New Books in Technology

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Directions of Peer Review in Software Engineering

27 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Bram Adams, Professor at the School of Computing, Queen's University, Canada. We talk about current developments in peer r...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

Jeremy Black, "A World History of Rail: From the Steam Regime to Today" (Amberley Publishing, 2023)

06 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There were 20,000 miles of railways in 1865 and about a million by 2020. Scale has always been a key theme in railway history. In the First World War,...

Tara Ward, "Appreciation Post: Towards an Art History of Instagram" (U California Press, 2024)

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What does an art history of Instagram look like? Appreciation Post: Towards an Art History of Instagram (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr...

Eve Herold, "Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding on to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)

04 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The latest developments in robotics and artificial intelligence and a preview of the coming decades, based on research and interviews with the world's...

Jason Hannan, "Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media" (Oxford UP, 2023)

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We commonly think of trolls as anonymous online pranksters who hide behind clever avatars and screen names. In Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy...

Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard, "Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools" (MIT Press, 2024)

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A probing examination of the dynamic history of predictive methods and values in science and engineering that helps us better understand today's cultu...

Living with Digital Surveillance in China

24 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How do Chinese citizens make sense of digital surveillance and live with it? What narratives do they come up with to deal with the daily and all-encom...

Siobhan Angus, "Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography" (Duke UP, 2024)

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography (Duke UP, 2024) Siobhan Angus tells the history of photography through the minerals upon wh...

Paulina Rowinska, "Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers" (Pan Macmillan, 2024)

19 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How does a delivery driver distribute hundreds of packages in a single working day? Why does remote Alaska have such a large airport? Where should we ...

danah boyd on Digital Technology and Everyday Life

17 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with danah boyd, Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research, founder of the Data & Society Research Institute, an...

Allison J. Pugh, "The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World" (Princeton UP, 2024)

15 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work ha...

More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2024), by Meredith Broussard. When technology ...

Cameron J. Buckner, "From Deep Learning to Rational Machines" (Oxford UP, 2023)

10 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence started with programmed computers, where programmers would manually program human expert knowledge into the systems. In sharp ...

AI and the Humanities: Nina Beguš DIscusses "Artificial Humanities"

03 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this debut conversation, we speak to Dr. Nina Beguš, a researcher at UC Berkeley and the founder of InterpretAI who holds a PhD in Comparative Li...

Gretchen McCulloch, "Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language" (Riverhead Books, 2020)

01 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Brynn Quick speaks with best-selling author and linguist Gretchen McCulloch about her 2019 New York Times bestselling book Because Internet: Under...

Joanna Guldi, "The Dangerous Art of Text Mining: A Methodology for Digital History" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

28 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Dangerous Art of Text Mining: A Methodology for Digital History (Cambridge UP, 2022) celebrates the bold new research now possible because of tex...

Rob Drew, "Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable" (Duke UP, 2023)

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Well into the new millennium, the analog cassette tape continues to claw its way back from obsolescence. New cassette labels emerge from hipster encla...

Daniel P. Ott, "Harvesting History: McCormick's Reaper, Heritage Branding, and Historical Forgery" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Cyrus McCormick invented the revolutionary mechanical reaper in 1831...right? At least, that's how the story has been told for decades. In Harvesting...

Constantin Ardeleanu, "Steamboat Modernity: Travel, Transport, and Social Transformation on the Lower Danube, 1830–1860" (CEU Press, 2024)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact on Moldavia and Wallachia of steam navigation on the D...

Priya Satia, "Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution" (Bloomsbury, 2019)

18 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one domina...

Catherine D'Ignazio, "Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action" (MIT Press, 2024)

17 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What isn't counted doesn't count. And mainstream institutions systematically fail to account for feminicide, the gender-related killing of women and g...

Douglas L. Reside, "Fixing the Musical: How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory" (Oxford UP, 2023)

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Thousands of shows have opened on Broadway. Why do we remember some and not others? The musical theatre repertory is not composed of titles popular in...

Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg, "The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago: A Historical Geography of Atomic-Powered Communism" (CEU Press, 2023)

12 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Per Högselius and Achim Klüppelberg to ...

Gina Sipley, "Just Here for the Comments: Lurking as Digital Literacy Practice" (Bristol UP, 2024)

11 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We all sometimes ‘lurk’ in online spaces without posting or engaging, just reading the posts and comments. But neither reading nor lurking are eve...

"Did You Miss My Comment or What?": Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions

11 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to this interview of Courtney Miller, PhD student in Software Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. We talk about her paper "Did You Mis...

Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Trere, "Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power" (MIT Press, 2024)

10 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What are the tactics needed for a world of platforms and algorithms? In Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power (MIT Pre...

