New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
Episodes
Marietje Schaake, "The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley" (Princeton UP, 2024)
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past decades, under the cover of "innovation," technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power ...
Wes Marshall, "Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System" (Island Press, 2024)
12 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse in recent years, yet we continue...
Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024)
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions...
Risa Cromer, "Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics" (NYU Press, 2023)
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, a group of white pro-life evangelical Christians in the United States created the nation’s first embryo adoption program to “save” the ...
Critique, Wonder, and Chinese Anatomy, with Lan A. Li
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the Blue Beryl Podcast, Dr Pierce Salguero sits down with the show’s producer, Lan A. Li, a historian of Chinese science, medicin...
John Withington, "A History of Fireworks from: Their Origins to the Present Day" (Reaktion, 2024)
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A History of Fireworks from: Their Origins to the Present Day (Reaktion, 2024) by John Withington illuminates the glittering history of fireworks, fr...
Pamela O. Long on the Long, Long, Long History of Technology
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with MacArthur “Genius Prize” winning historian Pamela Long about her long career writing about the histo...
Marco Bastos, "Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation" (Bristol UP, 2024)
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dissecting 45 million tweets from the period that followed the Brexit referendum, Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation (Brist...
Alan F. Blackwell, "Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI" (MIT Press, 2024)
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why the world needs less AI and better programming languages. Decades ago, we believed that robots and computers would take over all the boring jobs a...
Jeffrey Ding, "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition" (Princeton UP, 2024)
05 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the mom...
Gerald Sim, "Screening Big Data: Films That Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy" (Routledge, 2024)
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy (Routledge, 2024) examines the influence of key films on public understanding of big da...
Christian Wolmar, "The Liberation Line: The Untold Story of How American Engineering and Ingenuity Won World War II" (Hachette, 2024)
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
They certainly were not soldiers, yet they suddenly found themselves in uniform, in a foreign land. But, as locomotive drivers, track-workers, conduct...
Paola Bertucci, "In the Land of Marvels: Science, Fabricated Realities, and Industrial Espionage in the Age of the Grand Tour" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How a journey through Italy casts light on secrets, stereotypes, and the manipulation of information in eighteenth-century science. In 1749, the celeb...
Amos C. Fox, "Conflict Realism: Understanding the Causal Logic of Modern War and Warfare" (Howgate, 2024)
30 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you seek a compelling exploration of contemporary armed conflict, then Conflict Realism: Understanding the Causal Logic of Modern War and Warfare ...
Jason Weiss, "Listenings" (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Listenings (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023) is a collection of meditations on the art of experiencing sound. The writings reflect Jason Weiss's passion for il...
Annette Kehnel, "The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability" (Brandeis UP, 2024)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Annette Kehnel joins Jana Byars to talk about The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability (Brandeis University Press, 2024). A fascinati...
Jonathan Maskit, "Bicycle" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
These days the bicycle often appears as an interloper in a world constructed for cars. An almost miraculous 19th-century contraption, the bicycle prom...
Jordan Minor, "Video Game of the Year: A Year-By-Year Guide to the Best, Boldest, and Most Bizarre Games from Every Year Since 1977" (Abrams, 2023)
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Pong. The Legend of Zelda. Final Fantasy VII. Rock Band. Fortnite. Animal Crossing: New Horizons. For each of the 40 years of video game history, ther...
Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we assume that computers always get it right? Today’s book is: Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (MIT Press,...
Ethical Machines: A Conversation with Reid Blackman
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Join us as we discuss Dr. Reid Blackman’s new book: Ethical Machines: Your Concise Guide to Totally Unbiased, Transparent, and Respectful AI (Harv...
Max Hirsh and Till Mostowlansky, "Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia" (U Hawaii Press, 2022)
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the twenty-first century, infrastructure has undergone a seismic shift from West to East. Once concentrated in Europe and North America, global inf...
Jason A. Josephson Storm, "The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences" (U Chicago Press, 2017)
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Jose...
Emily M. Bender on AI Hype
23 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics p...
Amber Billey et al., "Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches" (ALA Editions, 2024)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Filling a gap in the literature, Inclusive Cataloging: Histories, Context, and Reparative Approaches (ALA Editions and Core, 2024) provides libraria...
Gergely Gosztonyi, "Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media’s Content Regulation and Moderation Practices" (Springer, 2023)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering...
Amir Alexander, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, a...
