New Books in Technology

Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 7 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Hollywood today, thousands of data specialists work for streaming video platforms, playing a role not just in distribution and marketing but also in decisions about content and production. In Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming (Princeton UP, 2026), Violaine Roussel examines the emergence of this new category of professionals at the heart of the Hollywood dream factory. Roussel shows how the rise of data and algorithm specialists has transformed organizations and rearranged power relationships within them. Drawing on extensive interviews and in situ observations, she describes the ways that technical “data work” carried out by professionals at streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ has had a significant effect on creative decisions.
Rather than fetishizing data and algorithmic models, Roussel explores the practices of the professionals who shape them, manipulate them, and give them power. She examines the relationships of these workers with traditional producers, describing legitimacy struggles and the eventual stabilization of new professional arrangements. Roussel’s account of the ways that data specialists deploy algorithmic models to reinvent their industry’s approach to content, artists, and the market—the first in-depth sociological study of the rise of this new profession—reveals the new forms of power and knowledge at play in today’s Hollywood.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marnie Hughes-Warrington, "Artificial Historians" (Routledge, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 3 Sep 2026 07:00:00 +0000

I spoke with Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington about her 2026 book Artificial Historians, co-authored with Anne Martin and Lewis Yarlupurka O’Brien. A distinguished historian, philosopher, academic leader, and Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) based at the University of Adelaide, my guest explores how the logic of history, defined around trivalent logic (the “maybes,” the “ifs,” the ontological uncertainties), intersects with and challenges the logic of dominant AI algorithms.

The book raises urgent questions about the changing status of human agency, the ethics of AI-powered data collection about us, and the de facto histories that AI is writing about us every second—histories that may decide whether we can travel, access education, or receive medical care. We talk about the opportunities that this perspective on AI presents to humans (and historians in particular!), how some non-Western conceptions of history—for instance, those of the Indigenous nations of Australia—complicate the dominant Western understanding of what history is, and the challenges we must address as we hand over more and more data and delegate the writing of actual human histories to AI.

Aristotle makes a cameo, and my guest talks about how the economy might be shifting from knowledge bias to ethics bias.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Xiaochang Li, "Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Since the advent of computers, society has fantasized about conversing with machines. In Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Xiaochang Li shows readers how that dream both fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today’s generative AI. 

With original research and clear explanations, Dr. Li elucidates the origins of what’s known as natural language processing (NLP) and the heated twentieth-century debates between computer scientists, linguists, and communication engineers that shaped today’s technology. Starting with early devices that recorded, analyzed, and attempted to interpret human speech, she demonstrates how computer speech recognition, particularly efforts led by Bell Labs and IBM, advanced technology by deemphasizing linguistic meaning in favor of statistical prediction. In other words, researchers gradually abandoned systems that sought to understand human language, opting instead for work-arounds that simply predicted patterns in speech and text data. That solution became incredibly and surprisingly adaptable. As Dr. Li reveals, transforming linguistic questions into engineering ones ushered in the routine operation of search engines, spam filters, and the varied content sorting and recommendation mechanisms that regulate the access, circulation, and legitimacy of information across every platform. But this has all come at the cost of forever requiring copious and ever-growing amounts of new data.

At its core, Divination Engines illuminates how the artifacts of human communication—speech, text, and images—have become both the fodder for and products of computers. This connection between communication and computation, Li shows, has given rise to data-driven analytics, machine learning, and today’s algorithmic culture.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Special Episode: Accounting for Computing, or Why We So Badly Need a New Social and Economic History of Everyday Digital Technology Use

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This special episode features a short talk Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, gave at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia. The event featured a great mix of historians and Science and Technology Studies scholars and was organized by Jacob Bruggeman, who recently finished his dissertation on the politics of computer hackers at Johns Hopkins University and is now headed to a job at Ohio State University. Thanks to Jacob for putting the event together and hearty congratulations on his accomplishments. In the talk, Vinsel argues that we are missing a synthetic social and economic history of how our adoption and use of digital technologies over the past fifty years has affected everyday life in many social spheres, including work, religion, politics, schools, and family life. He also points to some exemplary scholars who have laid some initial groundwork on these topics and gives some suggestions for primary and secondary sources we can use to do this work. Most of all, the talk is an open invitation to collective work - because doing this project well goes far beyond what any individual can do alone.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith, and Tomás Dodds, "Journalism in the Age of AI: From Acceleration to Reimagination" (Polity, 2027)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 23 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

What if AI’s biggest impact on journalism isn’t replacing journalists, but forcing us to rethink what journalism is for?

In this episode, Joanne Kuai speaks with Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith, and Tomás Dodds, authors of Journalism in the Age of AI: From Acceleration to Reimagination (Polity, 2027).

For decades, journalism has been caught on a “hamster wheel” of acceleration: producing more stories, for more platforms, with fewer resources. AI promises even greater efficiency, but is doing more with less really what journalism needs?

Lewis, Zamith, and Dodds argue that the current AI moment offers something more consequential: an opportunity to reimagine journalism itself. The conversation explores what remains distinctly human about journalism when machines can increasingly perform creative and cognitive tasks; how dependence on AI companies and digital infrastructure is reshaping media power; what AI means for journalism education and human judgement; and whether journalism can harness these technologies in ways that strengthen, rather than erode, its democratic purpose.

The conversation also raises a more fundamental question: is preserving journalism as an institution the goal, or should we rethink how society meets its information needs altogether?

Journalism in the Age of AI is available open access. Learn more and access the book here.

About the authors

Seth C. Lewis is the inaugural Elcan Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Media Studies at the University of Virginia. Previously, he was the founding holder of the Shirley Papé Chair in Emerging Media and Director of Journalism at the University of Oregon. In his research, Lewis examines the social implications of emerging technologies and their consequences for news and public life.

Rodrigo Zamith is an Associate Professor and former Chair of the Journalism Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of journalism and technology, with a focus on understanding the social implications of emerging technologies for how news is produced, distributed, and consumed. He is a recipient of UMass’ Distinguished Teaching Award.

Tomás Dodds is an Assistant Professor in Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Director of its Public Tech Media Lab. His research examines the evolving relationship between journalism and technology, with a focus on how journalists and media organizations can develop open-source tools and artificial intelligence systems that serve the public interest.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeff Jarvis, "Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad (Bloomsbury, 2026) is the epic story of the magnificent 19th-century machine that rendered Gutenberg's movable type obsolete and opened the portal to the long century of mass media. The Linotype mechanized the 400-year-old process of setting type one laborious letter at a time, and thus ignited an explosion of newspaper, book, and magazine empires.
This is a tale populated with wondrous characters: tragic inventors, malign media moguls, hand-typesetters called the Swifts who turned their craft into a spectator sport, and authors and journalists who chronicled the turmoil of their time, their every word molded into metal type by what some viewed as a thinking machine. This revolution in media technology helped to propel Mark Twain into literary celebrity, but it also cost him his fortune – as well as his sense of humor and optimism.
The era of the Linotype was a bridge between Twain's Gilded Age with its tycoons of steam, steel, and wire and today's Gilded Age with its barons of bits and AI. Its history provides an opportunity to reflect on how technology changes culture just as new technologies – the internet and artificial intelligence –manufacture their endless streams of words today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jehnie Burns on Mixtape Culture

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with writer and researcher, Jehnie I. Burns about her book, Mixtape Nostalgia: Culture, Memory, and Representation (Lexington, 2023). This conversation builds on earlier ones on music and technology, especially our earlier episode with Anthony Kwame Harrison about the ethnography of hiphop. Vinsel and Burns chat about the rise of mixtape culture, how it played out in different subcultures, and how it was wrapped up in and transformed by technological change. We also announce some big news at the beginning of the episode.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aarthi Vadde, "We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature (Columbia UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature (Columbia University Press 2026) by Aarthi Vadde is a groundbreaking account of mass writing in the twenty-first century, identifying rarely recognized forms of literary possibility amid the profound upheavals in traditional publishing. Aarthi Vadde examines the explosion of textuality across digital platforms: countless writers, diverse publishing formats, and vast communities of readers responding to stories publicly and instantly. Countering ubiquitous decline narratives, she offers powerful examples of literary innovation, adaptation, and survival. Among them are Jonathan Lethem and Lauren Oyler’s challenges to individualist ideas of authorship, the Twitter fiction of Jennifer Egan and Teju Cole, Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman’s collaborative writing on Wattpad, conceptual projects like Book from the Ground, and the experimental use of chatbots by authors including Sheila Heti. Through nuanced and illuminating readings, We the Platform shows how platform-based writing has altered cornerstone concepts of authorship, aesthetic form, and craft, delivering a bold new understanding of literature now.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Beyond Free Speech: Why AI Governance Demands Freedom of Thought

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 9 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Are we driving our technology, or is it starting to drive us? In this thought-provoking conversation, Eli Karetny sits down with researcher and author Eduardo Albrecht to explore the invisible, rapidly encroaching frontier of AI governance and data surveillance.Moving far beyond traditional debates about data privacy, Albrecht warns of a near future where the state and corporate partners bypass human speech entirely, relying instead on "sentiment detection" to ascribe thoughts and make decisions that impact our physical lives. Together, they trace the historical trajectory of control—from early fingerprinting and eugenics to modern biometrics and neural implants—and challenge the modern illusion of state efficiency at the expense of human agency.Tune in for a deep dive into the two fundamental rights required to safeguard the future of democracy: absolute transparency over our data, and an evolving, radical defense of our collective freedom of thought.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Leopoldina Fortunati, "The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital" (Verso, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 8 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The definitive feminist analysis of reproductive and ‘caring’ labor to emerge from Italian feminism of the 1970s.

Emerging from the great social upheavals that contested the sexual and racial divisions of labor globally in the 1970s, Leopoldina Fortunati’s classic work expands and transforms how we analyze the sphere of reproduction, redefining the value of the individual’s life and the labor performed in the home.

Released here for the first time in its unabridged form with historical notation and contemporary commentary, The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital (Verso, 2025) is a foundational text and essential contribution to today’s discussions of social reproduction and the history of Italian feminism. Fortunati’s work provides some of the earliest theorizations of ‘immaterial,’ ‘affective,’ and ‘caring’ labor, and of the role of technology in reproduction, articulated decades before their popular reception in English academic literature. Reading this work some 50 years after its original publication gives us the tools to analyze the contemporary state of capitalist development and of women’s lives today. The text remains prefigurative and essential in our era of digital labor.

Leopoldina Fortunati was a core member of Lotta Femminsta and the Wages for Housework Movement internationally. Along with Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James and Silvia Federici, she composed many of the group’s core theoretical and political texts. Her early work continues to inform movements concerned with struggles over reproduction globally and in subsequent work as a theorist of media and technology, Fortunati has been at the vanguard of contemporary theory addressing the relation between gendered labor and technology.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James W. Cortada, "Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 3 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times (Bloomsbury, 2025) describes tacit knowledge, what it is, how it used and its role in our current data driven world. Author James Cortada argues that fuzzy, hard-to describe information is greater and more, important than just hard facts. What is tacit knowledge? It is what we might consider knowledge that is unable to be fully communicated; knowledge that we understand implicitly, but it is a bit hard to explain. For example, it is the kind of knowledge one needs to ride a bicycle, but that cannot be described precisely on paper in the way one might be able to explain how to cook a dish. Tacit knowledge is the least understood type of information and one of the most difficult to communicate. Yet there is more tacit knowledge in our lives than the specific facts one can find in a book, on the Internet or in the simple form of a fact. This book is designed to introduce the reader to the concept of tacit knowledge and how to recognize and use it. This book offers definitions of tacit knowledge and compares the topic to explicit knowledge, then describes how the former is used today. The author argues that both types are used today and explains how one can use both types of knowledge in their lives. This book is essential primer to understanding tacit knowledge and learning how to use it to your advantage.

Guest: James (Jim) Cortada is a senior research fellow at the University of Minnesota. He is a leading authority on the role of modern information. He holds a PhD in modern history but worked at IBM Corporation for nearly 40 years in sales and consulting. He has written several books on the business history of the computer industry and just over a dozen on the history and use of information over the past two centuries. So, he straddles the subject between historical evolution and its current uses.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Devin Kennedy, "Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy" (Columbia UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Long before Google, Amazon, or Microsoft, computer technology shaped how people worked, how markets operated, and how businesses became big. After World War II, military officials and their partners in industry looked to the newly invented electronic computer as they sought to cut costs, speed up labor, manage supply chains, and—they hoped—bring stability to the postwar economy. Their efforts would shape early computer science and the first applications of computer technology in manufacturing and business, with profound consequences for workers and managers alike. By the 1960s, practices originally developed to improve industrial efficiency were being used by Wall Street, influencing how markets worked and even how traders thought. Digital technology became central to finance, tying together far-flung trading floors and automating decision making—with alarming consequences, including the 1987 Black Monday crash.

In Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy (Columbia University Press, 2026), Dr. Devin Kennedy offers a new history of the digital economy, showing how the computer emerged from—and transformed—capitalism in the United States. He traces how computer science and technology were made by industry, which molded computation to manage factories, financial markets, and entire firms. Drawing on the archives of businesses, computer researchers, regulators, and financial institutions, Coding Capitalism retells the story of the postwar economy and the computer, revealing how mid-century business laid the foundations of the digital world. Bridging business and economic history with the history of science and technology, this book uncovers the prehistory of big tech and demonstrates how capitalism has shaped computing since its invention.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Re-Evaluating CX in the AI Era

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Michael Brand is a CX strategist and trainer, based in Switzerland, who has been named a Thinkers 360 Top 50 Global Thought Leader on Customer Loyalty. Dr. Vincent Covello directs the Center for Risk Communications, and is a nationally and internationally recognized trainer, researcher, consultant, and expert in emergency, crisis, risk, and change communications. Deanna Leonard is a futurist, executive coach, and AI transformation leader. Her career has spanned senior leadership posts across a wide range of Fortune 500 companies.

In this freewheeling, one-hour roundtable discussion, the focus is on the Customer Experience through the lens of both the opportunities and misuses that AI involves. The topics addressed include the following: 1) the importance of active listening, 2) the 20 words that can make or break an exchange with a customer, 3) how front-line CX employees can be enabled to do their jobs better, and 4) the need for training budgets to be protected, if not increased. In emotional terms, two feelings rise to prominence in this session: fear (of not being heard and responded to) and trust (rooted in the demonstration of caring before knowledge gets shared or an action-step taken). The answers as to who people trust, and why, when experiencing stress will be sure to surprise you.

Real Transformations: Business Change That Works from the Inside Out is co-hosted by Julie Anixter and Dan Hill, PhD, entrepreneurs with deep experience as corporate change agents, devoted to helping companies make continuous change work for everyone through clarity and connection. To learn about their keynote talks, workshops and labs, check out Real-Transformation.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Long Reach of the Strong Arm: Evolving Forms of Transnational Authoritarianism in Asia and Beyond

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How do authoritarian regimes silence critics across borders? And what are the repressive tools and strategies that authoritarian regimes use transnationally? In this episode we are joined by Arild Engelsen Ruud, Mubashar Hasan and Karin Zackari to discuss the role of digital surveillance, emotional blackmail, enforced family isolation, psychological harassment, and the imprisonment of relatives on fabricated charges by Asian authoritarian regimes seeking to control populations and narratives across borders.

You can read more about the research discussed in this episode in the book The Long Reach of the Strong Arm: Evolving Forms of Transnational Authoritarianism, published by Springer.

Arild Engelsen Ruud is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Oslo.

Mubashar Hasan is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Western Sydney University.

Karin Zackari Associate Senior Researcher at the School of Global Studies at the University of Gothenburg.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen, your host, is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and the Director of the Centre for South Asian Democracy at the University of Oslo.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paul Langley and Andrew Leyshon, "Fintech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

How is finance changing in the contemporary world? In FinTech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance (Princeton University Press, 2026), Paul Langley, a Professor of Economic Geography at Durham Universityand Andrew Leyshon, a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Economy, Policy and Place, Nottingham Trent University and Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Nottingham, chart the rise of a new form of capitalism in the digital age. Drawing on detailed case studies from across the world, from familiar everyday examples such as Klarna to continent-spanning institutions such as Standard Bank, the book theorises the dynamics of this new moment in global capitalism. Of interest across the social sciences, the book will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand money today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Building A Freedom Infrastructure in the Age of Networked Control

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Host Licia Cianetti talks to Venezuelan democracy activist and co-founder of the World Liberty Congress Leopoldo López. As part of PPP’s ongoing collaboration with the Journal of Democracy they discuss Leopoldo’s recent article on Democracy in an Age of Networked Control. They discuss the technological challenges that democracy activists worldwide face today, and how some activists are rethinking their use of technology to elude the infrastructure of control and create new infrastructures for freedom.

Guest:

Leopoldo López is a Venezuelan democracy activist and the cofounder of the World Liberty Congress, which is a global network that connects democracy advocates and leaders from across the world. From 2014 to 2020 he was imprisoned for leading peaceful protests and civil resistance against the regime of Nicolás Maduro. Currently he is a Fellow at the Wilson Center.

Presenter:

Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. She is the Principal Investigator of an upcoming research project on “Resisting Inter-Scalar Authoritarian Networks and Coalitions” (funded by the EU under Horizon Europe grant no. 101286676).

Transcript here

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David I. Waddington, "The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Despite decades of inflammatory rhetoric, the real risk of video games lies not in their violent imagery but in the ethical and political sensibilities they normalize. Video games reward speed, efficiency, control, and meritocratic mastery, training players to align with a technolibertarian worldview - one that celebrates individual will, technological power, and skepticism toward collective forms of governance. Rather than asking whether games produce violent individuals, we might more productively ask how they contribute to a commitment to radical capitalism and a belief in highly individualistic worldviews. In this unsettling work David Waddington traces the philosophical roots of technolibertarianism, founded on faith in technological progress and personal freedom. He identifies a darker turn in this thinking, animated by the ideals of Ayn Rand and her archetype of the "tech hero of capitalism." Many games, Waddington argues, invite players to inhabit this archetype, treating mastery, control, and relentless striving as moral virtues. While educational research often praises games for motivating students and fostering problem-solving, Waddington asks a deeper question: What kinds of people do games help us become? Drawing on Martin Heidegger and other thinkers, he explores whether gameplay expands human possibility or narrows it by habituating players to efficient yet restrictive systems. The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026) critiques mainstream game design and educational technology, offering hopeful alternatives and examining reflective games that resist dominant gameplay logics. Written with clarity, passion, and philosophical depth, this thought-provoking work opens new horizons on technology, education, and the moral imagination of play.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel L. Gardner, "Thresholds of Digital Gameplay" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware, and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production has not yet been fully explored.

In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character configuration, and microtransactional storefronts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stefan Höltgen et al., "Commodore 64: Past, Present, and Future of a Home Computer" (Projekt Verlag, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Commodore 64 is the most signiﬁcant computer of its era. From 1982 to 1994, a total of 27 million units were sold—more than any other computer from a single manufacturer afterwards. Due to its widespread use as well as its technical features, the C64 has a huge international following—even to this day. The 19 contributions compiled in Commodore 64: Past, Present, and Future of a Home Computer (Projekt Verlag, 2026) illustrate the signiﬁcance of the platform for the digitalization of society, the general public’s computer science knowledge, as well as digital art and culture—both in the past, present, and also in the future. Volume 5 of the »Computer Archaeology« series is partly based on the conference of the same name held in 2024 at the University of Bonn and has here been supplemented with additional contributions from the ﬁelds of artiﬁcial intelligence, quantum computing, and digital humanities.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fenwick McKelvey, "SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers" (MIT Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This book is available open access.

For more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers (MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet.

Drawing on novel archival and historical research, Dr. McKelvey recounts the history of efforts to simulate politics by building models of elections, voters, and international relations. Comparing attempts in the United States to simulate domestic electoral politics and international affairs, he reveals the unexamined connections and conflicts between the two projects. His book provides a helpful guide to taking stock of exaggerated claims that AI and technology will fix politics, while presenting the long history of such promised technological fixes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination (MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech, military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is about the changing imagination of technology within an American context and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of modern life.

Soraya Murray is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central role. Murray’s first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin’s Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Emerging Anocracy: AI, Tech Oligarchs, and the Future of Democracy with Alexis Cruz

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny sits down with Alexis Cruz, founder of Enough Consulting and former strategic advisor for governance at Meta. Cruz explores how the proliferation of AI and digital platforms has shifted global politics into an "anocracy"—a precarious gray zone situated between traditional democracy and authoritarianism.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ali Fard, "Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data (University of Minnesota Press, 2026) by Dr. Ali Fard peers through this hazy façade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological development of the cloud computing paradigm, Dr. Fard exposes an ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments.

Demonstrating how technology’s spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform capitalism—from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas. Meanwhile, with compelling examples of smart-city initiatives and corporate campuses, Dr. Fard shows how the future of urbanism is deeply intertwined with the growing economies of data extraction.

Breaking down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird today’s most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Campaigning, Parties and the Digital in Contemporary Politics

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 8 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Politics, parties and campaigning are all changing. AI, digital tools and the rapid spread of messages all mean that the conduct and content of politics are changing. In many respects, it feels like the only constant is change. But closer observation often illuminates a patchier picture with elements of change and elements that remain. Moreover, change can be more evolutionary than revolutionary, and the change is not always along the lines we might predict. So, how and in what ways is political campaigning changing? What role are digital tools playing? What do citizens want from their political parties, and what are they (or could be) doing to meet those desires and expectations? Join Tim Haughton and guest Kate Dommett for a discussion of campaigning, digital politics and political parties.

Kate Dommett is Professor of Digital Politics at the University of Sheffield. Among her many publications are The Reimagined Party: Democracy, change and the public, published by Manchester University Press in 2020, and a co-authored book with Glenn Kefford & Simon Kruschinski, Data Driven Campaigning and Political Parties: Five Advanced Democracies Compared, published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Tim Haughton is Professor of Comparative and European Politics and a Deputy Director of CEDAR at the University of Birmingham. He is the author, inter alia, of The New Party Challenge published by Oxford University Press in 2020 and Clicks and Mortar: Electoral Campaigning in the 21st Century published last year in Government and Opposition.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chinese EVs: From Nordic Streets to Central Asian Hubs

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 3 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Can Europe afford to stand back as China rewrites the global electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem? In this episode, Julie Yu-Wen Chen at the University of Helsinki talks to United Nations Senior Adviser Matthew Gray for Europe and Central Asia Markets, who discusses the rapid international expansion of Chinese EVs. The conversation highlights how Chinese brands have moved beyond public buses to growing passenger car markets in the Nordic region and Central Asia through superior technology, lower price points, and patient policy.