MC Forelle on Cars, Chipification, and Repair

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with MC Forelle, Assistant Professor of Engineering & Society at the School of Engineering and Applied Scien...

John Powers, "Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture" (Oxford UP, 2023)

04 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Bolex camera, 16mm reversal film stocks, commercial film laboratories, and low-budget optical printers were the small-gauge media technologies tha...

Natalia Grincheva and Elizabeth Stainforth, "Geopolitics of Digital Heritage" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

27 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How are digital platforms transforming heritage? In Geopolitics of Digital Heritage (Cambridge UP, 2023), Dr Natalia Grincheva, Program Leader of...

Anu Bradford, "Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology" (Oxford UP, 2023)

24 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The global battle among the three dominant digital powers―the United States, China, and the European Union―is intensifying. All three regimes are ...

Asif Siddiqi on Rockets, Prisons, Pop Songs, and So Much More

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Asif Siddiqi, Professor of History at Fordham University, about the arc of his career and his wide-rangi...

Héctor Beltrán, "Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands" (Princeton UP, 2023)

21 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands (Princeton UP, 2023), Héctor Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx coders’ personal...

Coreen McGuire, "Measuring Difference, Numbering Normal: Setting the Standards for Disability in the Interwar Period" (Manchester UP, 2020)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Measurements, and their manipulation, have been underestimated as crucial historical forces motivating and guiding the way we think about disability. ...

Heather Parry, "Electric Dreams: Sex Robots and Failed Promises of Capitalism" (404 Ink, 2024)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the future, we’ll all be having sex with robots… won’t we? Roboticists say they’re a distracting science fiction, yet endless books, films ...

Stephen Morillo, "War and Conflict in the Middle Ages" (Polity Press, 2022)

20 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In War and Conflict in the Middle Ages (Polity, 2022), Dr. Stephen Morillo offers the first global history of armed conflict between 540 and 1500 or...

Stewart Lawrence Sinclair, "Space Rover" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit and vision many equated...

Tina Sikka, "Health Apps, Genetic Diets and Superfoods: When Biopolitics Meets Neoliberalism" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

05 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Health Apps, Genetic Diets and Superfoods: When Biopolitics Meets Neoliberalism (Bloomsbury, 2023) critically examines contemporary health and wellne...

Marc Masters, "High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape" (UNC Press, 2023)

03 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade the...

Guru Madhavan on Wicked Problems and Engineering a Better World

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Guru Madhavan, Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and Senior Director of Programs at the National Academ...

Max Bennett, "A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains" (Mariner Books, 2023)

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains (Mariner Books, 2023) tells two fascinating stories. ...

Matthew H. Hersch, "Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle" (MIT Press, 2023)

30 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle (MIT Press, 2023), Dr. Matthew Hersch challenges the existing narrative of the most significant hum...

Robert Willim, "Mundania: How and Where Technologies Are Made Ordinary" (Bristol UP, 2024)

30 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Robert Willim's new book Mundania: How and Where Technologies Are Made Ordinary (Bristol University Press, 2024), takes the reader on a journey thr...

Thomas S. Mullaney, "The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age" (MIT Press, 2024)

29 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing. A standard QWERT...

Ignacio Cofone, "The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Our privacy is besieged by tech companies. Companies can do this because our laws are built on outdated ideas that trap lawmakers, regulators, and cou...

Anita R. Gohdes, "Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence" (Oxford UP, 2023)

26 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Global adoption of the Internet has exploded, yet we are only beginning to understand the Internet's profound political consequences. Authoritarian st...

John Warner on Teaching Writing in the Age of Generative AI

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with writer and editor John Warner, who taught writing at the college level for more than twenty years. Warner ...

How Can We Reach International Consensus on AI Regulation?

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Gabriele Mazzini, a lawyer and officer of the European Commission and ...

On Bloomsbury's "Object Lessons" Series: A Discussion with Christopher Schaberg

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Object Lessons is a series of concise, collectable, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Each book starts from a spe...

George S. Takach, "Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America" (Pegasus Book, 2024)

24 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A vivid, thoughtful examination of how technological innovation—especially AI—is shaping the tensions between democracy and autocracy during the n...

Tonia Sutherland, "Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife" (U California Press, 2023)

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The first critical examination of death and remembrance in the digital age—and an invitation to imagine Black digital sovereignty in life and death....

Once More--What Does It Even Mean for a Machine to be Generative?

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to Episode No.9 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. ...

Lisa Messeri, "In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles" (Duke UP, 2024)

16 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the mid-2010s, a passionate community of Los Angeles-based storytellers, media artists, and tech innovators formed around virtual reality (VR), bel...