Marta Fijak and Artur Ganszyniec, "How and Why We Make Games" (CRC Press, 2024)
18 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How and Why We Make Games (CRC Press, 2024) delves into the intricate realms of games and their creation, examining them through cultural, systemic, ...
Hey, Robot!
16 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we’re playing with voice assistants and thinking about the role of voices in gaming with our guest, game designer and NYU professor Frank La...
Whitney Barlow Robles, "Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History" (Yale UP, 2023)
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dive into the world of animals with Whitney Barlow Robles in her captivating new book, Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History (Yale UP, 2...
Matthew C. Ehrlich, "The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine" (U Illinois Press, 2024)
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The brainchild of an obscure Yugoslav physician, Krebiozen emerged in 1951 as an alleged cancer treatment. Andrew Ivy, a University of Illinois vice p...
Greg Eghigian, "After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon" (Oxford UP, 2024)
11 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Roswell, 1947. Washington, DC, 1952. Quarouble, 1954. New Hampshire, 1961. Pascagoula, 1973. Petrozavodsk, 1977. Copley Woods, 1983. Explore how sight...
Michael Gavin, "Literary Mathematics: Quantitative Theory for Textual Studies" (Stanford UP, 2022)
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Across the humanities and social sciences, scholars increasingly use quantitative methods to study textual data. Considered together, this research re...
Raquel Velho on Disability, Infrastructure, and London's Public Transport System
09 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Raquel Velho, Associate Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, a...
Trevor Boffone, "TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age" (Oxford UP, 2024)
08 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Are you a musical theatre fan who loves TikTok? Or are you curious about how this social media app has changed musical theatre fandom - and even the c...
Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024)
07 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability in...
James M. Scott, "Black Snow: Curtis Lemay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb" (Norton, 2024)
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In our interview about Black Snow: Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), James M. ...
Jordan Magnuson, "Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice" (Amherst College Press, 2023)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars, critics, and creators describe certain videogames as being “poetic,” yet what that means or why it matters is rarely discussed. In Game...
S4E4 In Defense of Bad Science and the Philosophy of Being
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What role does science play in shaping our laws? How do we distinguish between good science and bad science? Where does science hit its limits due to ...
John P. Davis, "Russia in the Time of Cholera" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of “backwardness” often plagues historical writing on Russia. In Russia in the Time of Cholera: Disease under Romanovs and Soviets (Bloom...
Kostas Kampourakis, "Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many historical figures have their lives and works shrouded in myth, both in life and long after their deaths. Charles Darwin (1809–82) is no excep...
Sarah Malanowski and Nicholas R. Baima, "Why It's Ok to Be a Gamer" (Routledge, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If you enjoy video games as a pastime, you are certainly not alone—billions of people worldwide now play video games. However, you may still find yo...
Andy Clarno et al., "Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Chicago is a city with extreme concentrations of racialized poverty and inequity, one that relies on an extensive network of repressive agencies to po...
Violet Moller, "The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found" (Doubleday, 2019)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Violet Moller has written a narrative history of the transmission of books from the ancient world to the modern. In The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Y...
Elizabeth A. Williams, "Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we eat? Is it instinct? Despite the necessity of food, anxieties about what and how to eat are widespread and persistent. In Appetite and Its D...
Brian Clegg, "Ten Patterns That Explain the Universe" (MIT Press, 2021)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our universe might appear chaotic, but deep down it's simply a myriad of rules working independently to create patterns of action, force, and conseque...
Henry H. Work, "Wood, Whiskey and Wine: A History of Barrels"(Reaktion Books, 2024)
01 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Barrels – we rarely acknowledge their importance, but without them we would be missing out on some of the world’s finest wines and spirits. For ov...
Susan Greenhalgh, "Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
31 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola (U Chicago Press, 2024) takes readers deep inside the secret world of corporate science, where powe...
Mel Stanfill, "Fandom Is Ugly: Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture" (NYU Press, 2024)
31 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In their latest book, Fandom is Ugly: Networked Harassment in Participatory Culture (NYU Press, 2024), Mel Stafill highlights the importance of con...
John V. Pavlik, "Journalism and the Metaverse" (Anthem Press, 2024)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Journalism has been in a state of disruption since the development of the Internet. The Metaverse, or what some describe as the future of the Internet...
Tarryn Li-Min Chun, "Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China" (U Michigan Press, 2024), "Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China (University of Michigan Press, 2024) offers a fascinating approach to m...