While European markets face limited model availability due to protectionism and strategic caution, Central Asian nations have seen an immediate and total transformation of their transport infrastructure with far higher and lower end Chinese EVs than in Europe - and dramatic new challenges in electrification capacity. Based in Copenhagen, with 20+ experience in the regions, Gray is speaking freshly with us after two recent months in Tajikistan and China. He compares EV and soft power growth in Scandinavia vs Central Asia, and explains that modern EVs act as geopolitical infrastructure, shifting the focus from simple manufacturing to long-term digital service ecosystems, data control, and entry into more vertical industries. As the West maintains protective barriers, China’s control over the battery supply chain and hybrid innovations will likely force a global shift in both consumer and freight industries. Listeners can find Gray’s fact-finding recap of Chinese EVs in Tajikistan here.

Julie Yu‑Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Master’s Programme in Area and Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Her new book, Global Knowledge Production about China, explores how the practice of “China‑watching” has evolved over the decades. The book is freely accessible online.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Christian Martinez, "NYC Open Data Student Gallery" (Brooklyn College CUNY, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 2 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

About NYC Open Data

During the Fall 2025 semester, students in the M.S. program in Psychological Research at Brooklyn College completed the inaugural offering of Reproducible Psychological Research. Using the R programming language, students developed weekly R Markdown documents to solve simulated real-world analytical problems using authentic datasets, with an emphasis on transparency, documentation, and reproducibility.

For their final projects, students were tasked with conducting independent, original research using open data related to New York City. Rather than working with pre-cleaned or artificial datasets, students engaged directly with messy, real-world data and were responsible for every step of the analytical workflow—from data acquisition and cleaning to analysis, visualization, and interpretation. A majority of projects utilized data from the NYC Open Data Portal, though students were encouraged to explore any open NYC-based data source that aligned with their research questions.

Each project in this volume represents a complete, reproducible research artifact. Students were required to meet the following criteria:

The data must be openly available
The data must meaningfully relate to New York City
The research question, analysis, and interpretation must be original

Collectively, these projects demonstrate not only technical proficiency in R, but also the ability to ask meaningful questions about the city students live in, evaluate real-world data critically, and communicate findings in a clear, reproducible manner. This volume serves both as a showcase of student growth and as an example of how open data and open-source tools can be used to conduct rigorous, socially relevant research. Chapters are organized in alphabetical order of the student’s last names.

This volume is designed for students, educators, and practitioners interested in applied data analysis, reproducible research, and open data. Each chapter represents an independent research project and can be read on its own. Readers are encouraged to explore the accompanying code, reproduce analyses, and adapt methods for their own work.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Tin Man Model of Running a Company Is Rusty

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 2 Jul 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner are enterprise strategists at Amazon Web Services, based in London. Phil was previously a corporate VP and international CIO at McDonalds. Jana was formerly at DHL and studied uncertainty dynamics in academia. They are authors of The Octopus Organization: A Guide to Thriving in a World of Continuous Transformation published by Harvard Business Review Press.

Octopus’s are nimble and amazing, as anybody who has watched the 2020 Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher will verify. In contrast, the Tin Man model we know from The Wizard of Oz needs constant oil and is too rusty and rigid to function well on its own for long. This episode’s guests lean into the Octopus model, which is about earning trust and evading, in this case, the enemy within ourselves when it comes to not admitting mistakes and quickly learning from them. The value of a strong feedback loop, creating an technology infrastructure that is “thin” and allows for freedom, and not chasing metrics that prevent you from learning from anecdotal evidence of where change is necessary: those are among the topics that lively conversation pursues. A final key point the authors make is that at a time when investment in executive learning has tripled while other personnel developments remain flat is a mistake; now more than ever, human capabilities need to be built upon in an era of rapid innovation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thomas S. Mullaney, "How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information" (W. W. Norton, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This is the third time I have the great fortune of interviewing Tom Mullaney. I can hardly think of a more worthy ambassador for the history discipline, and the work we are discussing today, I believe, will serve as the perfect bridge from Tom’s historical scholarship to the wider, reading public. We are discussing Tom’s latest book, How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information (W.W. Norton, 2026). Tom’s book takes on some of the most philosophically rich ideas at the center of both history and memory. Over time, things come apart: objects, archives, ephemera, people, memories, histories. For millennia, we relied on common tools to remember the past: oral tradition, writing, and artifacts. In under 200 years, we developed more advanced information technology like the camera, phonograph, typewriter, computer, and more. The information encoded by these devices has a shelf life too, decaying over time, disintegrating, becoming obscured, getting deaccessioned. How We Disappear explores this process through the lens of family tragedy: the death of Tom’s parents and the attempts to recover and remember the past. What happens when we try to recover the lives of our parents, the people who shape our world, and what do we do when we discover the unexpected? To take us through his brilliant new book, I’m pleased today to have Tom Mullaney on the podcast.

Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of History and UNESCO Chair in Digital Futures at Stanford University.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathon W. Penney, "Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age (Cambridge UP, 2025), Jonathon W. Penney explores the increasing weaponization of surveillance, censorship, and new technology to repress and control us. With corporations, governments, and extremist actors using big data, cyber-mobs, AI, and other threats to limit our rights and freedoms, concerns about chilling effects – or how these activities deter us from exercising our rights – have become urgent. Penney draws on law, privacy, and social science to present a new conformity theory that highlights the dangers of chilling effects and their potential to erode democracy and enable a more illiberal future. He critiques conventional theories and provides a framework for predicting, explaining, and evaluating chilling effects in a range of contexts. Urgent and timely, Chilling Effects sheds light on the repressive and conforming effects of technology, state, and corporate power, and offers a roadmap of how to respond to their weaponization today and in the future.

You can find more information about Jon at his website: https://jonpenney.com/

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student and law student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily Doucet, "Inventing Nadar: A History of Photographic Firsts" (Duke UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Félix Nadar took the first aerial photograph in 1858, so the story goes. The evidence, Emily Doucet notes, is mixed. In Inventing Nadar: A History of Photographic Firsts (Duke UP, 2026), Doucet analyzes the historical and material production of the nineteenth-century Parisian photographer’s famous and numerous photographic firsts. Focusing on these oft-labeled groundbreaking elements of his career, she deconstructs Nadar’s legacy as a prime protagonist in the history of photography by interrogating the media techniques used to construct his invention narratives. Doucet highlights this highly mediated process as one that canonized novel applications of photography as discrete techniques with single authors and inventors. Looking to this process of mediation through the institutions and individuals that shaped Nadar’s archives, Doucet unpacks assumptions of Nadar as a master of early photography and shows how the medium is enmeshed in larger histories of media, science, and technology. The result is both a new account of Nadar’s place in photographic history and a critical study of how stories of innovation take shape.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Margaret O’Mara on the Clintons, Tech, and Memory

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 8 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We were joined by Professor Margaret O’Mara of the University of Washington, who had a front row seat to the Clinton campaign and went on to become an expert in the history of information technology and Silicon Valley.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ralph Jones, "Microphone" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 5 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Since its invention more than 150 years ago, the microphone transformed the world in an instant. Yet its evolution and integration into our daily lives has been comparatively gradual – so gradual, crucially, that it is easy to forget just how much we take it for granted. As explored in Microphone (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Ralph Jones, every phone has a microphone. Every laptop has a microphone. We are surrounded by microphones.

The microphone wields enormous power. But when we're 'on mic' we aren't just powerful, we're vulnerable. Microphones can destroy careers as quickly as make them. The microphone is inextricable from our need to be heard. This book takes a curious, always humorous look at this object as a metaphor for power and how the fulfillment of our desire to be heard has created a multi-headed beast we are still learning how to tame.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Turning IBM's Culture Massively Around

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 4 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Phil Gilbert is best known for leading IBM’s transformation as their General Manager of Design, a project that updated the work of 400,000 IBM employees across 180 countries. The transformation became the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, the documentary film The Loop, and feature articles in the New York Times and Fortune magazine. Phil was inducted into the New York Foundation for the Arts’ Hall of Fame in 2018, and being a native from there was named a Oklahoma Creativity Ambassador in 2019 for his achievements in the world of creative thinking and innovation. He is the author of Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-In and Breakout Success.

Wedding cakes. Birthday cakes. Cupcakes. Shit umbrellas. The baggage that comes with using the word “design” in the business world. You might get a more unique guest than Phil, but the odds would be heavily against you. With tenacity and street smarts, this guy whose start-up was purchased by IBM shares with us the unlikely story of how IBM’s CEO Ginny Rometty got behind him, unleashing the creativity that had made his smallish business unit within the company a top performer. Into business unit after unit, as detailed here, Phil tells with verve the story of overcoming the sorry state that endless rounds of cost-cutting initiatives had landed a now bedraggled company. “Empathy is the hardest word you will ever learn,” Phil told colleagues, left and right, prodding them to move forward.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 2 Jun 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Around 2016, buoyed by so-called data kranti  ("data revolution"), an aspirational neo-middle class of users in India accessed internet for the first time on their mobile phones. Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution (MIT Press, 2026) tells the story of digital infrastructures that are being created by state-corporations for content and money to move and reach such users. It interrogates how their design impact the forms of inclusions and exclusions enacted as well as the horizon of social behaviors and expectations in "Digital India." The book contends that to understand the possibilities and limits of India's aspirational politics, media studies scholars should attend to infrastructures of aspiration: the distributional logistics of streaming content and mobile money are the infrastructural backbone that recalibrate thresholds of aspirational goals. 

Digital content media distribution is also shaped by how user practices get entangled with particular affordances of platforms, and hence the need to study both participatory cultures of circulation and logistics of distribution together. Drawing on in-depth interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, critical discourse analysis and participant observation, the book traces the supply chains of content delivery networks enabling streaming video-on-demand services and informal ways of circulating "vernacular" music videos through memory cards. Unlimited does not restrict itself to formal media infrastructures, but also researches online phishing and lending scam assemblages to understand how such scams perform critical boundary work to reveal the cracks in and workings of financial distribution networks. This book offers a systematic examination of distribution considerations—including localization strategies—required for imagining mobile phone users across the varied regional geographies of "Digital India."

Rahul Mukherjee is Associate Professor of TV & New Media and graduate chair in the Department of Cinema & Media Studies at University of Pennsylvania. His teaching and research focus on the logistical and environmental dimensions of digital infrastructures and platforms. Rahul is the author of the monograph Radiant Infrastructures, and his work has been published in Critical Inquiry, SM+S, New Media & Society, and Science, Technology & Human Values. He has co-edited a special issue on "Media Power in Digital Asia" for Media, Culture & Society journal.  

Priyam Sinha is an Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical media industry studies, disability studies, gender studies, affect studies, production culture studies, and anthropology of the body, and her work has been published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Media, Culture and Society; Communication, Culture and Critique; South Asian Diaspora, among others. She is also a regular podcast host at the New Books Network and has been published in public writing forums like the Economic and Political Weekly, FemAsia, Asian Film Archive, among others. More information on her ongoing projects can be found on her website and you can follow her on X.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pedro Domingos, "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World" (Basic Books, 2018)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to
invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World (Basic Books, 2018), Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.

Pedro Domingos is a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Washington. He is a winner of the SIGKDD Innovation Award, the highest honor in data science. A fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, he lives near Seattle.

Gregory McNiff is a Managing Director in the New York office of the Blueshirt Group, an IR firm focused on technology; he has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book review).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Learning Languages on Social Media

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Yeong Ju Lee about her new book Social Media and Language Learning: Using TikTok and Instagram (Routledge, 2025).

Lee, Y. J. (2025). Social Media and Language Learning: Using TikTok and Instagram. Taylor & Francis.

This book explores creative uses of social media for informal language learning. It focuses on the underexplored area of how informal language learning adapts to technological innovations in two multimodal media-sharing platforms: TikTok and Instagram.

Drawing on ecological perspectives of language learning and spatial understandings of digital technology and learning, the research reported in this book unpacks how social media technologies are used for language learning. It presents insights from a dual-level qualitative methodological design: a comparative study of public online data of social media posts collected from TikTok and Instagram, and a multiple case study based on ethnographic narrative data gathered from participants’ journal entries, stimulated recall interviews, and social media posts. This book reveals the dynamic landscape of digital language learning that is being integrated into learners’ everyday lives through multimodal content creation and networking.

This book enriches readers’ understanding of social media’s role in language learning, and offers pedagogical strategies for teachers to integrate newer technologies and multimodal materials into language classrooms to enhance students’ learning experiences.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gerald F. Davis, "Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Information and communication technologies have fundamentally altered the markets for capital, labor, supplies, and distribution in ways that undermine the basic categories we use to understand the economy. Nationality, industry, firm, size, employee, and other fundamental terms are increasingly detached from the operations of the economy. If we want to understand and tame the new sources of economic power, we need a new diagnosis and a new set of tools. The broad consensus across the political spectrum in the US that monopolistic corporations – particularly Big Tech companies -- have grown too powerful, and that we need to revive antitrust to take on the 'curse of bigness' is mistaken. But both the diagnosis and the cure are rooted in an outdated understanding of how the American economy is organized. Listen to this interview about Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century (Cambridge UP, 2022)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aymar Jèan Escoffery, "Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Can producing stories and developing platforms to support people who have been harmed by multiple, intersecting systems heal those systems? In Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture (MIT Press, 2025), Aymar Jèan Escoffery argues that this is exactly how we repair our culture and heal harms from racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and religious discrimination: by reconsidering how we make media, how we connect through technology, and how we generate knowledge.
Based on five years of deep, complex work cocreating an independent alternative to platforms like Netflix and YouTube, the author reveals the process behind developing OTV | Open Television to stream stories by diverse creators. The book shows that planting seeds for a more community-based media and tech ecosystem can also reform corporate systems better than so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, as the platform helped elevate creators on social media and in Hollywood at companies like HBO, Netflix, and more. Combining theory and practice, local production and global distribution, Chicago and Hollywood, the book paints a portrait of what a healing media ecosystem looks like—and shows how communal ways of knowing can cultivate reparative media, technology, and research that benefit everyone no matter how they identify.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Angela I. Fritz, "AI and Digital Leadership: Transforming Libraries, Archives, and Museums for the Future" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

AI and Digital Leadership: Transforming Libraries, Archives, and Museums for the Future (Bloomsbury, 2026) explores how galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) are navigating new leadership styles and organizational frameworks to help meet the challenges posed by a digital society. During this time of digital transformation, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) are facing a generational challenge that calls on them to rethink their roles and responsibilities, re-evaluate policies and practices, and re-envision creative management and use of their collections. While AI is not new for GLAMs, the rapid development of generative AI has accelerated the pace of change along with a host of risks and benefits. For cultural heritage institutions, the stakes for implementing emerging AI technologies are high as GLAMs navigate questions relating to cultural relevance, limited resources and expanding backlogs of digital collections. GLAMs must also contend with the major intellectual and social implications for supporting entirely new approaches to learning, scholarship and public engagement. As GLAMs strive to keep pace, this book turns to explore how cultural heritage institutions can draw on a model of digital leadership to help them meet the challenges posed by the ethical implementation and use of generative AI in the stewardship of distinctive collections. Although digital leadership has been widely written about in the fields of business management, communication and marketing and information technology, it has not yet been addressed in a book format for the GLAM sector. In addition to discussing the basic definition and concepts of digital leadership, this book explores digital leadership as a critical framework for GLAMs to advance digital stewardship programs, professional development and staff training initiatives, and institutional advocacy in the age of AI.

Guest: Angela I. Fritz is Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. Previously, she has held leadership positions at the Wisconsin Historical Society, the University of Notre Dame, and the Office of Presidential Libraries and Museums at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Dr. Fritz has a PhD in American history and public history from Loyola University-Chicago, a master’s degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a master’s degree in library science with a concentration in archival administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mentioned during the episode, is an upcoming special issue of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Practitioners guest edited by Dr. Fritz. You can learn more about this special issue on the journal’s homepage.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Counter-Revolutionary Puzzles with Guillermo Badia

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Guillermo Badia.

Dr Guillermo Badia is a philosopher working in logic. His research interests are logic in computer science, semiring-based logics and models of computation, and modal, intuitionistic and other non-classical logics.

They discuss logic, murder mysteries, and the counter revolutionary search for truth.

A transcript of this episode will be available on the Concept : Art website here.

Concept : Art is produced on muwinina Country, lutruwita Tasmania. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Angus Burgin on the Rise of the Internet

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We were joined by Angus Burgin, Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and talked about how the arrival of the Internet remade life and politics in the 90s. Angus shared his thoughts on the motivations behind his upcoming book, which offers an intellectual history of the Internet.

Lee Vinsel is a professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech.

Benjamin Waterhouse is a professor of History at UNC Chapel Hill.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Olivier Sylvain, "Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control-And How We Can Take It Back" (Columbia Global Reports, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 9 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control-And How We Can Take It Back (Columbia Global Reports, 2026)is an indictment of how Big Tech cloaks ruthless commercial exploitation in the language of free speech. Olivier Sylvain, a leading legal scholar and former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, exposes the incentives behind social media design, revealing how they trap users in cycles of addiction, misinformation, and harm—from fatal TikTok challenges to AI chatbot codependency.

With clarity and urgency, Sylvain dismantles the libertarian mythology that shaped internet law and calls for a new legal regime that protects users over platforms. Recovering the Internet is a powerful, original intervention into the most urgent policy debate of our time—what it will take to reclaim the digital public sphere.

Find out more here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney eds., "Media Rurality" (Duke UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 3 May 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Media Rurality (Duke UP, 2026), edited by Darin Barney and Patrick Brodie, investigates the centrality of rural places and people within the media systems and technologies that shape daily life in and across rural and urban settings alike. Edited by Darin Barney and Patrick Brodie, from the boglands of Ireland to data centers in the Oregon countryside to the homemade media systems of rural Tanzania, the contributors to this volume show how rural territories are highly mediated, technologized spaces profoundly enmeshed with global capitalism and colonialism. Approaching the study of rurality through a materialist lens that foregrounds infrastructure, this collection shows how rural spaces often bear the environmental brunt of capitalist development while being relegated to the economic and cultural periphery.
Contributors: Christopher Ali, Patrick Bresnihan, Patrick Brodie, Darin Barney, Jenna Burrell, Jordan B. Kinder, Burç Köstem, Cindy Lin, Emily Ng, Lisa Parks, Anne Pasek, Esther Peeren, Nicole Starosielski, Ishita Tiwary, Hunter Vaughan, Ayesha Vemuri, Megan Wiessner, Assatu Wisseh.

This episode features a conversation with host Sadie Couture, editors Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney, and contributors Burç Köstem and Megan Wiessner.

Sadie Couture is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University, and an incoming Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. https://www.sadiecouture.com/

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A Shakeup Is Coming for the Nation-State: A Conversation with Stephen Sims

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Stephen Sims’ New Atlantis essay examines how emerging technologies are reshaping the structure and authority of the modern nation-state. He argues that innovations such as artificial intelligence, drones, and networked warfare are weakening the traditional link between territorial control and the projection of power, enabling smaller actors to operate with unprecedented reach. At the same time, advanced states are enhancing their internal capabilities through data-driven governance and automation, increasing their ability to monitor and manage populations. This dynamic creates a paradox in which states grow more powerful domestically while becoming more vulnerable externally. Sims contends that sovereignty is fragmenting, with authority dispersing both to non-state actors and to transnational technological systems. The result is not the end of the nation-state, but its evolution into a more contested, uneven, and technologically mediated form.

Stephen Sims is associate professor of political science at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Greg is the Executive Director and Founder of the World War II Discussion Forum (wwiidf.org). He also has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book reviews).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Roland Betancourt, "Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

When Disneyland opened to the public in 1955, it demystified the hidden world of factory automation through its extraordinary new attractions. In Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth (Princeton University Press, 2026), Dr. Roland Betancourt tells the story of how the visionary engineers and designers at Disney transformed the technologies of the postwar assembly line into an entertainment experience unlike anything the world had ever seen.
This book traces the origins and evolution of these technical innovations during the theme park’s first three decades in operation, exploring how engineers reimagined the systems and machines of industrial manufacturing and the military. The magnetic tape used to test ballistic missiles was repurposed to animate the talking macaws in the Enchanted Tiki Room. Programmable Logic Controllers, widely used on automotive assembly lines, brought to life the spectacular rides of the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain. Dr. Betancourt shows how these and other attractions helped to allay fears about automation and job displacement in 1950s America. Along the way, he situates Disneyland’s remarkable creations within a broader history of the technologies that increasingly order and construct the world around us, from the Fordist factory to artificial intelligence.
Essential reading for anyone interested in engineering, corporate histories, or popular culture, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation invites us to consider how technology and the logic of automation become integrated into our lives through entertainment.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Murray, "Powered by Smart: A Prehistory of Everyday AI" (NYU Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Powered by Smart traces the techno-cultural evolutions that made artificial intelligence feel more familiar than futuristic. From wearables and streaming platforms to home voice assistants and AI toasters, smart is an inescapable feature of postdigital life. Today, thousands of products and platforms define smart as routine automation and friendly digital kinship. Yet smartness was not always so digital. Sarah Murray uncovers the century-long process through which smart became synonymous with seamless interaction between bodies and machines, showing how this intimate interfacing helped to normalize today’s algorithmic world.
Offering a critical, feminist prehistory of everyday AI, Powered by Smart reveals how the pursuit of convenience, comfort, and efficiency has long been a gendered campaign. Smartness has often been associated with women — from early switchboard operators and industrial designer Lillian Gilbreth’s test kitchens to Jane Fonda’s Jazzercise empire and Disney’s computer-housewife PAT in Smart House. These moments illuminate how machine intelligence has already been made ordinary, and how the smart ideal was built over time through domesticity, discipline, and desirability.
Moving across factory floors, suburban kitchens, exercise trends, and digital homes, Murray shows how twentieth-century innovations in wearability, solutionism, and recognition laid the groundwork for our contemporary tolerance of — and attachment to — AI. Far from a sudden technological revolution, everyday AI emerged through decades of cultural conditioning of smart life as a caring, attentive endeavor that cast human–machine harmony as both natural and necessary. Powered by Smart reframes artificial intelligence not as the next frontier of progress, but as the logical extension of a much older dream of efficiency made ordinary and personal.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Adrian Woolfson, "On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Imagine a future where we grow houses rather than build them. Where smartphones are alive, clothing has opinions and all human knowledge fits into a speck of DNA. A world where disease is a thing of the past and the human lifespan is dramatically extended.
To achieve this, says Adrian Woolfson, founder of the genome writing company Genyro, we must transform biology into a predictive, programmable engineering material. That means decoding the generative grammar of DNA: the language of life itself. We will then be able to author genomes—and, if we choose, even rewrite our own.
In On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence (MIT Press, 2026), Woolfson describes how we are at the cusp of a technological revolution, driven by the convergence of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Currently at the scribbling phase—writing the genomes of viruses, bacteria and yeast—we will eventually author the genomes of extinct and never-before-realized species. Life will become computable, detached from its past and no longer bound by Darwinian evolution.
While offering extraordinary opportunities, this power also carries great risk, and it is vital for everyone to understand what the future might hold. In this groundbreaking work, Woolfson provides a guide to this bold new world, offering a moral compass to help us do so safely, wisely and ethically.

