New Books in Technology
Episodes
South Korea, Technology, and Globalization
16 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick Chung, assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland, talks about his research on the rise of shipping and manufacturing in Sou...
Infrastructure and Inequality
15 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Daniel Armanios, associate professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, talks about his work on infrastructure and inequa...
Christopher Bartel, "Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy: Killing Time" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But sh...
The Politics of Digital Technology
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Meredith Whittaker, co-founder and faculty director of the AI Now Institute and Minderoo Research Professor at New York University, talks about the po...
Bridget Whearty, "Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern Labor" (Stanford UP, 2022)
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Medieval manuscripts are our shared inheritance, and today they are more accessible than ever—thanks to digital copies online. Yet for all that wide...
Harald Koberg, "Free Play: Digital Gaming and the Longing for Effectiveness" (Büchner-Verlag, 2021)
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What needs are satisfied in digital gaming? And what does the shift of these need satisfactions into the digital space say about the social realities ...
Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World
13 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Data journalist Meredith Broussard talks about her book, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, with Peoples & Things host ...
Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
12 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful n...
Understanding Technology Bubbles
11 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brent Goldfarb and David Kirsch, professors of entrepreneurship and strategy at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, talk ...
The History of Household Technology from Open Hearth to the Microwave
09 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan talks about her book, More Work for Mother, with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book examines the history of how ...
Albert Glinsky, "Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2022)
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Moog synthesizer ‘bent the course of music forever’ Rolling Stone declared. Bob Moog, the man who did that bending, was a lovable geek with Ei...
Mirror Image: New Technologies and the Self
07 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
16th-century glass mirrors and 21st-century camera phones actually share a lot in common; they both are technologies that shaped new forms of the self...
Robert M. Geraci, "Futures of Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives from India and the U.S." (Oxford UP, 2021)
05 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty-first century life is increasingly governed by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as machine learning, big data analysis, facial re...
Samantha Muka, "Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
04 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Samantha Muka, Assistant Professor of Science, Te...
Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou, "The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power" (NYU Press, 2022)
02 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this episode, our host Juan Llamas-Rodriguez discusses the book The Digital...
Ethical AI
31 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Alex Hanna talks with Nathan Kim about Ethical AI. Their conversation is part of our High Theory in STEM series, which...
Luke Munn, "Automation Is a Myth" (Stanford UP, 2022)
27 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For some, automation will usher in a labor-free utopia; for others, it signals a disastrous age-to-come. Yet whether seen as dream or nightmare, autom...
Mariëlle Wijermars et al., "The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
24 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How has digitalisation changed Russian politics? How has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed Russia studies? What is special about Russia’s appro...
John D. Wong, "Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s-1998" (Harvard UP, 2022)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On July 6, 1998, the last flight took off from Kai Tak International Airport, marking the end of an era for Hong Kong aviation. For decades, internati...
Geert Lovink, "Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism" (Pluto Press, 2019)
22 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Why is the internet making us so unhappy? Why is it in capital’s interests to cultivate populations that are depressed and desperate rather than dri...
Heather Ford, "Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age" (MIT Press, 2022)
21 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A close reading of Wikipedia's article on the Egyptian Revolution reveals the complexity inherent in establishing the facts of events as they occur an...
Jenny L. Davis, "How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things" (MIT Press, 2020)
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective. Tec...
Renee M. P. Teate, "SQL for Data Scientists: A Beginner's Guide for Building Datasets for Analysis" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Economists and other social scientists are used to working with data that comes nicely organized into a table with a series of variable names across t...
Pamela H. Smith, "From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
19 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How and why early modern European artisans began to record their knowledge. In From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Kn...
The Future of the Arms Industry: A Discussion with Pieter D. Wezeman
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If you read the business pages of most newspapers, they are filled with stories about the sort of companies that people do business with – airlines,...
Danielle Keats Citron, "The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age" (Norton, 2022)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The boundary that once protected our intimate lives from outside interests is an artefact of the 20th century. In the 21st, we have embraced a vast ar...
Kelly I. Aliano, "The Performance of Video Games: Enacting Identity, History and Culture Through Play" (McFarland, 2022)
17 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When viewed through the context of an interactive play, a video game player fulfills the roles of both actor and spectator, watching and influencing a...
Matthew Hall et al., "Digital Gender-Sexual Violations: Violence, Technologies, Motivations" (Routledge, 2022)
16 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This groundbreaking book argues that the fundamental issues around how victim-survivors of digital gender-sexual violations (DGSVs) are abused can be ...