The Human Advantage: A Conversation with Jay Richards
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore the insights of Jay Richards, author of The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines (Fo...
Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, "Mumbai on Two Wheels: Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility" (U Washington Press, 2024)
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mumbai is not commonly seen as a bike-friendly city because of its dense traffic and the absence of bicycle lanes. Yet the city supports rapidly expan...
Joanna Wuest, "Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ+ Movement" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars often narrate the legal cases confirming LGBTQ+ rights as a huge success story. While it took 100 years to confirm the rights of Black Americ...
Yerkebulan Sairambay, "New Media and Political Participation in Russia and Kazakhstan" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023)
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Yerkebulan Sairambay’s New Media and Political Participation in Russia and Kazakhstan (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023) confronts the sociologic...
Cyrus Mody on the Importance of Square (as in NOT COOL) Scientists and Engineers
26 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Cyrus Mody, Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation and Director of the STS Progra...
Phil Haun, "Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War: Explaining Effectiveness in Modern Air Warfare" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
25 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War: Explaining Effectiveness in Modern Air Warfare (Cambridge UP, 2023) introduces a much-needed theory of tactic...
Nick Chater, "The Mind Is Flat: The Remarkable Shallowness of the Improvising Brain" (Yale UP, 2019)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Psychologists and neuroscientists struggle with how best to interpret human motivation and decision making. The assumption is that below a mental “s...
Uluğ Kuzuoğlu, "Codes of Modernity: Chinese Scripts in the Global Information Age" (Columbia UP, 2023)
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the late nineteenth century, Chinese reformers and revolutionaries believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Chinese writing s...
Nick Haddad, "The Last Butterflies: A Scientist's Quest to Save a Rare and Vanishing Creature" (Princeton UP, 2019)
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Butterflies have long captivated the imagination of humans, from naturalists to children to poets. Indeed it would be hard to imagine a world without ...
Michele Santamaria and Nicole Pfannenstiel, "Information Literacy and Social Media: Empowered Student Engagement with the Acrl Framework" (ACRL, 2024)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Teaching our students how to become flexible and accurate evaluators of information requires teaching them adaptable processes and not static heuristi...
12 Angry Alaskans: Re-Examining the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Case
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is part #2 of a the (ir)Rational Alaskans, a Cited Podcast series that re-examines the legacy of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Last episode, th...
Noah Heringman, "Deep Time: A Literary History" (Princeton UP, 2023)
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Deep Time: A Literary History (Princeton UP, 2023), Noah Heringman, Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri, presents a “...
Heather Murray, "Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) by Dr. Heather Murray is a cultura...
Craig Gent, "Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work" (Verso, 2024)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Across the world, algorithms are changing the nature of work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the logistics and distribution sectors, where workers ar...
Aimee Louise Middlemiss, "Invisible Labours: The Reproductive Politics of Second Trimester Pregnancy Loss in England" (Berghahn Books, 2024)
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tracing women’s experiences of miscarriage and termination for foetal anomaly in the second trimester, before legal viability, shows how such events...
Matthew Evangelista, "Allied Air Attacks and Civilian Harm in Italy, 1940–1945: Bombing among Friends" (Routledge, 2024)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of thousands of Italian civilians perished in the Allied bombing raids of World War II. More of them died after the Armistice of September 1943...
Daniel Kahneman’s Forgotten Legacy: Investigating Exxon-Funded Psychological Research
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After the unprecedented Exxon Valdez oil spill, a jury of ordinary Alaskans decided that Exxon had to be punished. However, Exxon fought back against ...
Neoliberalism and the University, Part 2
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Co...
Alice Mah, "Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation" (Duke UP, 2023)
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is a green future possible? In Petrochemical Planet: Multiscalar Battles of Industrial Transformation (Duke UP, 2023), Alice Mah, a Professor in U...
Andrew Denning, "Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa" (Cornell UP, 2024)
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Andrew Denning uncovers how roa...
The GiveWell Method
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Caleb Zakarin and Uri Bram dive into the world of effective charitable giving through the lens of GiveWell, an organization known for...
Edward Shanks, "The People of the Ruins" (MIT Press, 2024)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The People of the Ruins (originally published in 1920), Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neo mediaeval society wh...
Thomas A. Kerns and Kathleen Dean Moore, "Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change" (Oregon State UP, 2021)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bringing together philosophy, jurisprudence, and a deep concern for the environment, Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Clim...