Adrian Woolfson is the cofounder of Genyro, a California-based biotechnology company specializing in synthetic genome design and construction. He studied medicine at Balliol College, Oxford, and was formerly the Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michał Mycka, "Games User Research Cookbook: Tools and Techniques for Better Player Experience" (CRC Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This book offers a comprehensive and practical guide to Games User Research (GUR). Blending theory and hands-on experience, it walks readers through methods, tools, and techniques tailored to the real-world constraints of small and medium-sized game development studios to support them in delivering better player experiences. The book is divided into three parts. Part one introduces core concepts to game development, and explores gameplay experience, together with factors that influence player behaviour and decisions. The part ends by exploring the games user researcher's role and its common challenges. Next, part two presents readers with a 10-step end-to-end research process for a single study. From understanding stakeholders, designing methods, through recruiting participants, moderating sessions and analysing results, to delivering actionable insights. It provides guidance, real-life examples, and templates for integrating research in the game development practices, even when the budget and timeline are tight. Finally, part three provide readers with ready-to-use "recipes" for 10 research methods covering every phase of the game production cycle. Each recipe includes practical tips, pitfalls to avoid, and actual report excerpts. Whether you're an indie developer wanting to better understand your players, UX designer or researcher moving from application software to the world of games, this book will provide you with all the information on how to use research to gain the insights needed to create better player experiences.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Security and Risk: Challenges for Economy and Business in the Global 20th Century: A Conversation with Marie Huber, Nina Kleinöder, and Christian Kleinschmidt

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The volume addresses issues of security and risk in economic and business history. A focus lies on the study of security in order to highlight the central role of preventive measures, corresponding corporate strategies, (public) demands for measures to promote security, and the conscious avoidance of actions considered risky. It is less on questions of risk avoidance and more on the analysis of decisions and strategies for creating stability and averting potential threats.

The book aims at understanding how these security-oriented interventions and forward-looking approaches have shaped economy and businesses.
With contributions by Dolly Afoumba | Anna Corsten | Marie Huber | Nina Kleinöder | Christian Kleinschmidt | Andreas Langenohl | Christian Marx | Cornelia Sahling | Tim Salzer | Tonio Schwertner
This title is also available as open access. https://www.nomos-shop.de/en/p/security-and-risk-gr-978-3-7560-3577-9

Interview host, Paula de la Cruz-Fernández

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations, risks, and social costs of these systems.

Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI’s inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals, communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective action.

This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español.

This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences.

Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation:

Instituto Nuevos Horizontes
Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez
Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke.
The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor.
The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias.
DukeGPT
Wendy Brown
Ivan Illich
"Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena
"We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender
"The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena
"AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender
"It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna
"It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna
"The groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna
"The very idea of intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender
"The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender
"Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna
"How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Kirsch on the Dot Com Bubble and Bust

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We chat with historian David Kirsch, Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School, about how to understand the Dot Com bubble and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s. David both lived through the Dot Com moment as a California resident and is a scholar of technology bubbles, including through his coauthored book, Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation (Stanford University Press, 2019). We talk to him about how to think about past and contemporary bubbles from both personal and professional historical perspectives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alberto Galasso, "The Management of Innovation: Managing and Creating Technology Capital" (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Despite the importance of innovation for the growth of firms, industries, and the national economy, the strategic tools available to effectively manage and create new technologies are often neglected by entrepreneurs and corporate managers. The Management of Innovation: Managing and Creating Technology Capital (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2024) examines how firms can leverage and create technology capital. The analysis considers the two key stages of the innovation process: technology management and technology creation. Each stage involves complex managerial decisions related to resource allocation and the assessment of relevant costs and benefits. This book examines the most frequent trade-offs that shape the innovation process across these two stages. It also provides an introduction to intellectual property and patent analytics.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Arditi, "Music Technology Panic Narratives Beyond Piracy: From Taping to Napster to TikTok" (Anthem Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 7 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Who makes a living from the music industry? In Music Technology Panic Narratives Beyond Piracy: From Taping to Napster to TikTok (Anthem Press, 2026) David Arditi, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington, looks at the history of technology in the music industry. This history illustrates the way the industry continues to profit even as artists struggle to make money. The book charts the development and evolution of listeners’ uses of formats and technologies, from cassette tapes and CDs through sharing to streaming, demonstrating how the record industry has initiated moral panics to stop threats to their profits. This is in a context where listeners and independent labels have found new ways to engage with music because of these same formats and technologies. An engaging and accessible overview of issues central to creative industries, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary culture.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Douglas H. Erwin, "The Origins of the New: Novelty and Innovation in the History of Life, Culture, and Technology" (Princeton UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 6 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The Origins of the New (Princeton University Press, 2026) presents a revolutionary approach to evolutionary success in all realms of life. In this groundbreaking book, Douglas Erwin takes readers on a dazzling excursion across science and history to explore how evolution generates new and enduring features in biology, culture, and technology.
Erwin begins by tracing how thinkers from Darwin’s time to the present day have sought to discover the driving mechanisms of evolutionary novelty. He then lays out compelling empirical evidence for separating novelty from innovation, showing that novelty involves the emergence of unique characteristics, while innovation concerns the success of those characteristics over time. Erwin develops a unifying conceptual framework for these powerful dynamics, demonstrating how they have shaped everything from the evolution of avian feathers and flight to the creation of human language and the breathtaking advances in digital computing we’re witnessing today.
A landmark work that redefines our understanding of the changes happening all around us, The Origins of the New reveals how the forces of novelty and innovation are the same across nature and culture, continually producing new forms and refashioning the world as we know it.

Our guest is doctor Doug Erwin, who is an independent researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, after retiring as Senior Scientist and Curator of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Wout Saelens, "Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries" (Leuven UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries (Leuven UP, 2026) by Dr. Wout Saelens explores how the homes of ordinary city dwellers sparked our modern dependence on fossil fuels. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, including probate inventories, household manuals, personal journals, medical treatises and contemporary artwork, it reveals how households in the early modern Low Countries embraced peat and coal to fuel new standards of warmth, light and domesticity. Yet, with these new home comforts came rising indoor pollution, intensified and gendered housework and, ultimately, a quiet shift in humanity’s relationship with nature.

Bridging the histories of environments, material culture and consumption, Fossil Consumerism offers a reinterpretation of the historical roots of global warming, finding these not in the industrial mill, but in the intimate, overlooked spaces of the home. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the everyday origins of the Anthropocene and is available Open Access.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ben Collier on Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor of Digital Sociology at University of St. Gallen, talk to Ben Collier, Senior Lecturer in Digital Methods in the Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies department at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, about his book, _Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy_, as well as some of his other work. The book examines one of the most important and misunderstood technologies of the digital age, Tor, the overlay network that allows for anonymous communication, best known as the infrastructure underpinning the so-called Dark Web. Collier takes a community-centered approach and examines the many different reasons and motivations people become involved in using and maintaining the platform. The trio also talk about various other projects and themes, including Collier’s current project on the visual and aesthetic standardization of public security infrastructure, like barriers and bollards.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sam Illingworth and Rachel Forsyth, "GenAI in Higher Education: Redefining Teaching and Learning" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

GenAI in Higher Education: Redefining Teaching and Learning (Bloomsbury, 2026) provides practical guidance for higher education professionals looking to use Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technologies. Blending theoretical grounding with real-world examples and case studies, it gives step-by-step guidance on how to evaluate, select, and implement GenAI technologies in teaching, learning, assessment, and student support. It covers topics including automating administrative processes, adapting learning resources, and critiquing outputs. Each chapter includes reflective exercises and further reading lists and shows how AI can enhance accessibility, efficiency, and creativity in higher education. Alongside this, the many challenges and ethical considerations of using AI are introduced, including issues around plagiarism, quality control, and the need to establish governance protocols.

Dr. Tiatemsu Longkumer, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan, researches indigenous religion and Christianity among the Nagas, Buddhism in Bhutan, and Generative AI in education.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

César A. Hidalgo, "The Infinite Alphabet: And the Laws of Knowledge" (Allen Lane, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We all understand that knowledge shapes the fate of business and the growth of nations, but few of us are aware of the principles that govern its motion. The Infinite Alphabet: And the Laws of Knowledge (Allen Lane, 2026) unravels the laws describing the growth and diffusion of knowledge by taking you from a failed attempt to build a city of knowledge in Ecuador to the growth of China's innovation economy. Through dozens of stories, you will learn why aircraft manufacturers in Italy began manufacturing scooters after the Second World War and how migrants like Samuel Slater shaped the industrial fabric of the United States. Knowledge is the secret to the wealth of nations. But to understand it, we must accept that it is not a single thing, but an ever-growing tapestry of unique ideas, experiences and received wisdom. An Infinite Alphabet that we are only beginning to fathom. César A. Hidalgo, a world-renowned scholar for his work on economic complexity, will walk you through the "three laws" and the many principles that govern how knowledge grows, moves, and decays. By the end of this journey, you will understand why knowledge grows exponentially in the electronics industry and what mechanisms govern its diffusion across geographic borders, social networks, and professional boundaries. Together these principles will teach you how knowledge shapes the world.

César A. Hidalgo is a physicist, professor, and author known for pioneering work in economic complexity, data visualization, and applied artificial intelligence. For nine years he led MIT's Collective Learning Group before moving to France to found the Center for Collective Learning (CCL), an international research laboratory with offices at the Toulouse School of Economics and Corvinus University of Budapest.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marianna Dudley, "Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain by Marianna Dudley" (Manchester UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain by Marianna Dudley (Manchester University Press, 2025) is a cutting-edge history of wind power in Britain.

There are turbines on the horizon. The blades whirl with metronomic rhythm. With each rotation, wind is transformed into electricity. An energy revolution is underway. Electric wind rewinds to the beginning to explore the rise of wind energy in modern Britain. From the industrial revolution to the aftermath of war, through energy crises and the changing politics of the late twentieth century, we see how energy has shaped a nation - and how a nation is reflected and refracted through energy. Boldly charting Britain through its wildest, windiest places, this book takes us to the edges of land and beyond to think deeply about the role of nature in politics, science and technology. Visionaries and hippies join engineers and entrepreneurs. Traditions and local cultures meet infrastructure and industry in this captivating history.

At a time when action on carbon emissions is urgent, Electric wind offers examples, ideas and stories to fuel change going forwards. This book is an essential read for anyone interested in nature, climate change, landscape and the making of modern Britain.

Marianna Dudley is Senior Lecturer in Environmental Humanities at the University of Bristol. She is the author of An Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate (2012).

Filippo De Chirico is a Ph.D. Candidate in Energy History at Roma Tre University (Italy). His research focuses on the history of the Italian natural gas sector.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Britt Paris, "Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 9 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

We are glad to talk to Britt Paris about her book Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up (U California Press, 2025).

This book asks: What if we could start over and build the Internet from scratch? For more than eight years, Britt S. Paris investigated alternative Internet infrastructure projects, conducting interviews, site visits, and policy analysis. In this expansive and interdisciplinary study, Paris critically examines how people and groups imagine, build, deploy, maintain, and use the Internet as they survive—and even dare to thrive—in challenging political, economic, and environmental contexts. The book is available (to download for free!) here.

Your host is Megan Finn, Associate Professor at American University and Affiliate Associate Professor at University of Washington.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Christiane Tristl, "Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent" (Bristol UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 8 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, I am in conversation with Dr Christiane Tristl, an economic geographer interested in heterodox economic geography. Their scholarship focuses on big tech companies, digital technologies, marketisation of water and critical agri-food studies. We discuss her book Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent (Bristol UP, 2025). Dr Tristl’s book explores how private sector approaches and digital technologies open up remote regions to permanent arrangements of transnational market-based water supply beyond state sovereignty, which define their users as paying customers. By considering the socio-political realities of these market based interventions in the water sector, Dr Tristl’s research spells out for us the increasing influence of private corporations and philanthrocapitalist principles in development cooperation in both rural and peri-urban parts of Kenya.

Abhilasha Jain is a social anthropologist trained at the London School of Economics. Her research interests lie at the intersection of caste, gender, spatial and climate justice, legal and critical anthropology. She is a qualitative researcher, curriculum designer and a feminist ethnographer. She has produced and co-hosted an academic podcast in India called AcademiaBTS, to bring graduates and PhD scholars to talk about their work, academic life in India, and to build a community that resonates with students in higher education.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amelia Acker, "Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 4 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

We're so pleased to welcome Dr. Amelia Acker, author of Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms (MIT Press, 2025) to the New Books Network!

This book describes the struggle between the computing technologies that archive data and the cultures of information that have led to platforms that assert control over its use. Acker examines the origins of data archives and the computing processes of storage, exchange, and transmission. Each chapter introduces data archiving processes that relate to the evolution of data sovereignty we experience today: from magnetic tape and timesharing computer models from the 1950s, to the establishment of data banks and the rise of database processing and managed data silos in the 1970s, to file structures and virtual containers in cloud-based information services over the past 40 years.

Your host is Dr. Adam Kriesberg, Associate Professor at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Miguel Sicart, "Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 2 Mar 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The play element at the heart of our interactions with computers—and how it drives the best and the worst manifestations of the information age.

Whether we interact with video games or spreadsheets or social media, playing with software shapes every facet of our lives. In Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture (MIT Press, 2023), Miguel Sicart delves into why we play with computers, how that play shapes culture and society, and the threat posed by malefactors using play to weaponize everything from conspiracy theories to extractive capitalism. Starting from the controversial idea that software is an essential agent in the information age, Sicart considers our culture in general—and our way of thinking about and creating digital technology in particular—as a consequence of interacting with software's agency through play.

As Sicart shows, playing shapes software agency. In turn, software shapes our agency as we adapt and relate to it through play. That play drives the creation of new cultural, social, and political forms. Sicart also reveals the role of make-believe in driving our playful engagement with the digital sphere. From there, he discusses the cybernetic theory of digital play and what we can learn from combining it with the idea that playfulness can mean pleasurable interaction with human and nonhuman agents inside the boundaries of a computational system. Finally, he critiques the instrumentalization of play as a tool wielded by platform capitalism.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, editor of “Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alan J. McComas, "Consciousness: The Road to Reductionism" (American Scientist, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Neuroscientific evidence increasingly shows that consciousness is a remarkable but explainable function of a machinelike brain. Alan J. McComas' discusses his article for the American Scientist.

Alan J. McComas is an emeritus professor of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Honghong Tinn, "Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

How Taiwan rose to global prominence in high tech manufacturing, from computer maker to the world's leading chip manufacturer. How did Taiwan, a former Japanese colony and the last fortress of the defeated Chinese Nationalists, ascend to such heights in high-tech manufacturing? In Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry (MIT Press, 2024), Honghong Tinn tells the critical history of how hobbyists and enthusiasts in Taiwan, including engineers, technologists, technocrats, computer users, and engineers-turned-entrepreneurs, helped transform the country with their hands-on engagement with computers. Rather than engaging in wholesale imitation of US sources, she explains, these technologists tinkered with imported computing technology and experimented with manufacturing their own versions, resulting in their own brand of successful innovation.

Defying the stereotype of “the West innovates, and the East imitates,” Tinn tells the story of Taiwanese technologists' efforts over the past six decades. Beginning in the 1960s, they grappled with the “black-boxed” computers that were newly available through international technical-aid programs. Shortly after, multinational corporations that outsourced transistor and integrated circuit assembly overseas began employing Taiwanese engineers and factory workers. Island tinkerers developed strategies to adapt, modify, assemble, and work with computers in an inventive manner. It was through this creative and ingenious tinkering with computers that they were able to gain a better understanding of the technology, opening the door to future manufacturing endeavors that now include Acer, Foxconn, Asus, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

Honghong Tinn is Assistant Professor in the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Li-Ping Chen is a visiting scholar in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Li-Ping’s NBN episodes on Taiwan Studies are supported by the Chun and Jane Chiu Family Foundation Taiwan Studies Program at Oregon State University.

Relevant Links:

Open Access for Island Tinkerers here
Island Tinkerers’ Book Talk with Honghong Tinn here
Chinese language translation of Island Tinkerers 科技造浪者: 一部奇蹟般的台灣科技產業史，揭開全球都想知道的人脈網絡 here
Fly up with Love (1978) here
“Labour and (De)Industrialisation in East Asia” in Gateway To Global China Podcast here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fred Turner on Countercultures, Cybercultures, and Californian and Texan Ideologies

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor of Digital Sociology at University of St. Gallen, talk to Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University, about his classic 2006 book, _From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism_. They briefly explore the arc of Fred’s career and revisit the book in the spirit of asking what has changed in digital ideology since the book’s publication, including with the role of Silicon Valley elites in the second Trump Administration, Elon Musk’s role in DOGE, and the (perhaps only brief) turn of digital technology elites moving from California to Texas. Since this conversation was recorded in April 2025, Fred’s essay, “The Texan Ideology,” has been published in The Baffler: Link here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Subodhana Wijeyeratne, "The Islands and the Stars: A History of Japan's Space Programs" (Stanford UP, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is among the six largest national space agencies in the world, along with China's CNSA, US's NASA, and Russia's Roscosmos. JAXA's budget is more than $1 billion USD—bigger than France or Germany individually, and more than that of Italy, India, Canada, and the UK combined. And yet, Japan's significant contributions have largely been absent in the history of space exploration, and space exploration largely absent in the history of technology in Japan. The Islands and the Stars: A History of Japan’s Space Programs (Stanford University Press, 2026) corrects this conspicuous oversight. Through meticulous archival research in Japanese and anglophone archives, Dr. Subodhana Wijeyeratne examines the history of Japan's space exploration efforts over nearly a century.

Dr. Wijeyeratne traces the evolution of Japan's space program from its early origins in the 1920s, through the postwar period of rapid technological innovation, to the consolidation of its various institutional elements into JAXA in 2003. He situates Japan's space programs within the broader history of the country's postwar recovery, economic growth, and cultural identity, while also considering their place within global trends in space exploration. Through this narrative, Wijeyeratne not only illuminates Japan's centrality to the global history of science and technology, but also offers insights into the future of global space exploration, emphasizing the importance of diverse voices and perspectives in the quest to understand our place in the cosmos.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade them with friends! Tape over the ones you don't like! The cassette tape upended pop culture, creating movements and uniting communities.

High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape (UNC Press, 2023) charts the journey of the cassette from its invention in the early 1960s to its Walkman-led domination in the 1980s to decline at the birth of compact discs to resurgence among independent music makers. Scorned by the record industry for "killing music," the cassette tape rippled through scenes corporations couldn't control. For so many, tapes meant freedom--to create, to invent, to connect.

Marc Masters introduces readers to the tape artists who thrive underground; concert tapers who trade bootlegs; mixtape makers who send messages with cassettes; tape hunters who rescue forgotten sounds; and today's labels, which reject streaming and sell music on cassette. Their stories celebrate the cassette tape as dangerous, vital, and radical.

Marc Masters is a music journalist whose work has appeared on NPR and in the Washington Post, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Bandcamp Daily. He is also the author of No Wave. Marc Masters on Twitter.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America. He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM, serves as a co-chair of the associate board at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and volunteers in the music archive at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Bradley Morgan on Twitter.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joe Williams, "Inequality in the Digital Economy: The Case for a Universal Basic Income" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Joe Williams speaks with Andrew White about how the digital economy is reshaping inequality, work, and the social contract. Drawing on the themes of his book Inequality in the Digital Economy: The Case for a Universal Basic Income (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), our conversation explores why technological progress has not translated into shared prosperity, how structural features of digital markets concentrate power and wealth, and what this means for the future of work and social policy. We discuss universal basic income as part of a broader attempt to rethink how societies provide security and dignity in an era of automation, and consider what a more sustainable and humane economic model might look like in practice.

Joe Williams website here

- Censorship and Sacralisation of Politics in the Portuguese Press during the Spanish Civil War
- "Year X of the National Revolution" — Salazarist Palingenetic Myth in the Diário da Manhã

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Raiford Guins, "King PONG: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions" (MIT Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

PONG is one of the longest- and most consistently circulating video games. Released in 1972, it remains at our fingertips as Android or iOS app, hosted at freepong.org and the Internet Archive, and even released as A Tiny Game of Pong for the Apple Watch. Despite its simplicity and ubiquity, Atari’s PONG encapsulates far more than the history of a video game and an iconic game company. King PONG: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions (MIT Press, 2026) is the first book dedicated to an unassuming game that changed the world. Through the prisms of product positioning, market development, and category creation, Professor Raiford Guins answers the question of why Atari’s inaugural product succeeded and why it endures.
The author of Game After and Atari Design, and an excavator of the “Atari landfill” in New Mexico, Professor Guins brings us a unique history that reconsiders the launch of Atari’s PONG through the lens of the company’s business practices. He follows the young Silicon Valley startup from its early days of positioning its new product within the existing coin-op amusement industry to its establishment of a consumer industry for home video games—a story of remarkable market development innovation. Written with a passion for video games and a historian’s insight, the book animates the business exploits of one of the fastest growing and most influential companies ever.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David King Dunaway, "A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Eyeglasses have become so commonplace we hardly think about them—unless we can’t find them. Yet glasses have been controversial throughout history. Roger Bacon pioneered using lenses to see and then spent a decade in a medieval prison for advocating that he could fix" God’s creations by improving our eyesight. Even today, people take off their glasses before having their picture taken, despite how necessary they are.

A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See (Bloomsbury, 2026) is the first book to investigate the experience of wearing glasses and contacts and their role in culture. Dr. David King Dunaway encourages readers to take a look at how they literally see the world through what they wear. He explores everything from the history of deficient eyesight and how glasses are made to portrayals of those who wear glasses in media, the stigma surrounding them, and the future of augmented and virtual reality glasses, highlighting how glasses have shaped, and continue to shape, who we are. Interwoven is Dr. Dunaway’s own experience of spending a week without his glasses, which he has used since childhood, to see the world around him and his newfound appreciation for his visual aids.