Karen Levy, "Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance" (Princeton UP, 2022)
15 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have...
Yasmine Ali, "Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America" (Citadel Press, 2023)
14 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The first book to examine the rarely-acknowledged Waverly Train Disaster of 1978 - the catastrophic accident that changed America forever and led to t...
Scott Moore, "China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future" (Oxford UP, 2022)
13 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
If the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it is that the world is bound together by shared challenges—and that at the center of those challenges ...
Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)
10 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode I got to chat about two of my favorite things: the history of imperialism and Star Wars with Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of History ...
The Future of AI in Work: A Discussion with Daniel Susskind
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What exactly can artificial intelligence do? It’s an issue some of the professions are grappling with – on the face of it, law is an area that res...
Julia Ticona, "Left to Our Own Devices: Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age" (Oxford UP, 2022)
09 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this episode, our host Florence Madenga discusses the book Left to Our Own ...
James A. Geraghty, "Inside the Orphan Drug Revolution: The Promise of Patient-Centered Biotechnology" (Cold Springs Harbor Lab Press, 2022)
06 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Advances in medicine have made possible better treatments for widespread, familiar human illnesses like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Yet there...
Melissa Kagen, "Wandering Games" (MIT Press, 2022)
04 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Wandering Games (MIT Press, 2022), Melissa Kagen analyzes wandering within different game worlds, viewed through the lenses of work, colonialism...
Jonathan R. Hunt, "The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam" (Stanford UP, 2022)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam (Stanford UP, 2022) reveals how a coalition of powerful and d...
94 Elizabeth Kolbert on the Nature of the Future (GT, JP, NS, HY)
01 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How should humans respond to our ongoing human-made climate catastrophe? To answer that question, Recall this Book turned to prize-winning climate r...
Sofya Glazunova, "Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) examines various forms of Russian online ant...
Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz, "The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
30 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but ...
Sarah Abel, "Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome" (UNC Press, 2021)
29 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the ...
Tim Walker and Lucian Morris, "The Handbook of Banking Technology" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)
28 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In The Handbook of Banking Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2021), Walker and Morris provide a first comprehensive view of the systems that support a...
Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, "Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back" (Beacon Press, 2022)
23 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (wh...
Aynne Kokas, "Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty" (Oxford UP, 2022)
22 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On August 6, 2020, the Trump Administration issued a ban on TikTok in the United States, requiring that the owner, Beijing-based Bytedance, sell the c...
Anna Pendergrast and Kelly Pendergrast, "More Zeros and Ones: Digital Technology, Maintenance and Equity in Aotearoa New Zealand" (Bridget Williams Books, 2022)
21 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Many of today’s digital technologies inadvertently amplify the power structures and prejudices of wider society. By examining the way digital tools ...
Robert P. Crease with Peter D. Bond, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
18 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a w...
The Future of Data Control: A Discussion with Sarah Lamdan
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A few big companies are selling information about us to governments and companies. But beyond a general sense of unease, what do we need to know about...
Matthew Crain, "Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
15 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The contemporary internet's de facto business model is one of surveillance. Browser cookies follow us around the web, Amazon targets us with eerily pr...
Ernest M. Valea, "Artificial Intelligence, Reincarnation, and Resurrection: An Inquiry Into the Ultimate Fulfillment of Human Nature" (Resource Publications, 2021)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Ernest M. Valea's Artificial Intelligence, Reincarnation, and Resurrection: An Inquiry Into the Ultimate Fulfillment of Human Nature (Resource Publi...
Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto, "(Im)mobile Homes: Family Life at a Distance in the Age of Mobile Media" (Oxford UP, 2022)
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do transnational Filipino families remain connected through mobile media technologies? In (Im)mobile Homes: Family Life at a Distance in the Age ...
Karen Bakker, "The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants" (Princeton UP, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to un...
Adam Crowley, "Representations of Poverty in Videogames" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
11 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Adam Crowley's book Representations of Poverty in Videogames (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) argues that digital games address contemporary, middle-cla...
Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish, "Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
10 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Image by image and hashtag by hashtag, Instagram has redefined the ways we relate to food. Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish’s edited book Food In...
Veronica Kirin, "Stories of Elders: What the Greatest Generation Knows about Technology that You Don't" (2018)
09 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
America’s Greatest Generation (born before 1945) witnessed incredible changes in technology and social progress. From simple improvements in enterta...
Gerd Gigerenzer, "How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms" (MIT Press, 2022)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Doomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think replacin...