Peter D. McDonald, "Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer" (MIT Press, 2024)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How abstract design decisions in 2D platform games create rich worlds of meaning for players. Since the 1980s, 2D platform games have captivated their...

Nick Jones, "Gooey Media: Screen Entertainment and the Graphic User Interface" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

15 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Graphic User Interface, or GUI, is the adhesive centre of today’s screen entertainment web. From films and television to apps and videogames, it...

Zachary Loeb on the History of the End of the World

11 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Are you into the end of the world? Well, have we got the guest for you. In this episode, Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel interviews Zachary Loeb, as...

Brian Merchant, "Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech" (LIttle, Brown, 2023)

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"Luddite" has become an insult and Brain Merchant wants to change that. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (Little,...

Hsuan L. Hsu, "Air Conditioning" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

08 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Air conditioning aspires to be unnoticed. Yet, by manipulating the air around us, it quietly conditions the baseline conditions of our physical, menta...

Robert Charette on Researching the Material World

04 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Peoples & Thing host Lee Vinsel interviews engineer, businessman, consultant, author, contributing editor at IEEE Magazine, and forme...

Verity Harding, "AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own" (Princeton UP, 2024)

01 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Artificial intelligence may be the most transformative technology of our time. As AI's power grows, so does the need to figure out what--and who--this...

Carol Beggy, "Pencil" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

28 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A cylinder of baked graphite and clay in a wood case, the pencil creates as it is being destroyed. To love a pencil is to use it, to sharpen it, and t...

Yanis Varoufakis, "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" (Melville House, 2023)

26 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2023), Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is dead and a new economic era has begun....

What Does It Even Mean for a Machine to Generate?

24 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to Episode No.8 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. ...

Paul Scharre, "Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" (Norton, 2023)

24 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

An award-winning defense expert tells the story of today’s great power rivalry―the struggle to control artificial intelligence. A new industrial r...

Jacob Ward, "Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications" (MIT Press, 2024)

23 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024), Jacob Ward explains why the privatization of Br...

Neil Lee, "Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy" (U California Press, 2024)

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can we build a more equal economy? In Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy (U California Press, 2024), ...

Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson, "American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15" (FSG, 2023)

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner so...

Nate Klemp, "Open: Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World" (Sounds True, 2024)

19 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

With the avalanche of information we get every day, closing down our minds and hearts seems to be the only way to survive. We close down to our inner ...

Jenna Ng, "The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie" (Amsterdam UP, 2021)

14 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Screens are ubiquitous today. Yet contemporary screen media eliminate the presence of the screen and diminish the visibility of its boundaries. As the...

Markus Krajewski, "The Server: A Media History from the Present to the Baroque" (Yale UP, 2018)

11 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The Server: A Media History from the Present to the Baroque (Yale UP, 2018) is a cutting–edge media history on a perennially fascinating topic tha...

Chen-Pang Yeang, "Transforming Noise. A History of Its Science and Technology from Disturbing Sounds to Informational Errors, 1900-1955" (2023)

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, the concept of noise is employed to characterize random fluctuations in general. Before the twentieth century, however, noise only meant distur...

Paddy Walker and Peter Roberts, "War's Changed Landscape?: A Primer on Conflict's Forms and Norms" (Howgate, 2023)

27 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout much of the 21st century thus far, the common argument among military pundits was that war has or will soon be radically changed in manners...

Hartmut Koenitz, "Understanding Interactive Digital Narrative: Immersive Expressions for a Complex Time" (Routledge, 2023)

19 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This remarkably clearly written and timely critical evaluation of core issues in the study and application of interactive digital narrative (IDN) unta...

What Decision Means

19 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to Episode No.5 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. ...

Paul Gowder, "The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

17 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Governments and consumers expect internet platform companies to regulate their users to prevent fraud, stop misinformation, and avoid violence. Yet, s...

James C. Goodall, "Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarines" (Osprey, 2023)

15 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarines (Osprey, 2023), James C. Goodall covers the origins, design and development o...

Can A.I. Mean?

13 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Listen to Episode No.4 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. ...

Roland Allen, "The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper" (Profile Books, 2023)

06 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful...

Carolyn Birdsall, "Radiophilia" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

31 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A century ago, the emergence of radio, along with organized systems of broadcasting, sparked a global fascination with the 'wonder' of sound transmiss...

Ben Jacobsen and David Beer, "Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory: Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past" (Bristol UP, 2023)

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Social media platforms hold vast amounts of biographical data about our lives. They repackage our past content as ‘memories’ and deliver them back...

John D. Hosler, "Seven Myths of Military History" (Hackett Publishing, 2022)

23 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

John D. Hosler's book Seven Myths of Military History (Hackett Publishing, 2022) "offers snapshots of seven pernicious myths in military history th...