This is the story of how we see the world and how our ability to see things has evolved, ultimately asking: How have two cloudy, quarter-sized discs of crystal or glass originally riveted together become so essential to human existence? Shakespeare famously said eyes are windows to the soul, but what about people who see only by covering theirs with glasses? Readers will find out together through this fascinating and insightful cultural history of one of humanity’s greatest inventions.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

W. Patrick McCray, "README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (MIT Press, 2025), historian Dr. Patrick McCray argues that in order for computers to become ubiquitous, people first had to become interested in them, learn about them, and take the machines seriously. A powerful catalyst for this transformation was, ironically, one of the oldest information technologies we have: books. The author uses a carefully chosen selection of books, some iconic and others obscure, to describe this technological revolution as it unfolded in the half-century after 1945. The book begins with a fundamental question: How does a new technology become well known and widespread? Dr. McCray answers this by using books as a window into significant moments in the history of computing, publishing, and American culture.
README offers a literary history of computers and, more broadly, information technologies between World War II and the dot-com crash of the early 21st century. From the electronic brains and cybernetics craze of the 1940s to the birth of AI, the rise of the personal computer, and the internet-driven financial frenzy of the 1990s, books have proven a durable and essential way for people to learn how to use and think about computers. By offering a readable half-century of bookish history, README explains how computers became popular and pervasive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ted Striphas, "Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Ted Striphas, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet (Columbia University Press 2023), considering how some pre-digital human systems functioned through repetitive structures and automated processes that have similarities to electronic algorithms. They discuss how cognition has become digitized, dispersed across algorithmic and biological systems, and how digital tools attempt to overtake lived experiences and knowledges.

Their conversation traces the history of computation while engaging culture and language as analytical tools. Their dialogue connects analog media, cultural practices, and symbolic systems to reflect on the importance of words in the human experience. Long before digital code, verbal narratives shaped (or attempted to shape) our relationship with knowledge and power; building on that insight, an important analytical point to critique algorithms begins with culture, and that culture begins in language.

This episode and the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes are sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation.
Our conversation in Spanish about Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet is available here.

Topics and scholars mentioned in this episode:

Héctor José Huyke, Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual (Editora Educación Emergente, 2024).

The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control (Columbia University Press, 2011).

Erik Hoel's notion of a “consciousness winter.”

Lawrence Grossberg

Medium theory

Joshua Myerwicz

Janice Radway

Scriptocentrism

“Things that different forms of media do to us.” -Ted Striphas

Scott Kushner, University of Rhode Island, “A turnstile is more persuasive than a person saying 'go this way.’"

Alan Touring

The Late Age of Print: Blog and book

"The locus of cultural decision making [has been] shifting in the direction of computer systems and algorithms." -Ted Striphas

“Build different meanings of words so we can build different worlds,” -Ted Striphas.

“What is culture when human beings are not the only one producing it?” -Ted Striphas

Pluriverse, A Post-Development Dictionary (Columbia University Press, 2019), edited by Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Yi-Ling Liu, "The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet" (Knopf, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Not too long ago, in the 2000s and 2010s, many felt that the internet–even one behind the Great Firewall–would bring about a more open China. As President Bill Clinton famously quipped in 2000, Beijing trying to control the internet would be like “trying to nail jello to the wall.”

Things don’t look quite so certain now. China’s internet is now more controlled than it was a decade ago, with platforms, content creators, and tech companies now firmly guided by rules and signals from Beijing.

Yi-Ling Liu charts the story of the Chinese internet in her book The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet (Knopf, 2026), with profiles of creators like Ma Baoli, the founder of one of China’s, and the world’s, largest gay dating apps, or Chinese hip hop pioneer Kafe Hu.

Yi-Ling’s work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, WIRED, and The New York Review of Books. She has been a New America Fellow, a recipient of the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award, and an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Wall Dancers . Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley et al. eds., "Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media" (Routledge, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Studying Chinese media has never been a stable intellectual enterprise. As Professor Yuezhi Zhao once observed, it often resembles aiming at a target that appears clear from a distance but becomes elusive on closer inspection. Over the past decade, that target has grown even more fragmented and mobile. Media systems across the Chinese-speaking world—including the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, and transnational Chinese communities—have been reshaped by rapid technological transformation, intensifying geopolitical rivalry, and profound political change.

It is against this backdrop that the second edition of The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media has been published. Rather than simply updating a reference work, this edition reflects a field fundamentally reconfigured. Assumptions formed before the full societal penetration of digital platforms and social media now require serious reconsideration. The digital is no longer one topic among many; it is central to understanding contemporary political, cultural, and economic life.

In this podcast conversation, co-editors Dr Ming-yeh Rawnsley and Dr Yiben Ma reflect on the making of the new volume. Dr Ma contributed to the first edition (2015) and joined the editorial team for the second edition, also authoring a new chapter. After introducing the book and outlining its scope, they share seven key reflections as editors and scholars of Chinese media:

Digital transformation as the organising principle
Scholarship grounded in lived experience
A regional lens without isolation
Expanding the field beyond institutional narratives
The limits of global communication strategy
Hong Kong: accelerated transformation
Macao: continuity and quiet change

The second edition comprises 29 chapters, in addition to an extensive introduction. Despite striving for breadth and balance, the editors recognise that many areas remain underexplored and warrant sustained attention. They hope the volume will stimulate further research and dialogue.

As global uncertainty deepens and information politics become increasingly consequential, the study of Chinese media can no longer be regarded as a specialised regional concern. It is central to understanding how power, technology, and communication interact in the contemporary world. In this sense, the handbook contributes not only to Chinese media studies but also to the broader field of media and communications.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom Bolton, "Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s Nuclear Power Stations" (Strange Attractor, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The United Kingdom has sixteen nuclear power stations. Most go under the radar, but their presence is enormous, both physically and culturally. They divide opinion like nothing else. Are they relics of a past era, or a crucial part of our futures? Are they cathedrals of science or temples of doom?

Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s Nuclear Power Stations (Strange Attractor, 2025) by Dr. Tom Bolton is a journey around Britain’s nuclear power stations and the country itself. From the Essex marshes to the Anglesey coast, from the Dungeness shingle to the far north of Scotland, Tom Bolton explores how nuclear sites shape the places around them, and enters the awesome world of nuclear power and weapons.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniela Stockmann and Ting Luo, "Governing Digital China" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

China's approach to digital governance has gained global influence, often evoking Orwellian 'Big Brother' comparisons. Governing Digital China (Cambridge UP, 2025) challenges this perception, arguing that China's approach is radically different in practice. This book explores the logic of popular corporatism, highlighting the bottom-up influences of China's largest platform firms and its citizens. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and nationally representative surveys, the authors track governance of social media and commercial social credit ratings during both the Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping eras. Their findings reveal how Chinese tech companies such as Tencent, Sina, Baidu, and Alibaba, have become consultants and insiders to the state, thus forming a state-company partnership. Meanwhile, citizens voluntarily produce data, incentivizing platform firms to cater to their needs and motivating resistance by platforms. Authors Daniela Stockmann and Ting Luo unveil the intricate mechanisms linking the state, platform firms, and citizens in the digital governance of authoritarian states.

Daniela Stockmann is Director of the Centre for Digital Governance and Professor of Digital Governance at the Hertie School.

Ting Luo is an Associate Professor in Government and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Birmingham.

Interviewer Peter Lorentzen is an associate professor of economics at the University of San Francisco, where he leads the Master's program in International and Development Economics.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jon R. Lindsay "Age of Deception: Cybersecurity as Secret Statecraft" (Cornell UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 7 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

At the heart of cybersecurity lies a paradox: Cooperation makes conflict possible. In Age of Deception (Cornell University Press 2025), Jon R. Lindsay shows that widespread trust in cyberspace enables espionage and subversion. While such acts of secret statecraft have long been part of global politics, digital systems have dramatically expanded their scope and scale. Yet success in secret statecraft hinges less on sophisticated technology than on political context.

To make sense of this, Lindsay offers a general theory of intelligence performance—the analogue to military performance in battle—that explains why spies and hackers alike depend on clandestine organizations and vulnerable institutions. Through cases spanning codebreaking at Bletchley Park during WWII to the weaponization of pagers by Israel in 2024, he traces both continuity and change in secret statecraft. Along the way, he explains why popular assumptions about cyber warfare are profoundly misleading. Offense does not simply dominate defense, for example, because the same digital complexity that expands opportunities for deception also creates potential for self-deception and counter-deception.

Provocative and persuasive, Age of Deception offers crucial insights into the future of secret statecraft in cyberspace and beyond.

Our guest is Jon R. Lindsay, an Associate Professor at the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom Griffiths, "The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind" (Henry Holt and Co., 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 4 Feb 2026 09:00:00 +0000

The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind (Henry Holt and Co., 2026) is an exploration of the quest to use mathematics to describe the ways we think, from its origins three hundred years ago to the ideas behind modern AI systems and the ways in which they still differ from human minds
Everyone has a basic understanding of how the physical world works. We learn about physics and chemistry in school, letting us explain the world around us in terms of concepts like force, acceleration, and gravity—the Laws of Nature. But we don’t have the same fluency with concepts needed to understand the world inside us—the Laws of Thought. While the story of how mathematics has been used to reveal the mysteries of the universe is familiar, the story of how it has been used to study the mind is not.
There is no one better to tell that story than Tom Griffiths, the head of Princeton’s AI Lab and a renowned expert in the field of cognitive science. In this groundbreaking book, he explains the three major approaches to formalizing thought—rules and symbols, neural networks, and probability and statistics—introducing each idea through the stories of the people behind it. As informed conversations about thought, language, and learning become ever more pressing in the age of AI, The Laws of Thought is an essential read for anyone interested in the future of technology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Giuseppe Longo and Adam Nocek, "The Organism Is a Theory: Giuseppe Longo on Biology, Mathematics, and AI" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

A bold reimagining of life that bridges science, philosophy, cybernetics, and the complexities of biological existence

The Organism Is a Theory: Giuseppe Longo on Biology, Mathematics, and AI (Giuseppe Longo and Adam Nocek, 2026) is an intriguing synthesis of decades of interdisciplinary research by eminent mathematician and biological scientist Giuseppe Longo. A unique collaboration between Longo and philosopher of technology Adam Nocek, the volume confronts foundational issues in the history of mathematics, computer science, physics, and theoretical biology.

Challenging conventional approaches that apply computational and formalist models to the biological world, Longo reveals how the limitations of these models hinder the understanding of organismic complexity, development, and evolution. Through a critique of dominant scientific paradigms, he emphasizes the need for a new biological theory that accounts for the temporal and spatial intricacies of life. Enhanced by Nocek's comprehensive introduction and a fascinating three-part interview with Longo, The Organism Is a Theory offers a bold rethinking of the biosciences, integrating the work of Alan Turing, Bernhard Riemann, Henri Poincaré, Kurt Gödel, and others into Longo's vision of critical biology.

Bridging scientific and philosophical discourses, this book creatively applies insights from mathematics, physics, and computing into the study of the organism to present a new theoretical approach to understanding biological complexity that resists reductive mechanistic and informatic explanations.

Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with image accompanied by short alt text and/or extended description.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robert Dorschel, "The Social Codes of Tech Workers: Class Identity in Digital Capitalism" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Who are the people staffing the digital economy? In The Social Codes of Tech Workers: Class Identity in Digital Capitalism (MIT Press, 2025) Robert Dorschel an Assistant Professor in Digital Sociology at the University of Cambridge, explores an occupation that has emerged as central to modern economies and societies. Drawing on an extensive range of interview fieldwork, the book offers a compelling picture of the working lives, along with the social and cultural interests of these workers, giving details on a section of the tech profession that is neglected in discussions that focus on the billionaire founders and owners in the sector. The book is also theoretically rich, considering the nature of work in modern society, the question of where these workers fit within social class structures, and crucially how they experience and understand both work and class. A significant addition to research on the tech sector, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences, and is available open access here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily Hund, "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media" (Princeton UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Before there were Instagram likes, Twitter hashtags, or TikTok trends, there were bloggers who seemed to have the passion and authenticity that traditional media lacked. The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how early digital creators scrambling for work amid the Great Recession gave rise to the multibillion-dollar industry that has fundamentally reshaped culture, the flow of information, and the way we relate to ourselves and each other.

Drawing on dozens of in-depth interviews with leading social media influencers, brand executives, marketers, talent managers, trend forecasters, and others, Emily Hund shows how early industry participants focused on creating and monetizing digital personal brands as a means of exerting control over their professional destinies in a time of acute economic uncertainty. Over time, their activities coalesced into an industry whose impact has reached far beyond the dreams of its progenitors--and beyond their control. Hund illustrates how the methods they developed for creating, monetizing, and marketing social media content have permeated our lives and untangles the unforeseen cultural and economic costs.

The Influencer Industry reveals how, in an increasingly fractured and profit-driven communications environment, the people we think of as "real" are merely those who have learned to exploit the industry's ever-shifting constructions of authenticity.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aaron Bateman. "Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 6 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

A new and provocative take on the formerly classified history of accelerating superpower military competition in space in the late Cold War and beyond.

In March 1983, President Ronald Reagan shocked the world when he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively known as “Star Wars,” a space-based missile defense program aimed at protecting the US from nuclear attack. In Weapons in Space, Aaron Bateman draws on recently declassified American, European, and Soviet documents to provide an insightful account of SDI, situating it within a new phase in the militarization of space following the collapse of superpower détente in the 1970s. In doing so, Bateman reveals the largely secret role of military space technologies in late–Cold War US defense strategy and foreign relations.
In contrast to existing narratives, Weapons in Space shows how tension over the role of military space technologies in American statecraft was a central source of SDI's controversy, even more so than questions of technical feasibility. By detailing the participation of Western European countries in SDI research and development, Bateman reframes the militarization of space in the 1970s and 1980s as an international phenomenon. He further reveals that even though SDI did not come to fruition, it obstructed diplomatic efforts to create new arms control limits in space. Consequently, Weapons in Space carries the legacy of SDI into the post–Cold War era and shows how this controversial program continues to shape the global discourse about instability in space—and the growing anxieties about a twenty-first-century space arms race.

Our guest is Aaron Bateman, an Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at GWU.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Florentine Koppenborg, "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 5 Jan 2026 09:00:00 +0000

Florentine Koppenborg’s Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance (Cornell UP, 2023) begins with the understated observation that the triple disaster of March 2011 “exposed severe deficiencies in Japan’s nuclear safety governance.” This is the starting point for the rather curious story of the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and how they created a new system with a strong independent nuclear safety regulator that has refused to back down even as the political tides have changed, and what this has meant for energy policy in Japan in the past dozen years. Koppenborg’s history of nuclear power regulation in Japan also seriously considers the implications of this dramatic break for regimes in other countries. This case study provides a complex and thought-provoking contribution to discussions of the role of nuclear power and independent regulation in global efforts to decarbonize our energy supply.

Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jordan Frith, "Barcode" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Barcodes are about as ordinary as an object can be. Billions of them are scanned each day and they impact everything from how we shop to how we travel to how the global economy is managed. But few people likely give them more than a second thought. In a way, the barcode's ordinariness is the ultimate symbol of its success.

However, behind the mundanity of the barcode lies an important history. Barcodes bridged the gap between physical objects and digital databases and paved the way for the contemporary Internet of Things, the idea to connect all devices to the web. They were highly controversial at points, protested by consumer groups and labor unions, and used as a symbol of dystopian capitalism and surveillance in science fiction and art installations.

Jordan Frith's book Barcode (Bloomsbury, 2023) tells the story of the barcode's complicated history and examines how an object so crucial to so many parts of our lives became more ignored and more ordinary as it spread throughout the world.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Donna J. Drucker, "Fertility Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A concise overview of fertility technology—its history, practical applications, and ethical and social implications around the world. In the late 1850s, a physician in New York City used a syringe and glass tube to inject half a drop of sperm into a woman’s uterus, marking the first recorded instance of artificial insemination. From that day forward, doctors and scientists have turned to technology in ever more innovative ways to facilitate conception. Fertility Technology (MIT Press, 2023) surveys this history in all its medical, practical, and ethical complexity, and offers a look at state-of-the-art fertility technology in various social and political contexts around the world. Donna J. Drucker’s concise and eminently readable account introduces the five principal types of fertility technologies used in human reproduction—artificial insemination; ovulation timing; sperm, egg, and embryo freezing; in vitro fertilization; and IVF in uterine transplants—discussing the development, manufacture, dispersion, and use of each. Geographically, it focuses on countries where innovations have emerged and countries where these technologies most profoundly affect individuals and population policies. Drucker’s wide-ranging perspective reveals how these technologies, used for birth control as well as conception in many cases, have been critical in shaping the moral, practical, and political meaning of human life, kinship, and family in different nations and cultures since the mid-nineteenth century.

Donna J. Drucker is Assistant Director of Scholarship and Research Development at the Columbia University School of Nursing.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeremy Black, "A History of Artillery" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Jeremy Black's book A History of Artillery (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) traces the development of artillery through the ages, providing a thorough study of these weapons. From its earliest recorded use in battle over a millennium ago, up to the recent Gulf War, Balkan, and Afghanistan conflicts, artillery has often been the deciding factor in battle. Black shows that artillery sits within the general history of a war as a means that varied greatly between armies and navies, and also across time.

Charles Coutinho, PH. D., Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, received his doctorate from New York University. His area of specialization is 19th and 20th-century European, American diplomatic and political history. He has written for Chatham House’s International Affairs, the Institute of Historical Research's Reviews in History and the University of Rouen's online periodical Cercles.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Luis Felipe Murillo, "Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures" (Stanford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

A digital world in relentless movement—from artificial intelligence to ubiquitous computing—has been captured and reinvented as a monoculture by Silicon Valley "big tech" and venture capital firms. Yet very little is discussed in the public sphere about existing alternatives. Based on long-term field research across San Francisco, Tokyo, and Shenzhen, Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures (Stanford UP, 2025) explores a transnational network of hacker spaces that stand as potent, but often invisible, alternatives to the dominant technology industry. In what ways have hackers challenged corporate projects of digital development? How do hacker collectives prefigure more just technological futures through community projects? Luis Felipe R. Murillo responds to these urgent questions with an analysis of the hard challenges of collaborative, autonomous community-making through technical objects conceived by hackers as convivial, shared technologies.

Through rich explorations of hacker space histories and biographical sketches of hackers who participate in them, Murillo describes the social and technical conditions that allowed for the creation of community projects such as anonymity and privacy networks to counter mass surveillance; community-made monitoring devices to measure radioactive contamination; and small-scale open hardware fabrication for the purposes of technological autonomy. Murillo shows how hacker collectives point us toward brighter technological futures—a renewal of the "digital commons"—where computing projects are constantly being repurposed for the common good.

Mentioned in this episode:

"Political Software: Mapping Digital Worlds from Below" Project Website here

Luis Felipe R. Murillo is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Fellow at the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center at the University of Notre Dame. His work is dedicated to the study of computing from an anthropological perspective.

Liliana Gil is Assistant Professor of Comparative Studies (STS) at The Ohio State University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chaim Gingold, "Building SimCity: How to Put the World in a Machine" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Building SimCity explores the history of computer simulation by chronicling one of the most influential simulation games ever made: SimCity. As author Chaim Gingold explains, Will Wright, the visionary designer behind the urban planning game, created SimCity in part to learn about cities, appropriating ideas from traditions in which computers are used as tools for modeling and thinking about the world as a complex system. As such, SimCity is a microcosm of the histories and cultures of computer simulation that engages with questions, themes, and representational techniques that reach back to the earliest computer simulations. Gingold uses SimCity to explore a web of interrelated topics in the history of technology, software, and simulation, taking us far and wide—from the dawn of programmable computers to miniature cities made of construction paper and role-play. An unprecedented history of Maxis, the company founded to bring SimCity to market, the book reveals Maxis’s complex relations with venture capitalists, Nintendo, and the Santa Fe Institute, which shaped the evolution of Will Wright’s career; Maxis’s failure to back The Sims to completion; and the company’s sale to Electronic Arts. Building SimCity boasts a treasure trove of visual matter to help bring its wide-ranging subjects to life, including painstakingly crafted diagrams that explain SimCity’s operation, the Kodachrome photographs taken by Charles Eames of schoolchildren making model cities, and Nintendo’s manga-style “Dr. Wright” character design, just to name a few.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thomas Haigh on the History of “AI” as a Brand

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 8 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Thomas Haigh, Professor and Chair of History and affiliate of the Department of Computer Science at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, about his forthcoming book on the history of artificial intelligence. The book, which has had the working title _Artificial Intelligence: The History of a Brand_ with the final title to be determined, examines how and why historical actors have decided to apply the term “artificial intelligence” to a variety of disparate computing technologies that often have very little to do with one another. Vinsel and Haigh also talk about how the book’s lessons apply to our current Generative AI bubble and an assortment of other fun topics along the way.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Reading the Bible with AI?: A Conversation with John Kaag, Philosopher and Co-Founder of Rebind AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 3 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Rebind combines reading with AI-chat to deepen learning and simulate the experience of conversing with some of the greatest scholars and thinkers. With Rebind, you can read A Tale of Two Cities with Margaret Atwood, Huck Finn with Marlon James, and Candide with Salman Rushdie. John and his team have recently launched the Rebind Study Bible, an interactive way to read, listen, and interpret the Bible with insight from scholars. As we head further into a world augmented by AI tools, Rebind is on the frontlines of embracing AI without destroying the art of deep, contemplative engagement. To give so insight into how Rebind is marrying scholarship with AI tools, I’m thrilled today to have John Kaag on the podcast.

For a free 7-day trial, visit this link

John Kaag is an American philosopher and chair and professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is co-founder of Rebind Publishing.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jimmy Wales with Dan Gardner, "The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last" (Crown Currency, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 2 Dec 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In my interview with Jimmy Wales, father of Wikipedia, we celebrate his new book, The Seven Rules of Trust: A Blueprint for Building Things That Last (Crown Currency Publishing, 2025). We talk about how the book came about, how Wikipedia took flight, and how the challenges of maintaining trust and preserving neutrality shape the key to Wikipedia's future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amanda Parrish Morgan, "Stroller" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Among the many things expectant parents are told to buy, none is a more visible symbol of status and parenting philosophy than a stroller. Although its association with wealth dates back to the invention of the first pram in the 1700s, in recent decades, four-figure strollers have become not just status symbols but cultural identifiers.

There are sleek jogging strollers for serious athletes, impossibly compact strollers for parents determined to travel internationally with pre-ambulatory children, and those featuring a ride-on kick board or second, less “babyish” seat, designed with older siblings in mind. Despite the many models available, we are all familiar with the image of a harried mother struggling to use a stroller of any kind in a public space that does not accommodate it. There are anti-stroller evangelists, fervently preaching the gospel of baby wearing and attachment parenting. All of these attitudes, seemingly about an object, are also revealing of how we believe parents and children ought to move through the world.

Amanda Parrish Morgan's book Stroller (Bloomsbury, 2022) is part Object Lessons, a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elisabetta Ferrari, "Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Activists utilize digital technologies to communicate, coordinate, and organize for social change. In Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies (U California Press, 2024) Elisabetta Ferrari examines both the politics of Silicon Valley's technological imaginary and how leftist activists appropriate, negotiate, and challenge Silicon Valley's vision of technology. Researching movements in Italy, Hungary, and the United States, Ferrari shows how activists construct their own activist technological imaginaries that reflect and shape the politics of social movement how activists think about their political possibilities. Ultimately, Ferrari centers the political and imaginative work that activists need to perform in order to navigate the politics of mainstream digital technologies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even today progress and prosperity in the world's largest, most advanced economies--the United States and China--have fallen short of expectations. To appreciate why we cannot depend on any AI-fueled great leap forward, Frey offers a remarkable and fascinating journey across the globe, spanning the past 1,000 years, to explain why some societies flourish and others fail in the wake of rapid technological change.