Timothy W. Burns, "Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education" (SUNY Press, 2021)
03 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
There are few thinkers who engender as much debate about their legacy as Leo Strauss (1899 –1973). His critics and biographers often don’t even ag...
Chris Salter, "Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape Our Everyday Life" (MIT Press, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Sensing machines are everywhere in our world. As we move through the day, electronic sensors and computers adjust our thermostats, guide our Roombas, ...
Ashley Sweetman, "Cyber and the City: Securing London’s Banks in the Computer Age" (Springer, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Ashley Sweetman works in cyber security for a London-based global bank and holds a PhD from the Department of War Studies at King’s College Lon...
Brian A. Wong, "The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World" (PublicAffairs, 2022)
01 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast features Brian A. Wong, discussing his new book, The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That is Changing the World (Publ...
Emily Weinstein and Carrie James, "Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing)" (MIT Press, 2022)
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What are teens actually doing on their smartphones? Contrary to many adults' assumptions, they are not simply "addicted" to their screens, oblivious t...
Darts Transit Commission: Silicon Valley’s Car Culture
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Paris Marx is one of the sharpest modern writers on Silicon Valley and transit. We have been talking a lot lately about the idea of techno-utopian thi...
Daniel D. Garcia-Swartz and Martin Campbell-Kelly, "Cellular: An Economic and Business History of the International Mobile-Phone Industry" (MIT Press, 2022)
28 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we discuss a book that will be appealing to a general audience and which helps to bridge the gap of the story of communication in the...
Andrei Nae, "Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games" (Routledge, 2021)
26 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Andrei Nae's book Immersion, Narrative, and Gender Crisis in Survival Horror Video Games (Routledge, 2021) investigates the narrativity of some of t...
Adrian Hon, "You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All" (Basic Books, 2022)
25 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Warehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be f...
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis, "Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
21 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Gwen Shuni D'Arcangelis's book Bio-Imperialism: Disease, Terror, and the Construction of National Fragility (Rutgers UP, 2020) focuses on an unders...
Paul Daugherty and H. James Wilson, "Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shaping Our Future" (HBR Press, 2022)
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Jim Wilson about his book (co-authored with Paul Daugherty) Radically Human: How New Technology Is Transforming Business and Shapi...
Seeing Truth in Data
20 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun sees value in the truth, but worries what data we might be looking at to find it. Chun discusses her new book, Discriminating Da...
Technocracy Now! Part 3: Technocracy in the Private Sector
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The first two episodes of this series told stories of technocrats who tied themselves to a muscular state. They believed the state could remake societ...
Josh Bowsher, "The Informational Logic of Human Rights" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What happens to the cultural politics of human rights when atrocities are rendered calculable, abuses are transformed into data, and victims become ve...
Orli Fridman, "Memory Activism and Digital Practices After Conflict: Unwanted Memories" (Amsterdam UP, 2022)
19 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
With Memory Activism and Digital Practices after Conflict: Unwanted Memories (Amsterdam UP, 2022), Orli Fridman traces the emergence of memory acti...
Robert P. Crease, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
18 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a w...
Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou, "The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power" (NYU Press, 2022)
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
How do digital technologies shape the experiences and meanings of migration? As the numbers of people fleeing war, poverty, and environmental disaster...
Geert Lovink, "Stuck on the Platform: Reclaiming the Internet" (Valiz, 2022)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We’re all trapped. No matter how hard you try to delete apps from your phone, the power of seduction draws you back. Doom scrolling is the new norma...
Scott Moore, "China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future" (Oxford UP, 2022)
13 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“We’ll compete with confidence; we’ll cooperate wherever we can; we’ll contest where we must.” That’s the new China strategy as outlined b...
Christopher Lukman, "Control Machines: Toward a Dispositive Theory of Computer Games" (Lit Verlag, 2022)
11 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Christopher Lukman about his new book Control Machines: Toward a Dispositive Theory of Computer Games (Lit Verlag, 2022). In light...
Technocracy Now! Part 2: Exploring Technocracy through Cybernetics
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On part #2 of Technocracy Now, we tell stories of cybernetic technocracies. First, we hear the story of Charles A. McClelland, a liberal political sci...
Virtual Reality as Immersive Enclosure, with Paul Roquet (EF, JP)
06 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Roquet is an MIT associate professor in media studies and Japan studies; his earlier work includes Ambient Media. It was his recent mind-bendin...