Mark Walker, "Hitler's Atomic Bomb: History, Legend, and the Twin Legacies of Auschwitz and Hiroshima" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
05 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who were the German scientists who worked on atomic bombs during World War II for Hitler's regime? How did they justify themselves afterwards? Exami...
Jeremy Black, "Histories of War" (Pen & Sword Military, 2024)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A global account of histories of war, from Antiquity to the present day, Histories of War (Pen & Sword Military, 2024) shows how the varied modes of...
Mitchel P. Roth and Mahmut Cengiz, "Murder by Mail: A Global History of the Letter Bomb" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Murder by Mail: A Global History of the Letter Bomb (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Mitchel P. Roth and Dr. Mahmut Cengiz unfolds the gripping history of wea...
Edward Kaplan, "The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our ...
Monica Berger, "Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications" (ACRL, 2024)
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Predatory publishing is a complex problem that harms a broad array of stakeholders and concerns across the scholarly communications system. It shines ...
Kate McDonald on Asian Mobility History as Labor History
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Kate McDonald, Associate Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara, about her fascin...
Tim Sweijs and Jeffrey H. Michaels, "Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War" (Oxford UP, 2024)
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
War in the 21st century will remain a chameleon that takes on different forms and guises. Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War (Oxford Univers...
Bishnupriya Ghosh, "The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media" (Duke UP, 2023)
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global...
Kirsten Moore-Sheeley, "Nothing But Nets: A Biography of Global Health Science and Its Objects" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Distributed to millions of people annually across Africa and the global south, insecticide-treated bed nets have become a cornerstone of malaria contr...
Quantifying the American Mind: George Gallup, and the Promise of Political Polling
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Early pollsters thought they had the psychological tools to quantify American mind, thereby enabling a truly democratic polity that would be governed ...
Anton Howes, "Arts and Minds: How the Royal Society of Arts Changed a Nation" (Princeton UP, 2020)
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past 300 years, The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce has tried to improve British life in every way ima...
David Badre, "On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done" (Princeton UP, 2020)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done (Princeton UP, 2020) is a look at the extraordinary ways the brain turns thoughts into actions—and how thi...
Sören Schoppmeier, "Playing American: Open-World Videogames and the Reproduction of American Culture" (De Gruyter, 2023)
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Videogames have always depicted representations of American culture, but how exactly they feed back into this culture is less obvious. Advocating an a...
Özge Çelikaslan, "Archiving the Commons: Looking Through the Lens of bak.ma" (DPR Barcelona, 2024)
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Stories of archives are always stories of phantoms, of the death or disappearance or erasure of something, the preservation of what remains, and it...
Thomas Zeller, "Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What we see through our windshields reflects ideas about our national identity, consumerism, and infrastructure. For better or worse, windshields have...
Jill A. Fisher, "Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals" (NYU Press, 2020)
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,...
Paula Bialski on Middletech, Software Work, and the Culture of Good Enough
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with Paula Bialski, an Associate Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen,...
Carl Öhman, "The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
14 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A short, thought-provoking book about what happens to our online identities after we die. These days, so much of our lives takes place online—but wh...
AI and Music: The Future is Here (featuring "There I Ruined It")
13 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the UConn Popcast, and recently UConn’s Center for the Study of Popular Music hosted a panel discussion on Artificial Intelligence and the ...
Tea Krulos, "American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness" (Feral House, 2020)
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The mainstream news media struggles to understand the power of social media. In contrast, conspiracy advocates, malicious political movements, and eve...
Monika Krause, "Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Dr. Monika Krause asks about the concrete material rese...
Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert, "The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance" (MIT Press, 2024)
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is data, and why does it matter for us to care about the data traces we leave behind? What are the implications for our lives of how this data is...
Shannon Vallor, "The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking" (Oxford UP, 2024)
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There's a lot of talk these days about the existential risk that artificial intelligence poses to humanity -- that somehow the AIs will rise up and de...
David Alff, "The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America’s most famous railway, but its influence goes far b...
Donna Drucker, "Contraception: A Concise History" (The MIT Press, 2020)
08 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding o...
David J. Hand, "Dark Data: Why What You Don't Know Matters" (Princeton UP, 2020)
08 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There is no shortage of books on the growing impact of data collection and analysis on our societies, our cultures, and our everyday lives. David Hand...
Sandra Hirsh, "Library 2035: Imagining the Next Generation of Libraries" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
07 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Building on the success and impact of Library 2020: Today’s Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library by Joseph Janes, Library 2035: Imag...