By examining key historical moments--from the rise of the steam engine to the dawn of AI--Frey shows why technological shifts have shaped, and sometimes destabilized, entire civilizations. He explores why some leading technological powers of the past--such as Song China, the Dutch Republic, and Victorian Britain--ultimately lost their innovative edge, why some modern nations such as Japan had periods of rapid growth followed by stagnation, and why planned economies like the Soviet Union collapsed after brief surges of progress. Frey uncovers a recurring tension in history: while decentralization fosters the exploration of new technologies, bureaucracy is crucial for scaling them. When institutions fail to adapt to technological change, stagnation inevitably follows. Only by carefully balancing decentralization and bureaucracy can nations innovate and grow over the long term--findings that have worrying implications for the United States, Europe, China, and other economies today.

Through a rich narrative that weaves together history, economics, and technology, How Progress Ends reveals that managing the future requires us to draw the right lessons from the past.

Carl Benedikt Frey is the Dieter Schwarz Associate Professor of AI and Work at the Oxford Internet Institute and Oxford Martin Citi Fellow at the Oxford Martin School, both at the University of Oxford.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cory Doctorow on Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this special livestream edition of Peoples & Things, host Lee Vinsel and very special guest host, danah boyd, formerly of Microsoft Research, presently Geri Gay Professor of Communication at Cornell University, chat with writer and activist, Cory Doctorow, about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. The book tracks how and why companies degrade their digital platforms and products and argues especially for the role that monopoly power plays in this phenomenon. Vinsel, boyd, and Doctorow talk about many different dimensions of these processes and go down various joyful rabbitholes, too, including our present AI bubble.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hilary Allen, "Fintech Dystopia: A Summer Beach Read about Silicon Valley Ruining Things" (2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Silicon Valley wants to disrupt finance, and it might just succeed. In FinTech Dystopia, professor Hilary Allen offers an accessible, irreverent, and occasionally furious account of how tech elites are quietly taking over the financial system and making it worse in the process.

Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of conversations with policymakers, journalists, and regulators, Allen explains how fintech and crypto have failed to deliver on their promises and why so much of Silicon Valley’s power comes from manipulating the law rather than from real innovation. She also explores how the spread of tech-driven finance connects to the biggest issues of our time, from inequality to political influence.

Written as a serial for readers outside the academic or policy worlds, FinTech Dystopia invites you to grab a drink, settle in, and learn how Silicon Valley is reshaping money, power, and the everyday economy and what we can do about it.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Christopher Ali, "Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity" (MIT, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 9 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

As much of daily life migrates online, broadband—high-speed internet connectivity—has become a necessity. The widespread lack of broadband in rural America has created a stark urban–rural digital divide. In Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press, 2021), Dr. Christopher Ali analyzes the promise and the failure of national rural broadband policy in the United States and proposes a new national broadband plan. He examines how broadband policies are enacted and implemented, explores business models for broadband providers, surveys the technologies of rural broadband, and offers case studies of broadband use in the rural Midwest.

Ali argues that rural broadband policy is both broken and incomplete: broken because it lacks coordinated federal leadership and incomplete because it fails to recognize the important roles of communities, cooperatives, and local providers in broadband access. For example, existing policies favor large telecommunication companies, crowding out smaller, nimbler providers. Lack of competition drives prices up—rural broadband can cost 37 percent more than urban broadband. The federal government subsidizes rural broadband by approximately $6 billion. Where does the money go? Ali proposes democratizing policy architecture for rural broadband, modeling it after the wiring of rural America for electricity and telephony. Subsidies should be equalized, not just going to big companies. The result would be a multi-stakeholder system, guided by thoughtful public policy and funded by public and private support.

Dr. Christopher Ali is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and is also the author of Media Localism: The Policies of Place. He is a Knight News Innovation Fellow with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and former Fellow with the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. His most recent research, “The Queen and Her Royal Court: A Content Analysis of Doing Gender at a Tulip Queen Pageant,” was published in Gender Issues Journal. He researches culture, social identity, placemaking, and media representations of social life at festivals and celebrations. He is currently working on a book titled Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River. You can learn more about Dr. Johnston on his website, Google Scholar, on Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Technological Soul: Alex Priou on Modernity, Ideology, and the Limits of Reason

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 6 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI acting director Eli Karetny speaks with Alex Priou, Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Austin, about how technology and ideology shape the modern soul. From Machiavelli’s “dikes and dams” to Odysseus’s struggle against the Sirens, Priou traces how modernity’s drive for control has left us materially fulfilled yet spiritually impoverished. The conversation explores liberalism’s crises, the moral stakes of AI, the American “technological republic,” and why revisiting Homer and Plato may be key to recovering wisdom and restraint in an age of restless innovation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI, News, and the State: Reinstitutionalising Journalism in Global China’s Algorithmic Age: A conversation with Dr. Joanne Kuai

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 3 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0000

How is artificial intelligence transforming journalism as both a profession and an institution? In this episode, Ning Ao speaks to Dr. Joanne Kuai, exploring how AI reshapes journalistic roles, organisational structures, and governance systems through the lens of China’s media landscape—while drawing comparisons with the US and EU.

Dr. Joanne Kuai is a Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University and holds a PhD from Karlstad University in Sweden. Her research focuses on digital journalism, the social implications of automation and algorithms, and the governance of data and AI.

Ning Ao is a PhD student at the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE) at Lund University. Her research looks at generational differences among Chinese Mongols.

Episode producer: Ning Ao

- - - - - -

Links:

Joanne’s article-based PhD dissertation:

AI, News, and the State: Reinstitutionalising Journalism in Global China’s Algorithmic Age

Joanne’s recommendations:

Julie E. Cohen’s Between Truth and Power: The Legal Constructions of Informational Capitalism

Kevin Xu’s bilingual newsletter - Interconnected

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Detroit: Become Human

Follow Joanne’s research on:

Joanne Kuai at RMIT University

ResearchGate

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners:

Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia)
Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland)
Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania)
Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden)
Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland)
Norwegian Network for Asian Studies

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Muhammad Atique, "Algorithmic Saga: Understanding Media, Culture, and Transformation in the AI Age" (Atique Mindscape Publishing, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 1 Nov 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In an age when digital media permeates every aspect of our lives, understanding its influence is more critical than ever. Algorithmic Saga: Understanding Media, Culture, and Transformation in the AI Age (Atique Mindscape Publishing, 2025), serves as a compass, guiding readers through the complexities of our interconnected world. From the moment we wake to a flurry of notifications to the late-night scrolling that often accompanies our downtime, we find ourselves enmeshed in a digital landscape that shapes our perceptions, relationships, and routines. The journey ahead will illuminate the dual-edged nature of technology—its ability to connect and empower as well as its potential to isolate and overwhelm. By examining the algorithms that curate newsfeeds and the social media platforms that redefine communication, this book unpacks the intricacies of modern digital life. But beyond the challenges lie opportunities; this book also highlights the ways in which digital media fosters social activism and creative expression, showcasing the remarkable power of collective voices and innovative ideas. Whether digital natives or just beginning to explore this expansive realm, readers will be equipped by this exploration with insights and tools to navigate the digital age thoughtfully. Discover how to harness technology's potential, ensuring it enriches rather than diminishes our lives.

Guest: Dr. Muhammad Atique holds a PhD in Public Administration with a specialization in Digital Governance and has over fifteen years of combined experience in academia and media. He has published several peer-reviewed research articles on digital media, technology adoption, and governance. His teaching and research explore the intersection of technology, media culture, and societal transformation in the AI age. He is also the founder of Atique Mindscape Publishing, an imprint of Digital Vista Ventures LLC (USA), and is based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Xiao Huang et. al, "GeoAI and Human Geography: The Dawn of a New Spatial Intelligence Era" (Springer, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

GeoAI and Human Geography: The Dawn of a New Spatial Intelligence Era (Springer, 2025) outlines a comprehensive journey into how geospatial artificial intelligence (GeoAI) is reshaping our understanding of people and places. Merging traditional geographic inquiry with AI technologies, it offers a holistic view of digital tools and advanced algorithms that redefine human geography. Across twenty‐eight chapters, the book chronicles the evolution of geographic thought into the GeoAI era. Innovative methodologies--from explainable spatial analysis and natural language processing to human-centered computer vision and high-performance computing--reveal new patterns and relationships beyond conventional approaches. Each contribution highlights both technical strides in data processing and enriched perspectives on cultural, economic, political, health, and urban studies. Showcasing diverse applications in disaster management, climate change adaptation, and urban planning, the volume demonstrates GeoAI's transformative potential. It also engages with ethical, sustainable, and social challenges, emphasizing that technological innovation must serve real-world impacts and inclusivity. Ideal for researchers, students, and practitioners alike, this volume invites you to explore new frontiers at the intersection of technology and human experience.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland, "The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines" (Basic Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

When we are trying to solve a problem, what happens? We find ourselves weighing arguments, or relying on intuition, then reaching a conscious decision about what to do. What is going on behind the scenes?

In The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines (Basic Books, 2025), Gaurav Suri and Jay McClelland show that our experience is the tip of an iceberg of brain activity that can be captured in an artificial neural network. Such networks--initially developed as models of ourselves--have become the engines of artificial neural intelligence. Suri and McClelland aren't reducing mankind to mere machines. Rather, they are showing how a data-driven neural network can create thoughts, emotions, and ideas--a mind--whether in humans or computers.

The Emergent Mind provides a fascinating account of how we reach decisions, why we change our minds, and how we are affected by context and experience. Ultimately, the book gives a new answer to one of our oldest questions: Not just how do minds work, but what does it mean to be a mind at all?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brian Potter, "The Origins of Efficiency" (Stripe Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Efficiency is the engine that powers human civilization. It's the reason rates of famine have fallen precipitously, literacy has risen, and humans are living longer, healthier lives compared to preindustrial times. But where do improvements in production efficiency come from?

In The Origins of Efficiency (Stripe Press, 2025), Brian Potter argues that improving production efficiency--finding ways to produce goods and services in less time, with less labor, using fewer resources--is the force behind some of the biggest and most consequential changes in human history.

With unprecedented depth and detail, Potter examines the fundamental characteristics of a production process and how it can be made less time- and resource-intensive, and therefore less expensive. The book is punctuated with examples of production efficiency in practice, including how high-yield manufacturing methods made penicillin the "miracle drug" that reduced battlefield infection deaths by 80 percent during World War II; the 100-year history of process improvements in incandescent light bulb production; and how automakers like Ford, Toyota, and Tesla developed innovative production methods that transformed not just the automotive industry but manufacturing as a whole. He concludes by looking at sectors where production costs haven't fallen, and explores how we might harness the mechanisms of production efficiency to change that.

The Origins of Efficiency is a comprehensive companion for anyone seeking to understand how we arrived at this age of relative abundance--and how we can push efficiency improvements further into domains like housing, medicine, and education, where much work is left to be done.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kate Epstein on How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode I sit down with Kate Epstein, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden, as she details her research on the intersection of defense contracting, intellectual property, and government secrecy in Great Britain and the United States. We talk about her process in researching and writing her latest book Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State and how breaking the law, historically speaking, has been important for the emergence of new technologies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Scott D. Anthony, "Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World" (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025) arrives at the perfect moment as artificial intelligence and other technologies promise to unleash another wave of major transformation. This book is a kaleidoscopic look at how eleven disruptive innovations—including the iPhone, transistor, disposable diapers, and Julia Child's The Art of French Cooking—reshaped industries and societies, propelling humanity toward new frontiers. It masterfully weaves together the fascinating stories behind history's most transformative disruptions—from ninth-century China to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley. Through the eleven pivotal innovations that it covers, including the printing press, mass-produced automobiles, the McDonald's revolutionary food system, and the iPhone, the author Dartmouth Business School Professor Scott D. Anthony reveals the hidden patterns behind world-changing breakthroughs from gunpowder to generative AI. These forces of disruption are repeatedly rewriting the rules of business, society, and human possibility. Through vivid storytelling and sharp analysis, Professor Anthony introduces the iconoclasts who dared to think differently—the Renaissance-era scientists, French-cooking enthusiasts, and corporate visionaries who saw opportunities others missed. This books shows how disruptions actually took place.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the twentieth century's history of war, destruction, and cruelty.

This story comes into focus during World War II at the factories of Tennessee Eastman, where photographic giant Kodak produced the rudiments of movie magic. Not far away, at Oak Ridge, Kodak was also enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project--uranium mined in the Belgian Congo and destined for the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. While the world's largest film manufacturer transformed into a formidable military contractor, across the ocean its competitor Agfa grew entangled with Nazi Germany's machinery of war. After 1945, Kodak's film factories stood at the front lines of a new, colder war, as their photosensitive products became harbingers of the dangers of nuclear fallout.

Following scientists, soldiers, prisoners, and spies through Kodak's and Agfa's global empires, Alice Lovejoy links the golden age of cinema and photography to colonialism, the military-industrial complex, radioactive dust, and toxic waste. Revelatory and chilling, Tales of Militant Chemistry shows how film became a weapon whose chemistry irrevocably shaped the world we live in today.

Alice Lovejoy is author of the award-winning Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military. A former editor at Film Comment, she is Professor of film and media studies at the University of Minnesota.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier, "Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

AI is changing democracy. We still get to decide how.
AI’s impact on democracy will go far beyond headline-grabbing political deepfakes and automated misinformation. Everywhere it will be used, it will create risks and opportunities to shake up long-standing power structures.
In this highly readable and advisedly optimistic book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship (MIT Press, 2025), security technologist Bruce Schneier and data scientist Nathan Sanders cut through the AI hype and examine the myriad ways that AI is transforming every aspect of democracy—for both good and ill.
The authors describe how the sophistication of AI will fulfill demands from lawmakers for more complex legislation, reducing deference to the executive branch and altering the balance of power between lawmakers and administrators. They show how the scale and scope of AI is enhancing civil servants’ ability to shape private-sector behavior, automating either the enforcement or neglect of industry regulations. They also explain how both lawyers and judges will leverage the speed of AI, upending how we think about law enforcement, litigation, and dispute resolution.
Whether these outcomes enhance or degrade democracy depends on how we shape the development and use of AI technologies. Powerful players in private industry and public life are already using AI to increase their influence, and AIs built by corporations don’t deliver the fairness and trust required by democratic governance. But, steered in the right direction, AI’s broad capabilities can augment democratic processes and help citizens build consensus, express their voice, and shake up long-standing power structures.
Democracy is facing new challenges worldwide, and AI has become a part of that. It can inform, empower, and engage citizens. It can also disinform, disempower, and disengage them. The choice is up to us. Schneier and Sanders blaze the path forward, showing us how we can use AI to make democracy stronger and more participatory.

Nathan E. Sanders is a data scientist focused on making policymaking more participatory. His research spans machine learning, astrophysics, public health, environmental justice, and more. He has served in fellowships at the Massachusetts legislature and the Berkman-Klein Center at Harvard University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

José Marichal, "You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem: Renegotiating the Socio-Technical Contract" (Policy Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the age of AI, where personal data fuels corporate profits and state surveillance, what are the implications for democracy?

This incisive book You Must Become an Algorithmic Problem: Renegotiating the Socio-Technical Contract (Policy Press, 2025) explores the unspoken agreement we have with tech companies. In exchange for reducing the anxiety of an increasingly complex online world, we submit to algorithmic classification and predictability. This reduces incentives for us to become “algorithmic problems” with dire consequences for liberal democracy. He calls for a movement to demand that algorithms promote play, creativity and potentiality rather than conformity.

This is a must-read for anyone navigating the intersection of technology, politics and identity in an increasingly data-driven world.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David Eliot, "Artificially Intelligent: The Very Human Story of AI" (Aevo UTP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The story of AI isn't finished yet. The question is: how will you be part of it?

With the unprecedented adoption of artificial intelligence and its far-reaching implications, people everywhere are witnessing the world change around them. Artificially Intelligent: The Very Human Story of AI (Aevo UTP, 2025) answers today's most pressing questions about AI - from the fundamental to the futuristic - offering readers a new, informed worldview.

In an age of unparalleled innovation and change, artificial intelligence has become the heart of our fears, discussions, and debates. Thus, AI researcher and award-winner David Eliot takes readers on a journey through the key moments and decisions that have shaped its creation and our world. A socially driven history, the book explores its technical breakthroughs and the social forces that made them possible.
But this book isn't just about the past - it's about you. Artificially Intelligent invites readers to find their place in the story of AI, to understand its impact on their lives, and to decide what kind of future they want to help create.
Artificially Intelligent tells the story of the technology the way it was meant to be told: not as an exhaustive retelling of history, nor as a prophecy of doom and gloom, but as a human story that is not yet complete.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Madeleine Chalmers, "French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

French Technological Thought and the Nonhuman Turn (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) traces a genealogy of thinking and writing about technology, which takes us from the French avant-gardes to the contemporary 'nonhuman turn' in Anglo-American theory via the Surrealists, Gilbert Simondon, and Gilles Deleuze.
Tracking the unruly transition from Catholic vocabularies of grace, potentiality, and actuality to the modern and contemporary secular lexicon of agency, virtuality, and affect, this book explores technology as a source of subject matter and conceptual metaphors, but also probes how ideas and words are modes of technicity through which we shape and reshape the world. Fusing literature, philosophy, and theology, it offers readers new contexts - and questions - for the egalitarian ontological commitments of contemporary post- and nonhuman thinking.

Guest Dr. Madeleine Chalmers is a lecturer in French studies at the University of Leicester in the UK, and holds a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. Dr. Chalmers is the recipient of or shortlisted for a number of prestigious essay prizes, and has written numerous articles as well on topics ranging from modernist authors to automation and the idea of “bricolage,” as well as editing a special issue of the Journal of Romance Studies on “French Perspectives on Conflict” in 2022.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at the University of Alabama with research focusing on speculative literatures of metropolitan France and the Francophone Caribbean, from surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, as well as the translator of the novels Mevlido's Dreams and The Inner Harbour.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Richard Duncan, "The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century" (John Wiley & Sons, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 6 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century, economist and bestselling author Richard Duncan lays out a farsighted strategy to maximize the United States' unmatched financial and technological potential. In compelling fashion, the author shows that the United States can and should invest in the industries and technologies of the future on an unprecedented scale in order to ignite a new technological revolution that would cement the country’s geopolitical preeminence, greatly enhance human wellbeing, and create unimaginable wealth. This book also features a history of the Federal Reserve.

Richard Duncan has served as Global Head of Investment Strategy at ABN AMRO Asset Management in London, worked as a financial sector specialist for the World Bank in Washington, D.C., and headed equity research departments for James Capel Securities and Salomon Brothers in Bangkok, Thailand. He is now the publisher of Macro Watch, a video-newsletter that analyzes the forces driving the global economy in the 21st Century.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 6 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces.

In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored book Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India. This book explores how the digital selfie, unlike traditional photography, turns the lens inward while reconfiguring social identities, gender norms, power relations, and everyday interactions. Drawing on rich, situated examples, it shows how selfies operate as acts of self-making and place-making in contemporary India. At once playful and political, intimate and public, selfies offer a fascinating entry point into the fast-changing cultures of digital media and visual expression.

Avishek Ray is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the National Institute of Technology Silchar, India. His research spans mobility, marginality, and digital culture, with a focus on South Asia. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination (Routledge, 2022) and co-author of Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India (Routledge, 2024). A Fulbright-Nehru Fellow (2021), he has held visiting fellowships at institutions across Europe, North America, and Asia.

Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel K. Sodickson, "The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 3 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed our understanding of our place in the universe and our conception of our own bodies--and we may be on the cusp of an even greater revolution.

Daniel K. Sodickson--a physicist and biomedical imaging innovator--explores the rich history and surprising future of vision, from the evolution of eyes to emerging high-tech devices. Beginning in the early oceans, when organisms first developed sight, The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the stories of the many remarkable tools people have invented to extend our natural vision. Ranging from the tales of brilliant inventors to profiles of everyday people, this book shows how imaging has transformed the practice of medicine, reshaped the global economy, and complicated the notion of privacy. In the era of artificial intelligence, Sodickson argues, it will be reinvented even further, emulating not only our senses but also our brains. Inviting and eye-opening, The Future of Seeing is a revelatory look at what imaging teaches us about the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael Fernandez and Amauri Serrano, "Streaming Video Collection Development and Management" (Bloomsbury Libraries Unlimited, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 3 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Streaming video is not new to the library environment, but recent years have seen an exponential growth in the number of platforms and titles available for streaming. For libraries, this has meant an increasingly complex acquisitions landscape, with more vendors occupying the marketplace and larger portions of the budget dedicated to streaming. Users increasingly expect video content to be available online and on demand, and streaming video is increasingly integrated into coursework.

In Streaming Video Collection Development and Management (Bloomsbury, 2025), Michael Fernandez and Amauri Serrano outline the myriad challenges of managing streaming video content across all stages of the electronic resources lifecycle, from initial collection decisions to the user's experience of accessing the content. At every step, they provide practical advice on how to handle these challenges regardless of the size and budget of the institution. Librarians at community colleges, research institutions, specialized schools, and public libraries will find this a valuable and engaging guide.

Michael Fernandez is the Head of Technical Services at Boston University, where he oversees a department tasked with managing electronic resources, cataloging, and processing physical collections. Previously he has held e-resource positions at Yale University and American University. He has published and presented on topics in e-resource management and currently serves as assistant editor for Library Resources & Technical Services in addition to being on the editorial board for The Serials Librarian.

Amauri Serrano is the Head of Collection Strategy at Yale University Library, USA, where she leads and coordinates the library’s holistic collection development and management strategy in all formats and is responsible for the collections budget. She was previously Central Collection Development Librarian at Yale and a humanities librarian at Florida State University and Appalachian State University. She has published book chapters and given presentations on collection development in the humanities, user outreach, and library instruction.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cass R. Sunstein, "Imperfect Oracle: What AI Can and Cannot Do" (APS Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Imperfect Oracle is about the promise and limits of artificial intelligence. The promise is that in important ways AI is better than we are at making judgments. Its limits are evidenced by the fact that AI cannot always make accurate predictions--not today, not tomorrow, and not the day after, either.

Natural intelligence is a marvel, but human beings blunder because we are biased. We are biased in the sense that our judgments tend to go systematically wrong in predictable ways, like a scale that always shows people as heavier than they are, or like an archer who always misses the target to the right. Biases can lead us to buy products that do us no good or to make foolish investments. They can lead us to run unreasonable risks, and to refuse to run reasonable risks. They can shorten our lives. They can make us miserable.