Elizabeth Ellcessor, "In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality" (NYU Press, 2022)
05 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Elizabeth Ellcessor presents a much-needed look at the growth of emergency media and its impact on our lives in In Case of Emergency: How Technol...
Technocracy Now! Part 1: Noam Chomsky on Intellectuals and Expertise
02 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Technocracy is the idea that experts should govern. For the common good, presumably. In fact, it's an idea as old as politics itself, and it emerges j...
Alex Williams and Jeremy Gilbert, "Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World (And How We Win it Back)" (Verso, 2022)
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today power is in the hands of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. How do we understand this transformation in power? And what can we do about it? We cann...
Social Media and Political Participation in the Philippines
29 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We are all familiar with the spread of disinformation on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. But just when we thought we’...
Tripp Mickle, "After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul" (William Morrow, 2022))
28 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his "spiritual partner at Apple." The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative forc...
Digital Lethargy
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Tung-Hui Hu talks with Júlia Irion Martins about Digital Lethargy, as part of our High Theory in STEM series. As a mo...
Charlton D. McIlwain, "Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from AfroNet to Black Lives Matter" (Oxford UP, 2020)
22 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from AfroNet to Black Lives Matter (Oxford Univeristy Press), Charlton McIlwain, Vice Provost for ...
Amber Sinha, "The Networked Public: How Social Media is Changing Democracy" (Rupa Publications, 2019)
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Amber Sinha works at the intersection law, technology and society, and studies the impact of digital technologies on socio-political processes and st...
The Future of Nuclear Weapons: A Conversation with Fred Kaplan
20 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For much of the Cold War the United States had thousands more nuclear weapons than it needed. And it took decades for American political leaders to re...
Alex Nathanson, "A History of Solar Power Art and Design" (Routledge, 2021)
19 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Alex Nathanson's book A History of Solar Power Art and Design (Routledge, 2021) examines the history of creative applications of photovoltaic (PV) ...
Stefan Höltgen, "Open History: The Archaeology of Retrocomputing" (Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2021)
16 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Stefan Höltgen about his book Open History: The Archaeology of Retrocomputing (Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2021). How can historical co...
Felicia Wu Song, "Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age" (InterVarsity Press, 2021)
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We're being formed by our devices. Unpacking the soft tyranny of the digital age, Felicia Wu Song combines insights from psychology, neuroscience, soc...
Esther Wright, "Rockstar Games and American History: Promotional Materials and the Construction of Authenticity" (de Gruyter, 2022)
13 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
For two decades, Rockstar Games have been making games that interrogate and represent the idea of America, past and present. Commercially successful, ...
Josh Chin and Liza Lin, "Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control" (St. Martin's Press, 2022)
09 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
As we build the AI-powered digital economy, how far do we want to go? Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control ...
J. Bradford DeLong, "Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century" (Basic Books, 2020)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From one of the world's leading economists, a grand narrative of the century that made us richer than ever, yet left us unsatisfied Before 1870, human...
Truck Nuts: The Political History of Trucks and Trucking
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The pickup truck is the symbol of rural conservative masculinity. So, it often takes centre stage in the tired culture wars between reactionary neo-po...
Justin Grimmer et al., "Text as Data: A New Framework for Machine Learning and the Social Sciences" (Princeton UP, 2022)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From social media posts and text messages to digital government documents and archives, researchers are bombarded with a deluge of text reflecting the...
Lucía Fernández-Amaya, "A Linguistic Overview of Whatsapp Communication" (Brill, 2022)
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Digital discourse has become a widespread way of communicating worldwide, WhatsApp being one of the most popular Instant Messaging tools. A Linguisti...
Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, "Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2022)
01 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most fiercely debated issues of this era is what to do about "bad" speech, hate speech, disinformation, propaganda campaigns, incitement of...
Property Technology
30 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Erin McElroy talks with Nathan Kim about Property Technology. This is the first episode in the High Theory in STEM ser...
Jennifer Jill Fellows and Lisa Smith, "Gender, Sex, and Tech!: An Intersectional Feminist Guide" (Canadian Scholars, 2022)
29 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this timely collection, gender, sex, and technology are explored through an intersectional and interdisciplinary lens. Gender, Sex, and Tech!: An ...
Julie A. Turnock, "The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism" (U Texas Press, 2022)
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma...
Don’t Hate the Player: The World of E-Sports
26 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode of Darts and Letters, we took a personal journey into virtual sport. Listen in as guest host (and regular lead producer) Jay Cockburn ...