Biases present one kind of problem; noise is another. People are noisy not in the sense that we are loud, though we might be, but in the sense that our judgments show unwanted variability. On Monday, we might make a very different judgment from the judgment we make on Friday. When we are sad, we might make a different judgment from the one we would make when we are happy. Bias and noise can produce exceedingly serious mistakes.

AI promises to avoid both bias and noise. For institutions that want to avoid mistakes it is now a great boon. AI will also help investors who want to make money and consumers who don't want to buy products that they will end up hating. Still, the world is full of surprises, and AI cannot spoil those surprises because some of the most important forms of knowledge involve an appreciation of what we cannot know and why we cannot know it. Written in clear, jargon-free English and grounded in deep understanding, Imperfect Oracle provides a distinctly useful perspective on this complex debate.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark Seligman, "AI and Ada: Artificial Translation and Creation of Literature" (First Hill Books, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Taking recent spectacular progress in AI fully into account, Mark Seligman's AI and Ada: Artificial Translation and Creation of Literature (Anthem Press, 2025) explores prospects for artificial literary translation and composition, with frequent reference to the hyperconscious literary art of Vladimir Nabokov. The exploration balances reader-friendly explanation (“What are transformers?”) and original insights (“What is intelligence? What is language?”) with personal and playful notes, and culminates in an assortment of striking demos

The book’s Preface places the current AI explosion in the context of other technological cataclysms and recounts the author’s personal (and not always deadly serious) AI journey. Chapter One (“Extracting the Essence”) assesses the potential of machine translation of literature, exploiting Nabokov’s hyperconscious literary art as a reference point. Chapter Two (“Toward an Artificial Nabokov”) goes on to speculate on possibilities for actual artificial creation of literature. Chapter Three (“Large Literary Models? Intelligence and Language in the LLM Era”) explains recent spectacular progress in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), as exemplified by Large Language Models like ChatGPT. On the way, the chapter ventures to tackle perennial questions (“What is intelligence?” “What is language?”) and culminates in an assortment of striking demos.
In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat with Mark Seligman to talk about how the current AI revolution fits into the long arc of cultural and technological shifts, Seligman's framing of the “Great Transition” between Humanity 1.0 and 2.0, Nabokov’s style as a lens for thinking about artificial creativity, the possibilities and limits of machine translation and literary artistry, and the philosophical stakes of whether AI-generated works can ever truly be considered art.
Ibrahim Fawzy is an Egyptian literary translator and writer based in Boston. His interests include translation studies, Arabic literature, ecocriticism, disability studies, and migration literature.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Samuel Arbesman, "The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future" (PublicAffairs, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In the tradition of classics such as The Lives of a Cell, a bold reframing of our relationship with technology that argues code is "a universal force--swirling through disciplines, absorbing ideas, and connecting worlds" (Linda Liukas).

In the digital world, code is the essential primary building block, the equivalent of the cell or DNA in the biological sphere--and almost as mysterious. Code can create entire worlds, real and virtual; it allows us to connect instantly to people and places around the globe; and it performs tasks that were once only possible in science fiction. It is a superpower, and not just in a technical sense. It is also a gateway to ideas. As vividly illustrated by Samuel Arbesman in The Magic of Code: How Digital Language Created and Connects Our World—and Shapes Our Future (PublicAffairs, 2025), it is the ultimate connector, providing new insight and meaning into how everything from language and mythology to biblical texts, biology, and even our patterns of thought connect with the history and nature of computing.

While the building block of code can be used for many wondrous things it can also create deeper wedges in our society and be weaponized to cause damage to our planet or our civilization. Code and computing are too important to be left to the tech community; it is essential that each of us engage with it. And we fail to understand it to our detriment.

By providing us with a framework to think about coding and its effects upon the world and placing the past, current, and future developments in computing into its broader setting we see how software and computers can work for people as opposed to against our needs. With this deeper understanding into the "why" of coding we can be masters of technology rather than its subjects.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jessica Urwin, "Contaminated Country: Nuclear Colonialism and Aboriginal Resistance in Australia" (U of Washington Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 9 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Though a nonnuclear state, Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear energy programs of numerous global powers across the twentieth century. From uranium extraction to nuclear testing, Australia’s lands became sites of imperial exploitation under the guise of national development. The continent was subject to rampant nuclear colonialism. However, this history is not just one of imposition. Aboriginal communities, bearing the brunt of these processes, have persistently resisted, reclaiming their rights to Country and demanding reparations.
As Dr. Jessica Urwin shows in Contaminated Country: Nuclear Colonialism and Aboriginal Resistance in Australia (U of Washington Press, 2025 & Melbourne University Press, 2026), extraction, weapons testing, and nuclear waste disposal have caused incalculable physical, spiritual, and cultural harm to Aboriginal communities and lands. Yet Indigenous peoples all over the world have not only survived nuclear colonialism but challenged it time and time again. Tracking the colonial mechanisms Australia used to pursue a nuclear industry, Dr. Urwin simultaneously highlights how Aboriginal peoples refused and reshaped those same mechanisms over time. A groundbreaking book, Contaminated Country reveals how Australia’s deep nuclear past has been entangled with colonialism locally, nationally, and internationally.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Human Leadership for Humane Technology

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 9 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, we spoke with Cornelia C. Walther about her three books examining technology's role in society. Walther, who spent nearly two decades with UNICEF and the World Food Program before joining Wharton's AI & Analytics Initiative, brings field experience from West Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to her analysis of how human choices shape technological outcomes.

The conversation covered her work on COVID-19's impact on digital inequality, her framework for understanding how values get embedded in AI systems, and her concept of "Aspirational Algorithms"—technology designed to enhance rather than exploit human capabilities. We discussed practical questions about AI governance, who participates in technology development, and how different communities approach technological change. Walther's "Values In, Values Out" framework provided a useful lens for examining how the data and assumptions we feed into AI systems shape their outputs.

The discussion examined the relationship between technology design, social structures, and human agency. We explored how pandemic technologies became normalized, whose voices are included in AI development, and what it means to create "prosocial" technology in practice.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Milan Janosov, "Geospatial Data Science Essentials: 101 Practical Python Tips and Tricks" (2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 6 Sep 2025 07:59:00 +0000

Geospatial Data Science Essentials is your hands-on guide to mastering the science of geospatial analytics using Python. Designed for practitioners and enthusiasts alike, this book distills years of experience by wrapping up 101 key concepts from theory to implementation, ensuring you gain a practical understanding of the tools and methods that define the geospatial data science landscape today.

Whether you are a seasoned data scientist, a GIS professional, a newcomer to spatial data, or simply a map lover, this book provides you solid foundation to level up your skills. The book is centered around practicalities, as you will explore real-world examples with compact code throughout ten topics and 101 sections. From understanding spatial data structures to leveraging advanced analytical techniques, from spatial networks to machine learning, this book equips you with a wide range of knowledge to navigate and succeed in the rapidly evolving field of geospatial data science.
Embrace the journey into geospatial data science with this essential guide and discover the power of Python in unlocking the potential of spatial analytics.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dan Roche, "Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 5 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing (MIT Press, 2025) is a book about artificial eyes—about the artisans and artists who make them, and about the life-changing and sometimes life-saving experience of wearing them, as author Dan Roche has done for 15 years. Eye making is done by hand, for one person at a time, by a very small number of ocularists (fewer than 200 in the US); it is a slow, intricate, and unusually intimate process of molding, fitting, and painting that brings ocularist and patient together for many hours or even days.
In Eyes by Hand, Dr. Roche describes the craft that goes into the making of an eye that looks uncannily real, as well as the psychological and emotional healing that such service brings to someone who has suffered the very visible trauma of eye loss—a loss that can go to the heart of self-identity.
In an engaging, frankly fascinating fashion, Roche captures the intricacies of a profession whose techniques and culture have been remarkably consistent for 200 years. He explores, too, how that profession may now be facing a digital transformation in the form of scan-print-mail possibilities. Such a change might make prosthetic eyes more easily and cheaply available, though it may also risk the aesthetic qualities and intimate connection fundamental to the process of healing.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anthony Bonato, "Dots and Lines: Hidden Networks in Social Media, AI, and Nature" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 3 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Can networks unlock secrets of AI or make sense of a social media mess? A behind-the-scenes look at how networks reveal reality.

According to mathematician Anthony Bonato, the hidden world of networks permeates our lives in astounding ways. From Bitcoin transactions to neural connections, Dots and Lines: Hidden Networks in Social Media, AI, and Nature (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025) explains how networks shape everything from political landscapes to climate patterns and how deceptively simple dots and lines can unveil the wonders of technology, society, and even nature.

From a fresh and startling look at the true impact of clever keywords in politicians' social media posts to a fun breakdown of survival strategies in reality TV shows, Bonato shows us how network theory operates everywhere. Each chapter focuses on a unique aspect of networks to reveal how they provide a captivating lens for bringing diverse phenomena into clearer focus.

The book offers an accessible snapshot of networks for anyone curious about what makes the modern world tick. Bonato's insights will give readers a deeper appreciation and understanding of networks and their relevance to our everyday lives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tia Sahrakorpi on a Use-Based History of Electricity in Finland

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 1 Sep 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Tiia Sahrakorpi, Visiting Professor at Weber State University, about her interesting book project, Our Land: An Oral History of Energy, which was funded by the Research Council of Finland. The project, which was rooted in oral histories in three locations in Finland, takes a use-based perspective and examines how ordinary Finnish people adopted and used electricity.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ben Connable, "Ground Combat: Puncturing the Myths of Modern War" (Georgetown UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Ground Combat: Puncturing the Myths of Modern War (Georgetown UP, 2025) reveals the gritty details of land warfare at the tactical level and challenges the overly subjective and often inaccurate American approach to characterizing war. Ben Connable's motivation for writing the book is to replace overly subjective analyses with an evidence-based approach to examining war. From analyzing a set of over 400 global ground combat cases, Connable shows there has been a modest and evolutionary shift in the characteristics of ground combat from World War II through the early 2020s. This evidence of gradual change repudiates the popular but often hyperbolic arguments about military-technical revolutions and that there is a singular character of war in the modern era. Connable identifies past and current weaknesses in military design and strategy, examines common characteristics in modern ground combat from the data, and reframes the debate over the historical and prospective impact of emerging technologies on war. Ground Combat sets an evidentiary baseline and a new, detail-oriented standard for conflict research and policymaking.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Noah Giansiracusa, "Robin Hood Math: Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life" (Penguin, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Everything we do today is recorded as data that’s sold to the highest bidder. Plugging our personal data into impersonal algorithms has made government agencies more efficient and tech companies more profitable. But all this comes at a price. It’s easy to feel like an insignificant number in a world of number crunchers who care more about their bottom line than your humanity. It’s time to flip the equation, turning math into an empowering tool for the rest of us.

In Robin Hood Math: Take Control of the Algorithms That Run Your Life (Penguin, 2025), award-winning mathematician Noah Giansiracusa explains how the tech giants and financial institutions use formulas to get ahead—and how anyone can use these same formulas in their everyday life. You’ll learn how to handle risk rationally, make better investments, take control of your social media, and reclaim agency over the decisions you make each day.

In a society that all too often takes from the poor and gives to the rich, math can be a vital democratizing force. Robin Hood Math helps you to think for yourself, act in your own best interests, and thrive.

Noah Giansiracusa is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Bentley University, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, and the author of How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, TIME, WIRED, Slate, and the Washington Post, among others, and he has been featured as a guest on CNN, BBC Radio 4, and Newsmax. Giansiracusa lives in Acton, Massachusetts, with his wife, two kids, two dogs, and 12 chickens.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gary Rivlin, "AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence" (Harper Collins, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist shadows the top thinkers in the field of Artificial Intelligence, introducing the breakthroughs and developments that will change the way we live and work.

Artificial Intelligence has been “just around the corner” for decades, continually disappointing those who long believed in its potential. But now, with the emergence and growing use of ChatGPT, Gemini, and a rapidly multiplying number of other AI tools, many are wondering: Has AI’s moment finally arrived?

In AI Valley: Microsoft, Google, and the Trillion-Dollar Race to Cash In on Artificial Intelligence (Harper Collins, 2025), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Rivlin brings us deep into the world of AI development in Silicon Valley. Over the course of more than a year, Rivlin closely follows founders and venture capitalists trying to capitalize on this AI moment. That includes LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, the legendary investor whom the Wall Street Journal once called, “the most connected person in Silicon Valley.”

Through Hoffman, Rivlin is granted access to a number of companies on the cutting-edge of AI research, such as Inflection AI, the company Hoffman cofounded in 2022, and OpenAI, the San Francisco-based startup that sparked it all with its release at the end of that year of ChatGPT. In addition to Hoffman, Rivlin introduces us to other AI experts, including OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman and Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind, an early AI startup that Google bought for $650 million in 2014. Rivlin also brings readers inside Microsoft, Meta, Google and other tech giants scrambling to keep pace.

On this vast frontier, no one knows which of these companies will hit it big–or which will flame out spectacularly. In this riveting narrative marbled with familiar names such as Musk, Zuckerberg, and Gates, Rivlin chronicles breakthroughs as they happen, giving us a deep understanding of what’s around the corner in AI development. An adventure story full of drama and unforgettable personalities, AI Valley promises to be the definitive story for anyone seeking to understand the latest phase of world-changing discoveries and the minds behind them.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thomas Christian Bächle and Jascha Bareis eds., "The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Autonomous weapons exist in a strange territory between Pentagon procurement contracts and Hollywood blockbusters, between actual military systems and speculative futures. For this week's Liminal Library, I spoke with Jascha Bareis, co-editor of The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025), about how these dual existences shape international relations and cultural imagination. The collection examines autonomous weapons not just as military hardware but as psychological tools that reshape power dynamics through their mere possibility. These systems epitomize what the editors call "the fluidity of violence"—warfare that dissolves traditional boundaries between human decision and machine action, between targeted strikes and algorithmic inevitability.

Bareis and his contributors trace fascinating connections between fictional representations and military doctrine—how Terminator narratives influence Pentagon planning while actual weapons development feeds back into artistic imagination. The book wrestles with maintaining "meaningful human control" over systems designed to operate faster than human thought, a challenge that grows more urgent as militaries worldwide race toward greater autonomy. Each chapter reveals how thoroughly we need to rethink human-machine relationships in warfare, from the gendered coding of robot soldiers in film to the way AI imaginaries differ between Silicon Valley and New Delhi. Autonomous weapons force us to confront uncomfortable realities about agency, violence, and the increasingly blurred line between human judgment and algorithmic certainty.

Links:

A Clean Kill? the role of Patriot in the Gulf War

Statement delivered by Germany on Working Definition of LAWS / “Definition of Systems under Consideration”

The Silicon Valley venture capitalists who want to ‘move fast and break things’ in the defence industry

Hype Studies

'The Gatekeepers' documentary

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Petter Törnberg and Justus Uitermark, "Seeing Like a Platform: An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

'Seeing Like a Platform: An Inquiry into the Condition of Digital Modernity (Taylor & Francis, 2025)' by Petter Törnberg & Justus Uitermark

In my conversation with Petter Törnberg about Seeing Like a Platform, we kept returning to a simple but unsettling point: platforms don't just carry our messages or connect us to information. They've created an entirely new way of knowing the world. His book with Justus Uitermark argues that when everything must be tagged, ranked, and fed through recommendation engines, we get a reality that only makes sense through those mechanisms.

This goes beyond previous technological shifts. The printing press expanded what we could know. Television changed how quickly we could know it. But platforms have altered the conditions of knowledge itself. When a platform "sees" the world, it only recognizes what can be counted, sorted, and optimized. Everything else becomes invisible or, worse, stops seeming real. We start mistaking the map for the territory, except now the map is writing itself based on our clicks and swipes.

What troubles me most about Törnberg's analysis is how naturally we've adapted to this new epistemology. We optimize our research for algorithmic discovery. We think in terms of engagement rather than understanding. The platform's logic becomes so embedded in daily life that other ways of organizing knowledge start to feel antiquated, inefficient. For STS researchers, this creates a genuine bind: we're trying to study platform society while swimming in its assumptions. The challenge isn't escaping platform thinking but remembering that there are other ways to think.

Notes:

The Ascendance Of Algorithmic Tyranny

Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job (Collection on Technology and Work)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tatiana Bur, "Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Tatiana Bur, Technologies of the Marvellous in Ancient Greek Religion (Cambridge UP, 2025)

This open-access book investigates the ways that technological, and especially mechanical, strategies were integrated into ancient Greek religion. By analysing a range of evidence, from the tragic use of the deus ex machina to Hellenistic epigrams to ancient mechanical literature, it expands the existing vocabulary of visual modes of ancient epiphany. Moreover, it contributes to the cultural history of the unique category of ancient 'enchantment' technologies by challenging the academic orthodoxy regarding the incompatibility of religion and technology. The evidence for this previously unidentified phenomenon is presented in full, thereby enabling the reader to perceive the shifting matrices of agency between technical objects, mechanical knowledge, gods, and mortals from the fifth century BCE to the second century CE.

New Books of Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Tatiana Bur is Lecturer in Classics at Australian National University

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Vijay Selvam, "Principles of Bitcoin: Technology, Economics, Politics, and Philosophy" (Columbia UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 11 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Principles of Bitcoin presents a holistic, first-principles-based framework for understanding one of the most misunderstood inventions of our time. By stripping away the hype, jargon, and superficial analysis that often surrounds the crypto industry, this book uncovers the true ingenuity behind Satoshi Nakamoto’s creation—and its profound implications for the future of money, governance, and individual freedom.

Vijay Selvam analyzes the technology, economics, politics, and philosophy of Bitcoin, making the case that only through this holistic understanding can we gain an appreciation of its true meaning and significance. Readers are invited to consider Bitcoin as a tool for individual empowerment, a catalyst for economic autonomy, and a challenge to traditional monetary systems. Selvam demonstrates why Bitcoin stands alone in the digital asset space as a path-dependent once-in-history invention that cannot be replicated.

Principles of Bitcoin is an invaluable resource for professionals in the financial world seeking a rigorous and accessible understanding of Bitcoin. Students, curious thinkers, and all who find the technology daunting will also benefit from its clear, foundational approach. Equipping readers with the tools to grasp the many facets of Bitcoin, this book is an ideal guide to exploring its role in shaping a more decentralized, transparent, and equitable future.

Vijay Selvam is a corporate lawyer and financial services expert with nearly twenty years of experience across the United States, United Kingdom, and Asia. He spent more than a decade at Goldman Sachs and has also held leadership roles in the digital assets industry, advising on the evolving regulatory landscape. Selvam is a graduate of Harvard Law School, Oxford University, and Cardiff University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paul Thagard, "Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?" (MIT Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 9 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Octopuses can open jars to get food, and chimpanzees can plan for the future. An IBM computer named Watson won on Jeopardy! and Alexa knows our favorite songs. But do animals and smart machines really have intelligence comparable to that of humans? In Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart? (MIT Press, 2021), Paul Thagard looks at how computers (“bots”) and animals measure up to the minds of people, offering the first systematic comparison of intelligence across machines, animals, and humans.

Thagard explains that human intelligence is more than IQ and encompasses such features as problem solving, decision making, and creativity. He uses a checklist of twenty characteristics of human intelligence to evaluate the smartest machines—including Watson, AlphaZero, virtual assistants, and self-driving cars—and the most intelligent animals—including octopuses, dogs, dolphins, bees, and chimpanzees. Neither a romantic enthusiast for nonhuman intelligence nor a skeptical killjoy, Thagard offers a clear assessment. He discusses hotly debated issues about animal intelligence concerning bacterial consciousness, fish pain, and dog jealousy. He evaluates the plausibility of achieving human-level artificial intelligence and considers ethical and policy issues. A full appreciation of human minds reveals that current bots and beasts fall far short of human capabilities.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland. To discuss and propose the book for an interview you can reach her at galina.limorenko@epfl.ch.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Social Impact of Automating Translation

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 3 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Tazin Abdullah speaks with Dr. Esther Monzó-Nebot, Associate Professor in Translation and Interpreting Studies at Universitat Jaume I in Catalunya. They talk about Dr. Monzó-Nebot's new book The Social Impact of Automating Translation: An Ethics of Care Perspective on Machine Translation.

The conversation delves into ideological issues involved in the widespread use of machine translation and the real-life impact for those who may rely on machine translations in various situations. Esther’s research and the wide variety of contributions to the book highlight the need to open a discussion about instilling an ‘ethics of care’ perspective into the use of technology to make AI-generated translations more inclusive and relevant for the communities using them.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gavin Williams, "Format Friction: Perspectives on the Shellac Disc" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 1 Aug 2025 08:00:00 +0000

With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the twentieth century. Format Friction brings together a set of local encounters with the shellac disc, beginning with its preconditions in South Asian knowledge and labor, to offer a global portrait of this format.
Spun at seventy-eight revolutions per minute, the shellac disc rapidly became an industrial standard even while the gramophone itself remained a novelty. The very basis of this early sound reproduction technology was friction, an elemental materiality of sound shaped through cultural practice. Using friction as a lens, Gavin Williams illuminates the environments plundered, the materials seized, and the ears entangled in the making of a sound format. Bringing together material, political, and music history, Format Friction decenters the story of a beloved medium, and so explores new ways of understanding listening in technological culture more broadly.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University

nathan.smith@yale.edu

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On Bullshit in AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today we’re continuing our series on Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work, On Bullshit. I have the privilege to speak with Arvind Narayanan co-author of the book AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What it Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference (Princeton University Press, 2024). Arvind is the perfect guest to explore the subject of bullshit in AI as AI Snake Oil takes on the ridiculous hype ascribed to the promise of AI. AI chatbots often hallucinate and many of the promoters of AI engage in the art of bullshit when selling people on wild and crazy AI applications.

Arvind Narayanan is professor of computer science at Princeton University and director of its Center for Information Technology Policy.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anil Ananthaswamy, "Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI" (Dutton, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Machine learning systems are making life-altering decisions for us: approving mortgage loans, determining whether a tumor is cancerous, or deciding if someone gets bail. They now influence developments and discoveries in chemistry, biology, and physics—the study of genomes, extrasolar planets, even the intricacies of quantum systems. And all this before large language models such as ChatGPT came on the scene.
We are living through a revolution in machine learning-powered AI that shows no signs of slowing down. This technology is based on relatively simple mathematical ideas, some of which go back centuries, including linear algebra and calculus, the stuff of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mathematics. It took the birth and advancement of computer science and the kindling of 1990s computer chips designed for video games to ignite the explosion of AI that we see today. In this enlightening book, Anil Ananthaswamy explains the fundamental math behind machine learning, while suggesting intriguing links between artificial and natural intelligence. Might the same math underpin them both?
As Ananthaswamy resonantly concludes, to make safe and effective use of artificial intelligence, we need to understand its profound capabilities and limitations, the clues to which lie in the math that makes machine learning possible.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna, "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want" (Harper, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?

Linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear that kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025), Bender and Hanna offer a, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms. They show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.

Alfred Marcus is Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How ClioVis is Transforming Education and Historical Research

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today I’m speaking with Marcus Golding, historian and Director of Educational Operations at ClioVis. ClioVis is an incredible software and learning tool that allows educators and studies to create digital timelines, network visualizations, and interactive presentations. Founded by UT Austin history professor Erika Bsumek, ClioVis is made for professors and teachers by current professors and scholars. I’m thrilled to get the chance today to speak with Marcus about this software to share with our listeners how they can enhance their own work and teaching.

Visit ClioVis' website to learn more: Click Here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Meegan Kennedy, "Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy: Beautiful Mechanism (Oxford UP, 2025) by Dr. Meegan Kennedy examines a revolutionary period in microscopical technology and practice. At first considered a mere toy, by 1900 the microscope rivaled the railway and telegraph as an emblem of modernity and enjoyed an astonishing diversity of applications. This technology could drive scientific debates on subjects like cell theory, vitalism, and bacteriology; guide workers in classrooms, laboratories, and businesses; and inspire a personal hobby or a mass entertainment. Victorian microscopy productively cuts across the ostensibly separate domains of science, religion, commerce, art, education, entertainment, and domestic life.
Writing Embodiment in Victorian Microscopy reads nineteenth-century microscopy across scientific, literary, religious, and popular texts. It argues that Victorian microscopists saw their vision and cognition as fully embodied experiences, the images emerging through a material entanglement of bodies (observer, instrument, apparatus, object) in a dynamic, unstable system. These ideas echo the work of physiological psychologists, who proposed mind as a system of embodied, distributed, and dynamic processes shaped by automatic or unconscious reflex action, attention, mental training, and fatigue. Striving to regulate this complex system, microscopists circulated tropes of embodiment through the varied forms of nineteenth-century print culture. They adapted existing concepts (such as beauty, the sublime, natural theology, and fairylands), or coined new phrases (such as many-sided comprehension), to promote favored forms of embodiment and enculturate microscopy as a difficult but valuable pursuit. Writing Embodiment draws on important work in book history and periodical studies by emphasizing the circulation of these tropes in intermedial conversations across diverse print forms.
Victorians understood wonder and skepticism not as incommensurate approaches to scientific observation but rather as complementary forms of embodiment. Romantic tropes of wonder solicit affective flows from observer to wriggling animalcule and back; while skeptical, realist tropes offer to train the reader's eye, hand, body, and judgment and to formalize microscopical practice. Microscopical narratives may manipulate wonder and skepticism in productive tension or create virtual storyspaces that enlist the reader in virtual witnessing. These tropes shape every level of microscopical interest and proficiency. By analyzing their use and circulation, Writing Embodiment illuminates wider patterns of Victorian thought on embodiment, scientific practice, and community.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David S. Wall, "Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age" (Polity, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How has the digital revolution transformed criminal opportunities and behaviour? What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal activity? What impact might cybercrime have on public security?

In this updated edition of his authoritative and field-defining text, cybercrime expert David Wall carefully examines these and other important issues. Incorporating analysis of the latest technological advances and their criminological implications, he disentangles what is really known about cybercrime today.

An ecosystem of specialists has emerged to facilitate cybercrime, reducing individual offenders’ level of risk and increasing the scale of crimes involved. This is a world where digital and networked technologies have effectively democratized crime by enabling almost anybody to carry out crimes that were previously the preserve of either traditional organized crime groups or a privileged coterie of powerful people. Against this background, the author scrutinizes the regulatory challenges that cybercrime poses for the criminal (and civil) justice processes, at both the national and the international levels.

This book offers the most intellectually robust account of cybercrime currently available. It is suitable for use on courses across the social sciences, and in computer science, and will appeal to advanced undergraduate and graduate students.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Edward Tenner, "Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences" (APS Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How did the addition of lifeboats after the Titanic shipwreck contribute to another tragedy in Chicago harbor three years later? How efficient are wild animals as investors, and how do dog breeds become national symbols? Why have scientific breakthroughs so often originated in the study of shadows? How did the file card prepare scholarship and commerce for the rise of electronic data processing, and why did the visual metaphor of the tab survive into today's graphic interfaces? Why have Amish artisans played an important role in manufacturing advanced technology? Why was United Shoe Machinery the Microsoft of the 1890s? Surprises like these, Edward Tenner believes, can help us deal with the technological issues that confront us now.

Since the 1980s, Edward Tenner has contributed essays on technology, design, and culture to leading magazines, newspapers, and professional journals, and has been interviewed on subjects ranging from medical ethics to typography. Why the Hindenburg Had a Smoking Lounge: Essays in Unintended Consequences (American Philosophical Society Press, 2025)--named for one of the paradoxes that can result from the inherent contradictions between consumer safety and product marketing--brings many of Tenner's essays together into one volume for the first time, accompanied by new introductions by the author on the theme of each work. As an independent historian and public speaker, Tenner has spent his career deploying concepts from economics, engineering, psychology, science, and sociology, to explore both the negative and positive surprises of human ingenuity.

Edward Tenner is an independent writer and Distinguished Scholar in the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and teaches the course Understanding Disasters at Princeton University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, "The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts Are Wrecking Science" (PublicAffairs, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 8 Jul 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode, New Books Network host Nina Bo Wagner talks to Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling about his recently published book The Ghost Lab: How Bigfoot Hunters, Mediums, and Alien Enthusiasts Are Wrecking Science (PublicAffairs, 2025). They talk about the process of writing the book, including delving deep into the local paranomal community in New Hampshire.

The book contrasts profound institutional distrust effecting higher education policy and scientific literacy, with a desperate grapple for community through paranormal beliefs. It portrays the Kitt Research Initiative, established in 2010, with the mission to use scientific method to document the existence of spirits. Founder Andy Kitt was unafraid — perhaps eager — to offend other paranormal investigators by exposing the fraudulence of their less advanced techniques. Kitt’s efforts attracted flocks of psychics, alien abductees, witches, mediums, ghost hunters, UFOlogists, cryptozoologists and warlocks from all over New England, and the world.

Hongoltz-Hetling brings our attention to the exponential growth of new age beliefs in the United States, with the potential to be the largest religion in the nation by 2050 at current rates. He argues that it is time for institutions in both science and policy to sit up, take notice, and engage with paranormal beliefs instead of marginalizing, or worse, ostracizing them.

Wagner and Hongoltz-Hetling touch on mental health, domestic violence, satanic panic and capturing paranormal orbs. The conversation is sure to provide fascinating insight into unconventional and riveting science journalism.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Wisnioski on the History of the Idea and Culture of “Innovation” in the United States

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Matt Wisnioski, Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech, about his new book, Every American an Innovator: How Innovation Became a Way of Life. The pair talk about how the new book connects to Matt’s earlier book, Engineers for Change; how what Matt calls “innovation expertise” first emerged; how government played a key role in promoting the idea of innovation; how the idea of innovation was democratized from focusing on elite white men to focusing on women, people of color, children, and, well, everyone; and much more. Vinsel and Wisnioski also talk about Matt’s current book project with Michael Meindl, Associate Professor of Communication at Radford University - a history of the television show and multimedia product, The Magic School Bus.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elliot Lichtman, "The Computer Always Wins: A Playful Introduction to Algorithms through Puzzles and Strategy Games" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In The Computer Always Wins: A Playful Introduction to Algorithms through Puzzles and Strategy Games (MIT Press, 2025), Elliot Lichtman will teach you some of computer science’s most powerful concepts in a refreshingly accessible way: exploring them through word games, board games, and strategy games you already know. Learn recursion by playing tic-tac-toe, efficient search through puzzle games like sudoku and Wordle, and machine learning by way of the playground classic rock-paper-scissors. Finish the book, and you’ll come away with not only a deeper understanding of these foundational programming techniques but also a new appreciation for the amazing feats that can be accomplished using simple, readable code.

Elliot Lichtman started teaching online classes in computer science when he was a freshman in high school. Small classes quickly grew into a series of larger and longer offerings, and from those, this book was born. Elliot is currently a junior at Yale University.

Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carly A. Kocurek and Matthew Payne, "Ultima and Worldbuilding in the Computer Role-Playing Game" (Amherst College Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game (Amherst College Press, 2024) is the first scholarly book to focus exclusively on the long-running Ultima series of computer role-playing games (RPG) and to assess its lasting impact on the RPG genre and video game industry. Through archival and popular media sources, examinations of fan communities, and the game itself, this book historicizes the games and their authors. By attending to the salient moments and sites of game creation throughout the series’ storied past, authors Carly A. Kocurek and Matthew Thomas Payne detail the creative choices and structural forces that brought Ultima’s celebrated brand of role-playing to fruition. This book first considers the contributions of series founder and lead designer, Richard Garriott, examining how his fame and notoriety as a pioneering computer game auteur shaped Ultima’s reception and paved the way for the evolution of the series. Next, the authors retrace the steps that Garriott took in fusing analog, tabletop role-playing with his self-taught lessons in computer programming. Close textual analyses of Ultima I outline how its gameplay elements offered a foundational framework for subsequent innovations in design and storytelling. Moving beyond the game itself, the authors assess how marketing materials and physical collectibles amplified its immersive hold and how the series’ legions of fans have preserved the series. Game designers, long-time gamers, and fans will enjoy digging into the games’ production history and mechanics while media studies and game scholars will find Ultima and World-Building in the Computer Role-Playing Game a useful extension of inquiry into authorship, media history, and the role of fantasy in computer game design.

Carly A. Kocurek is professor of digital humanities and media studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is the author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade (Minnesota, 2015) and Brenda Laurel: Pioneering Games for Girls (Bloomsbury, 2017).
Matthew Thomas Payne is associate professor of ?lm, television, and theatre at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Playing War: Military Video Games after 9/11 (NYU Press, 2016), and is a co-editor of How to Play Video Games (NYU Press, 2019) and Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games (Routledge, 2009).

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trans Technologies

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How can technology creates new possibilities for transgender people? How do trans experiences, in turn, create new possibilities for technology?

Trans Technologies, (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Oliver L. Haimson, explores how and why mainstream technologies often exclude or marginalize transgender users. Trans Technologies describes what happens when trans people take technology design into their own hands. Dr. Haimson, whose research into gender transition and technology has defined this area of study, draws on transgender studies and his own in-depth interviews with more than 100 creators of technology—including apps, games, health resources, extended reality systems, and supplies designed to address challenges trans people face—to explain what trans technology is and to explore its present possibilities and limitations, as well as its future prospects.
Dr. Haimson surveys the landscape of trans technologies to reveal the design processes that brought these technologies to life, and to show how trans people often must rely on community, technology, and the combination of the two to meet their basic needs and challenges. His work not only identifies the role of trans technology in caring for individuals within the trans community but also shows how trans technology creation empowers some trans people to create their own tools for navigating the world. Articulating which trans needs and challenges are currently being addressed by technology and which still need to be addressed; describing how trans technology creators are accomplishing this work; examining how privilege, race, and access to resources impact which trans technologies are built and who may be left out; and highlighting new areas of innovation to be explored, Trans Technologies opens the way to meaningful social change.

Our guest is: Dr. Oliver Haimson, who is an Assistant Professor at University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) where he directs the Community Research on Identity and Technology (CRIT) Lab, and is affiliate faculty with the Digital Studies Institute (DSI) and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies (CATS). He is a recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and a Henry Russel Award.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

More Than A Glitch

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World

He/She/They: How We Talk About Gender and Why It Matters

Raising Them

Public Scholarship and Feminist Communications

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 250+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ben Snyder on Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In this 100th episode (!!!) of Peoples & Things, host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Benjamin H. Snyder, Associate Professor of Sociology at Williams College, about his recent book, Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore’s Surveillance Experiment (University of California Press, 2024). Spy Plane examines how the city of Baltimore, Maryland, came to adopt a corporate-run surveillance program using aerial surveillance planes that could supposedly photograph and track every person in public. Snyder bases his account on incredible access and direct observations inside the for-profit tech startup that ran the program. He also examines the complex reactions of community members in the neighborhoods that were surveilled and how the program eventually fell to pieces.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jean J. Ryoo and Jane Margolis, "Power On!" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 9 Jun 2025 08:00:00 +0000

An interview with Jean Ryoo and Jane Margolis about Power On!

A diverse group of teenage friends learn how computing can be personally and politically empowering and why all students need access to computer science education.

This lively graphic novel follows a diverse group of teenage friends as they discover that computing can be fun, creative, and empowering. Taylor, Christine, Antonio, and Jon seem like typical young teens—they communicate via endless texting, they share jokes, they worry about starting high school, and they have each other's backs. But when a racially-biased artificial intelligence system causes harm in their neighborhood, they suddenly realize that tech isn't as neutral as they thought it was. But can an algorithm be racist? And what is an algorithm, anyway?
In school, they decide to explore computing classes, with mixed results. One class is only about typing. The class that Christine wants to join is full, and the school counselor suggests that she take a class in “Tourism and Hospitality” instead. (Really??) But Antonio's class seems legit, Christine finds an after-school program, and they decide to teach the others what they learn. By summer vacation, all four have discovered that computing is both personally and politically empowering.
Interspersed through the narrative are text boxes with computer science explainers and inspirational profiles of people of color and women in the field (including Katherine Johnson of Hidden Figures fame). Power On! is an essential read for young adults, general readers, educators, and anyone interested in the power of computing, how computing can do good or cause harm, and why addressing underrepresentation in computing needs to be a top priority.

Listen to the interview on the New Books Network Spanish here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Horn, "Inside the Competitor's Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 31 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Inside the Competitor's Mindset: How to Predict Their Next Move and Position Yourself for Success (MIT Press, 2023) offers a roadmap to help leaders predict, understand, and react to their competitors’ moves. It is a valuable tool to help companies stay ahead of their competitors when the competition is intensifying. To make the right choice when a competitor is working hard to prevent it is difficult. This book demystifies the process. For organizations developing systematic tools to effectively predict competitor behavior, this book provides a powerful, fact-based approach to building insight into A must-read for anyone seeking to better understand their competitors. This book shares proven methods for thinking like the competition and understand why they act the way they do. The keys are cognitive empathy and an approach that focuses on why competitors behave as they do. The book presents a systematic approach to competitive intelligence that starts with frameworks that get inside a competitor’s mindset, predict their reactions and assess their actions. The book stresses the importance of collecting forward-looking, predictive data; explains how to use war games, Black Hat exercises, mock negotiations, and premortems to build competitive insight; and makes the case for creating a dedicated competitive insight function within the organization. Reading this book will enable you to anticipate how competitors will react to moves you make. It ingeniously applies lessons from archaeologists, paleontologists, NICU nurses, and homicide detectives to better gather and analyze information when it is not possible to ask direct questions;

Alfred Marcus, Edson Spencer Professor of Strategy and Technology University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alex Davies, "Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car" (Simon & Schuster, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 27 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

In Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car (Simon & Schuster, 2022), Alex Davies tells the enlightening and significant story of the effort to create driverless cars and the intense competition among tech heavyweights such as Google, Uber, and Tesla to move this technology forward. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) have been one of the most hyped technologies of recent years, but early promises that they would quickly become common place have not borne fruit. Alex Davies set forth the twisted paths of this technology’s evolution from its genesis to the current moment. The idea began with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which aimed to create a land-based equivalent to the drone, a vehicle that could operate in war zones without risking human lives. DARPA established “Grand Challenges” that enticed future-oriented thinkers including amateurs and students to help drive the technology from fantasy to reality. Carnegie-Mellon University and other universities played a major role. The technology got the attention of Silicon Valley companies like Google and Uber. Next arriving were the major US automakers, GM and Ford, who initiated their programs of their own to commercialize the technology, and Chinese companies also showed an intense interest. As road testing went forward, however, the challenges became far more apparent. The difficulties of traversing diverse terrains under varying weather conditions without a driver came out to be far more daunting than expected. Progress was made but in no way as fast as the developers of the technology hoped. The early enthusiasm of the key players dissipated as they came to realize that AI-assisted driverless transportation faced formidable barriers. This book provides fabulous insights into the key characters in this story and how they struggled with a technology that was not ready for rush-hour driving It is a fast-paced, exciting account of how autonomous technology emerged, the main players, the conflicts between companies, and state of the technology today. The book provides the reader with a genuine feel for how real happens. The writing is fantastic because of the emphasis on that details that come from the many conversations that Davies had with people at the center of the story.

Hosted by Alfred Marcus, Edson Spencer Professor of Strategy and Technology University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From Hal to Siri: How Computers Learned to Speak

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 19 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Science in Human Culture program. Ben is the author “The Art of Text to Speech,” which recently appeared in Critical Inquiry, and he’s currently writing a history of text-to-speech computing.

In this conversation, we explore:

the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000, the speaking computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey
2001’s strong influence on computer science and the cultural reception of computers
the weird technology of the first talking computers and their relationship to optical film soundtracks
Louis Gerstman, the forgotten innovator who first made an IBM mainframe sing “Daisy Bell.”
why the phonemic approach of Stephen Hawking’s voice didn’t make it into the voice of Siri
the analog history of digital computing and the true differences between analog and digital

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia MacDonald, "The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 14 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

The Rise of Unmanned Warfare: Origins of the Us Autonomous Military Arsenal (Oxford UP, 2023) tells the fascinating story of the people, processes, and beliefs that led to the contemporary American unmanned arsenal. It takes an expansive look at automated and autonomous technologies, from mines and torpedoes to guided bombs and missiles, satellites, and ultimately, drones. Instead of asking the question, "Why unmanned rather than manned?" the book explains why certain types of unmanned systems became popular while others languished in research or in small pockets of the American military.

To answer this question, Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald use interviews of senior decision-makers, military doctrine and writings, and historical sources to detail the proliferation of over a hundred years of unmanned weapons in the US arsenal, from mines and balloons to Reapers and Global Hawks. Their exploration reveals how multiple factors--key policy entrepreneurs, like Andy Marshall in the Office of Net Assessment; critical junctures like the fall of the USSR or the 9/11 attacks; beliefs that emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War; and US military service culture--all interacted in complex ways to form today's unmanned arsenal.

The Hand Behind Unmanned uses theories of organizational innovation and process tracing of historical cases to explain recent developments, including US precision munition shortfalls and the rise of unmanned aerial platforms. It also foreshadows where the US unmanned arsenal may be headed in the future. Ultimately, the book uses a remarkable case study to illustrate how ideas diffuse across people and organizations to build the weapons of modern warfare.

Our guests are Doctor Jacquelyn Schneider, who is the Hargrove Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Director of the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative, and an affiliate with Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation; and Doctor Julia Macdonald, who is a Research Professor at the Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver, and Director of Research and Engagement at the Asia New Zealand Foundation.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jennifer Holt, "Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 13 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How the United States' regulation of broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and data—together understood as “the cloud”—has eroded civil liberties, democratic principles, and the foundation of the public interest over the past century.

Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data (MIT Press, 2024) is a policy history that chronicles how the past century of regulating media infrastructure in the United States has eroded global civil liberties as well as democratic principles and the foundation of the public interest. Jennifer Holt explores the long arc of regulating broadband pipelines, digital platforms, and the data centers that serve as the cloud's storage facilities—an evolution that is connected to the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century media and networks, including railroads, highways, telephony, radio, and television. In the process, Cloud Policy unearths the lasting inscriptions of policy written for an analog era and markets that no longer exist on the contemporary governance of digital cloud infrastructure.
Cloud Policy brings together numerous perspectives that have thus far remained largely siloed in their respective fields of law, policy, economics, and media studies. The resulting interdisciplinary argument reveals a properly scaled view of the massive challenge facing policymakers today. Holt also addresses the evolving role of the state in the regulation of global cloud infrastructure and the growing influence of corporate gatekeepers and private sector self-governance. Cloud policy's trajectory, as Holt explains, has enacted a transformation in the cultural valuation of infrastructure as civic good, turning it into a tool of commercial profit generation. Despite these current predicaments, the book's historical lens ultimately helps the reader to envision restorative interventions and new forms of activism to create a more equitable future for infrastructure policy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Beaty Rubens, "Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home" (Bodleian Library, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 12 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Radio, today, can feel like a faithful old companion, but its early history was sensational. Between 1922 and 1939, British life was transformed by what was known as the Radio Craze. Listen In: How Radio Changed the Home (Bodleian Library, 2025) expresses what the radio's arrival signified at a personal level. This narrative history recounts the perspective of listeners who adopted the then radical form of communication technology, invested in their first-ever gadgets, and tuned in by their firesides to outside voices, music, SOS calls, the Pips, news, sports, royalty, and innovative radiogenic comedy. Listen In also traces how radio affected family life by exploring whether it altered dynamics between children and adults, changed relationships between women and men, as well as affected class and a wider sense of nationhood.

Packed with touching stories and anecdotes, Listen In comes at a timely moment when traditional linear radio is shifting, and the experience of how people consume audio is once again transforming.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Darryl Campbell, "Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software" (W. W. Norton, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 9 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

A tech insider explains how capitalism and software development make for such a dangerous mix.

Software was supposed to radically improve society. Outdated mechanical systems would be easily replaced; programs like PowerPoint would make information flow more freely; social media platforms like Facebook would bring people together; and generative AI would solve the world’s greatest ills. Yet in practice, few of the systems we looked to with such high hopes have lived up to their fundamental mandate. In fact, in too many cases they’ve made things worse, exposing us to immense risk at the societal and the individual levels. How did we get to this point?

In Fatal Abstraction: Why the Managerial Class Loses Control of Software (W. W. Norton, 2025), Darryl Campbell shows that the problem is “managerial software”: programs created and overseen not by engineers but by professional managers with only the most superficial knowledge of technology itself. The managerial ethos dominates the modern tech industry, from its globe-spanning giants all the way down to its trendy startups. It demands that corporate leaders should be specialists in business rather than experts in their company’s field; that they manage their companies exclusively through the abstractions of finance; and that profit margins must take priority over developing a quality product that is safe for the consumer and beneficial for society. These corporations rush the development process and package cheap, unproven, potentially dangerous software inside sleek and shiny new devices. As Campbell demonstrates, the problem with software is distinct from that of other consumer products, because of how quickly it can scale to the dimensions of the world itself, and because its inner workings resist the efforts of many professional managers to understand it with their limited technical background.

A former tech worker himself, Campbell shows how managerial software fails, and when it does what sorts of disastrous consequences ensue, from the Boeing 737 MAX crashes to a deadly self-driving car to PowerPoint propaganda, and beyond. Yet just because the tech industry is currently breaking its core promise does not mean the industry cannot change, or that the risks posed by managerial software should necessarily persist into the future. Campbell argues that the solution is tech workers with actual expertise establishing industry-wide principles of ethics and safety that corporations would be forced to follow. Fatal Abstraction is a stirring rebuke of the tech industry’s current managerial excesses, and also a hopeful glimpse of what a world shaped by good software can off.

Alfred Marcus is Edson Spencer Professor at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter Krapp, "Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 5 May 2025 08:00:00 +0000

We're pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Krapp, the author of Computing Legacies: Digital Cultures of Simulation (MIT Press, 2024), to the New Books Network.

In Computing Legacies, Peter Krapp explores a media history of simulation to excavate three salient aspects of digital culture. Firstly, he profiles simulation as cultural technique, enabling symbolic work and foregrounding hypothetical literacy. Secondly, he positions simulation as crucial for the preservation of cultural memory, where modeling, emulation, and serious play are constitutive in how we relate to our mediated history. And lastly, despite suggestions that we may already live in a simulation, he interrogates how simulation can serve as critique of the computer age. In tracing our digital heritage, Computing Legacies elucidates inflection points where quantitative data becomes tractable for qualitative evaluations: modeling epidemics for scientific study or entertainment, emulating older devices, turning numerical calculations into music, conducting espionage in virtual worlds, and gamifying higher education. Simulation, this book demonstrates, is pivotal not only to high-tech research and to archives, museums, and the preservation of digital culture but also to our understanding of what it is to live and work under the technical conditions of computing.

Dr. Peter Krapp is a Professor of Film & Media Studies, English, and Music at UC-Irvine.

Your host is Dr. Adam Kriesberg, Assistant Professor at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Radiophilia

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, you likely know her work, particularly her monograph Nazi Soundscapes (AUP, 2012) which was the recipient of the ASCA Book Award in 2013. Her new book, Radiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2023), examines the love of radio through history. It will be a great value to anyone–from novice to expert–who wants to understand radio studies and think about where it should go in the future. In this wide-ranging interview, we discuss Carolyn’s career and both of her books. We also get into the present state of radio and media studies, as well as the kind of skeptical orientation to media that tends to set sound studies scholars apart from many of their peers.

And for our Patrons we’ll have Carolyn’s What’s Good segment, with something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join us at patreon.com/phantompower.

Today’s show was edited by Matt Parker. Transcript and web content by Katelyn Phan.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who have crossed the nation's southern border. In Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Builidng an Industry Around Immigrants (University of California Press, 2023), UCLA information studies professor Melissa Villa-Nicholas deftly explains how private corporations such as Amazon and Palantir, government agencies including ICE and the CBP, and even public libraries all coordinate to track citizens and non-citizens alike. Mass amounts of data are networked to immigrants, who link people together like nodes on a map. A startlingly relevant book, Villa-Nicholas argues that stories we tell about data, and about human experiences, can either aid or act as a bulwark against this type of mass surveillance. The surveillance state is here, and it was born in the American West.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter B. Kaufman, "The Moving Image: A User's Manual" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Video (television, film, the moving image generally) is today’s most popular information medium. Two-thirds of the world’s internet traffic is video. Americans get their news and information more often from screens and speakers than through any other means. The Moving Image: A User's Manual (MIT Press, 2025) is the first authoritative account of how we have arrived here, together with the first definitive manual to help writers, educators, and publishers use video more effectively.

Drawing on decades as an educator, publisher, and producer, MIT’s Peter Kaufman presents new tools, best practices, and community resources for integrating film and sound into media that matters. Kaufman describes video’s vital role in politics, law, education, and entertainment today, only 130 years since the birth of film. He explains how best to produce video, distribute it, clear rights to it, cite it, and, ultimately, archive and preserve it. With detailed guidance on producing and deploying video and sound for publication, finding and using archival video and sound, securing rights and permissions, developing distribution strategies, and addressing questions about citation, preservation, and storage—across the broadest spectrum of platforms, publications, disciplines, and formats—The Moving Image equips readers for the medium’s continued ascendance in education, publishing, and knowledge dissemination in the decades to come. And, modeled in part on Strunk and White’s classic, The Elements of Style, it’s also a highly enjoyable read.

Peter B. Kaufman is Senior Program Officer at MIT Open Learning. He is the author of The New Enlightenment and the Fight to Free Knowledge and founder of Intelligent Television, a video production company that works with cultural and educational institutions around the world.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Data and privacy have emerged as critical issues in our digitally interconnected era, profoundly influencing individual rights, societal norms, and democratic processes. In his book, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025), Daniel Solove provides a compelling exploration of the intersection between evolving technologies and privacy rights. Drawing on insights from law, philosophy, sociology, and communication studies, Solove unpacks the complex ways in which digital innovations challenge traditional notions of privacy and autonomy. The book advances a nuanced argument advocating for a reevaluation of how privacy is conceptualized and protected in an age dominated by data collection, surveillance, and algorithmic governance.

In this episode, Daniel Solove discusses how contemporary privacy concerns—ranging from mass surveillance and data breaches to algorithmic bias and digital profiling—can be critically understood and addressed. Grounded in rigorous theoretical analysis, the conversation pushes against the narrative that technological advancement inevitably erodes privacy, instead highlighting strategies and frameworks through which privacy rights can be reclaimed and reinforced in the digital age.

This interview was conducted by Shreya Urvashi, a doctoral researcher of sociology and education based in Toronto, Canada.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lauren E. Bridges on Fantasies and Realities of Digital Transformation and the Data Center Industry

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Lauren Bridges, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, about her work on the political, economic, and environmental politics of big data infrastructures. They focus on some of Bridges’ work on the disconnect between the promises made to localities around digital transformation and the realities of data center power demands and other material factors. They also discuss Bridges’ other projects, including “Geographies of Digital Wasting,” a global collaborative project, which Bridges was co-PI on, tracing the global flows and practices of digital wasting throughout the tech supply chain.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Will AI Transform What it Means to be Human in the Next Ten Years?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and what impact will AI have on being human in the next decade? Elon University’s Center for Imagining the Digital Future just released a big report on this question, based on a survey of nearly 300 global tech experts.

These insiders predict major changes in the very near future to the way we think about work, life, and ourselves.

We talked with Lee Rainie, the director of the center and co-author of the report. We also discuss another center report, on the impact of AI on higher education, as well as Lee’s earlier career as a political journalist.

Lee has spent decades studying expert opinion on technology - before joining Elon he spent 24 years directing the Pew Research Center’s studies of the internet. Prior to this, Lee was managing editor of U.S. News and World Report.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. Chan is the author of Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (U California Press, 2025). Chan is Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as the author of a prior book Networking Peripheries on tech movements among craftwork communities in Peru. In her current book, Chan documents how the Big Data on which AI are trained are based on long-standing data infrastructures—sets of practices, policies, and logics—that remove, imperil, devalue, and actively harm people who refuse to conform to racialized patriarchal power structures and the priorities of surveillance capitalism—most pointedly immigrant, feminist, and low-income communities.

Centered mostly in the United States as well as Latin America, Predatory Data shows how the eugenicist data practices of the past now shape our present. But her approach is fundamentally a politics of pluralism. Chan dedicates half of the book to amplifying and praising the small-scale, community-led projects of the past and present—from the legendary Hull House’s data visualizations to community data initiatives in Champaign, Illinois. There is much fuel for political outrage in this book and also fodder for solidarity and hope.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “The Politics of AI.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom.

email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu .

Student collaborators on this interview were Emma Bufkin, Keyonté Doughty, Natalie Dumm, Lauren Garza, Eden Kim, Michelle Kugel, Kai Lee, Sam Mitike, Hadassah Nehikhuere, Shalini Thinakaran, Logan Walsh, and Wesley Williams.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ysabel Gerrard, "The Kids Are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life" (U California Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

How do young people use digital platforms? In The Kids are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life (U California Press, 2025), Ysabel Gerrard, a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media and Society at the University of Sheffield explores the understandings and experience of young people as they navigate both the online and offline world. Drawing on a range of sociological, digital and creative methods, the book punctures many myths around young people’s digital lives, showing both the potential as well as the problems of contemporary online spaces. Framed through the idea of the paradoxes of social media for young people, the book’s analysis is insightful and engaging, as well as deeply theoretically informed. The book is essential reading across the social sciences and humanities, as well as for anyone interested in understanding contemporary digital life.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeremy Braddock on "Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums"

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 8 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Jeremy Braddock, Associate Professor of Literatures in English and Coordinator of the Media Studies Initiative at Cornell University, about his book, Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums. The book explores themes of media and technology through nine albums made by Firesign Theatre, an experimental, surrealistic comedy troupe formed in the mid-1960s that created art across several media forms. The theme of “technology” comes into the story in several ways, but the two major ones explored in this episode are that Firesign routinely experimented with new media technologies and that the troupe regularly explored how technologies, especially media technologies, were affecting society.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paddy Walker, "War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield" (Howgate, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 7 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Amid the fanfare around AI and autonomous weapons, decision-makers - both military and political - are imagining an augmented future for warfare that minimises human influence and connection. But in their rush for speed and lethality, leaders have failed to understand the behavioural and technical challenges that accompany these new weapon types, as well as the detail of their operation and the practicalities involved in deploying these assets on tomorrow's battlefields. Indeed, as autonomy starts to flood fighting practices, the classical concepts of combat, tactics and strategy may no longer be fit for task. We are not ready and, as Paddy Walker makes clear in War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield (Howgate Publishing Limited, 2025), human oversight over lethal engagement is critical if we are to do more than suffer defeats faster.

Formerly commissioned into the Fifth Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, Dr Paddy Walker is Managing Director of the Leon Group. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Buckingham, an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and an Associate at the Institute for the Public Understanding of War and Conflict at the Imperial War Museum. Previously London chair of NGO Human Rights Watch, Paddy is a Board Member of NGO Article 36 and co-authored War's Changed Landscape, also published by Howgate, with Professor Peter Roberts in 2023. Check out the New Books Network episode on that book here.

Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James Boyle Draws the Line Between Humans and AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 5 Apr 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we spoke with Duke Law Professor James Boyle about his new book The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood (MIT Press, 2024). We spoke with Boyle about how our legal and moral understandings of personhood are being challenged by advances in AI. We discussed the role of the law, popular culture, tests of sentience, and our capacity for empathy in shaping this urgent debate.

James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Making Radio History

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Elena Razlogova is an Associate Professor of History at Concordia University. She is the author of The Listener’s Voice: Early Radio and the American Public (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and co-editor of “Radical Histories in Digital Culture” issue of the Radical History Review (2013). She has published articles in American Quarterly, Radical History Review, Russian Review, Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Radio Journal, Cultural Studies, Social Media Society, and more.

Elena’s someone I’m always excited to talk to when I see her at conferences and I thought it would be fun talk to her on this podcast. In this episode we discuss some of her research interests including U.S. radio history, audience research, music recommendation and recognition algorithms, and her current book project, which centers on freeform radio station WFMU and the rise of online music.

Toward the end of the episode we talk about Elena’s research strategies as a historian working in the digital age.

And for our Patrons we’ll have Elena’s What’s Good segment, featuring something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join at patreon.com/phantompower.

Today’s show was edited by Nisso Sacha and Mack Hagood.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

For many, technology offers hope for the future―that promise of shared human flourishing and liberation that always seems to elude our species. Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies spark this hope in a particular way. They promise a future in which human limits and frailties are finally overcome―not by us, but by our machines. Yet rather than open new futures, today's powerful AI technologies reproduce the past. Forged from oceans of our data into immensely powerful but flawed mirrors, they reflect the same errors, biases, and failures of wisdom that we strive to escape. Our new digital mirrors point backward. They show only where the data say that we have already been, never where we might venture together for the first time. To meet today's grave challenges to our species and our planet, we will need something new from AI, and from ourselves.

In The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford UP, 2024), Shannon Vallor makes a wide-ranging, prophetic, and philosophical case for what AI could be: a way to reclaim our human potential for moral and intellectual growth, rather than lose ourselves in mirrors of the past. Rejecting prophecies of doom, she encourages us to pursue technology that helps us recover our sense of the possible, and with it the confidence and courage to repair a broken world. Professor Vallor calls us to rethink what AI is and can be, and what we want to be with it.

Our guest is: Professor Shannon Vallor, who is the Baillie Gifford Professor in the Ethics of Data and AI at the University of Edinburgh, where she directs the Centre for Technomoral Futures in the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She is a standing member of Stanford's One Hundred Year Study of Artificial Intelligence (AI100) and member of the Oversight Board of the Ada Lovelace Institute. Professor Vallor joined the Futures Institute in 2020 following a career in the United States as a leader in the ethics of emerging technologies, including a post as a visiting AI Ethicist at Google from 2018-2020. She is the author of The AI Mirror: Reclaiming Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking; and Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting; and is the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology. She serves as advisor to government and industry bodies on responsible AI and data ethics, and is Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the UKRI research programme BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sex and Love with Robots and Chatbots

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 26 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and can you fall in love with ChatGPT? Can, and should, you have sex with a robot? We asked Professor Kate Devlin, a leading researcher on intimate relations between humans and artificial intelligences, to help us navigate the new landscape of sex and love with robots.

Kate is a Professor of AI & Society in the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London. She’s the author of the excellent book Turned On: Science, Sex and Robots (Bloomsbury, 2018), which examines the ethical and social implications of technology and intimacy.

We had a rich conversation with Professor Devlin about the future of intimacy, the reality of the sex robot, the gender politics of depictions of AI in science fiction, and a lot more.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chris Skinner, "Intelligent Money: When Money Thinks for You" (Marshall Cavendish, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Audiobook's Century-Long Overnight Success

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Today we present the first episode of a miniseries on audiobooks by getting into the history and theory of the medium. Audiobooks are having a moment—and it only took them over a century to get here. Dr. Matthew Rubery, a Harvard PhD and Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London, pioneered the study of the audiobook, its history, and its affordances.

Among his other works, Dr. Rubery is the author of The Untold Story of the Talking Book (2016, Harvard University Press). He’s also the editor of Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies (2011, Routledge). Matt’s latest book is titled Reader’s Block: A History of Reading Differences (2022, Stanford University Press).

In this fascinating conversation, we discuss the long history of recorded literature; the weird shame around audiobook reading and its cultural roots; the interplay between disability, neurodivergence, and alternate forms of reading; and what an audiobook criticism might look like.

And for our patrons, we’ll have our What’s Good segment at the end of the show, where Matt will tell us something good to read, something good to listen to. Something good to do. You can become a patron of the show at patreon.com/phantompower.

Today’s show was edited by Mack Hagood. Transcription by Katelyn Phan. Music by Graeme Gibson

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lessons on Living with AI from the Home Computer Revolution: Revisiting Sherry Turkle’s “The Second Self”

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and we've been experiencing a revolution in the past few years, as artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly common part of everyday life. Powerful AI tools are now integrated into our work, our schools, our creative industries, and our experiences of dating and companionship. This is a disorientating experience, one that changes not only our views of technology, but of ourselves. Can we look to a past technological revolution for help?

We revisit Sherry Turkle's classic text The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (MIT Press, 1985) on how the sudden spread of the personal computer through society in the 1980s similarly challenged the human relationship to technology. What can Turkle's text, which combined the fields of ethnography, psychoanalysis, and technology and society, tell us about today's AI revolution?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eleni Kalantidou on Design, Repairability, and Cultures of Repair

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Eleni Kalantidou, Assistant Professor at the Queensland College of Art and Design, about the volume of essays, Design/Repair: Place, Practice, and Community (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), which Eleni co-edited with Abby Mellick Lopes, Alison Gill, Guy Keulemans, and Niklavs Rubenis. The volume examines both the relationship of design practices to repair and repairability and the kinds of cultures needed to develop sustainable repair practices the world over. Eleni is also the author of the recent book, Introduction to Design Psychology. Eleni respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners and Custodians of the Yugara and Turrabal land on which she lives, and pays her respects to Indigenous Elders, past and present.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Luis F. Alvarez Leon, "The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 8 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Digital technologies have changed how we shop, work, play, and communicate, reshaping our societies and economies. To understand digital capitalism, we need to grasp how advances in geospatial technologies underpin the construction, operation, and refinement of markets for digital goods and services.

In The Map in the Machine: Charting the Spatial Architecture of Digital Capitalism (U California Press, 2024), Luis F. Alvarez Leon examines these advances, from MapQuest and Google Maps to the rise of IP geolocation, ridesharing, and a new Earth Observation satellite ecosystem. He develops a geographical theory of digital capitalism centered on the processes of location, valuation, and marketization to provide a new vantage point from which to better understand, and intervene in, the dominant techno-economic paradigm of our time. By centering the spatiality of digital capitalism, Alvarez Leon shows how this system is the product not of seemingly intangible information clouds but rather of a vast array of technologies, practices, and infrastructures deeply rooted in place, mediated by geography, and open to contestation and change.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeremy Black, "A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 8 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Since their origins in eighteenth-century England, railroads have spread across the globe, changing everything in their path, from where and how people grew and made things to where and how they lived and moved. Railroads rewrote not only world geography but also the history of maps and mapping. Today, the needs of train companies and their users continue to shape the maps we consume and consult.

Featuring full-color maps primarily from the British Library's distinguished collection--many of them never before published--A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps is the first international history of railroads and railroad infrastructure told through maps. Jeremy Black includes examples from six continents, spanning a variety of uses from railroad planning and operations to guides for passengers, shippers, and tourists.

Arranged chronologically, the maps are accompanied by explanatory text that sheds light on the political, military, and urban development histories associated with the spread of railroads. A final chapter considers railroad maps from games, books, and other cultural artifacts. For anyone interested in the history of railroads or maps, A History of the Railroad in 100 Maps (U Chicago Press, 2024) will offer new and unexpected insights into their intertwined global history.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel J. Solove, "On Privacy and Technology" (Oxford UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 7 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Succinct and eloquent, On Privacy and Technology (Oxford UP, 2025) is an essential primer on how to face the threats to privacy in today's age of digital technologies and AI.

With the rapid rise of new digital technologies and artificial intelligence, is privacy dead? Can anything be done to save us from a dystopian world without privacy?

In this short and accessible book, internationally renowned privacy expert Daniel J. Solove draws from a range of fields, from law to philosophy to the humanities, to illustrate the profound changes technology is wreaking upon our privacy, why they matter, and what can be done about them. Solove provides incisive examinations of key concepts in the digital sphere, including control, manipulation, harm, automation, reputation, consent, prediction, inference, and many others.

Compelling and passionate, On Privacy and Technology teems with powerful insights that will transform the way you think about privacy and technology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Eric Dienstfrey, "Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology" (U California Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 7 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology (University of California Press, 2024) reveals that, in fact, filmmakers have been creating stereo and surround-sound effects for nearly a century, since the advent of talking pictures, and argues that their endurance owes primarily to the longstanding battles between stereo and mono technologies.

Throughout the book, Eric Dienstfrey analyzes newly discovered archival materials and myriad stereo releases, from Hell’s Angels (1930) to Get Out (2017), to show how Hollywood’s financial dependence on mono prevented filmmakers from seeing surround sound’s full aesthetic potential. Though studios initially explored stereo’s unique capabilities, Dienstfrey details how filmmakers eventually codified a conservative set of surround-sound techniques that prevail today, despite the arrival of more immersive formats.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Webb Keane, "Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination" (Princeton UP, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 3 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Revolutions in technology are fundamentally transforming what it means to be human. Or are they? As Webb Keane points out, before humans consulted ChatGPT, they propitiated oracles. Before they fell in love with robot boyfriends, they ventured into the forest to marry nature spirits.

In his new book Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination (Princeton UP, 2025) Keane combines anthropology and philosophy to show us what is new and what is not in our current technological moment. Using a broad comparative perspective he shows us how shamans, hunters, priests, and doctors have long responded to the existential questions which drive our current technological obsessions: Where is the line between human and non-human? How do humans find meaning in our interactions with non-humans? By widening our intellectual imagination, Keane shows us how many of our current intellectual dilemmas about technology are not new -- and are far more deep than enduring than we might have previously suspected.

Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Alex Golub is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sonic AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 3 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Today we hear two scholars reading their recent work on artificial intelligence. Steph Ceraso studies the technology of “voice donation,” which provides AI-created custom voices for people with vocal disabilities. Hussein Boon contemplates the future of AI in music via some very short and thought-provoking fiction tales. And we start off the show with Mack reflecting on how hard the post-shutdown adjustment has been for many of us and how that might be feeding into the current AI hype.

For our Patreon members we have “What’s Good” recommendations from Steph and Hussein on what to read, listen to, and do. Join at Patreon.com/phantompower.

About our guests:

Steph Ceraso is Associate Professor of Digital Writing & Rhetoric in the English Department at the University of Virginia. She’s one of Mack’s go-to folks when trying to figure out how to use audio production in the classroom as a form of student composition. Steph’s research and teaching interests include multimodal composition, sound studies, pedagogy, digital rhetoric, disability studies, sensory rhetorics, music, and pop culture.

Hussein Boon is Principal Lecturer at the University of Westminster. He’s a multi-instrumentalist, session musician, composer, modular synth researcher, and AI researcher. He also has a vibrant YouTube presence with tutorials on things like Ableton Live production.

Pieces featured in this episode:

“Voice as Ecology: Voice Donation, Materiality, Identity” by Steph Ceraso in Sounding Out (2022).

“In the Future” by Hussein Boon in Riffs (2022).

Mack also mentioned in his rant:

“Embodied meaning in a neural theory of language” by Jerome Feldman and Srinivas Narayanan (2003).

“The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor” by George Lakoff (1992).

Today’s show was produced and edited by Ravi Krishnaswami

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Christos Lynteris, "Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 2 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

How epidemic photography during a global pandemic of bubonic plague contributed to the development of modern epidemiology and our concept of the “pandemic.”

In Visual Plague: The Emergence of Epidemic Photography (MIT Press, 2022), Christos Lynteris examines the emergence of epidemic photography during the third plague pandemic (1894–1959), a global pandemic of bubonic plague that led to over twelve million deaths. Unlike medical photography, epidemic photography was not exclusively, or even primarily, concerned with exposing the patient's body or medical examinations and operations. Instead, it played a key role in reconceptualizing infectious diseases by visualizing the “pandemic” as a new concept and structure of experience—one that frames and responds to the smallest local outbreak of an infectious disease as an event of global importance and consequence.

As the third plague pandemic struck more and more countries, the international circulation of plague photographs in the press generated an unprecedented spectacle of imminent global threat. Nothing contributed to this sense of global interconnectedness, anticipation, and fear more than photography. Exploring the impact of epidemic photography at the time of its emergence, Lynteris highlights its entanglement with colonial politics, epistemologies, and aesthetics, as well as with major shifts in epidemiological thinking and public health practice. He explores the characteristics, uses, and impact of epidemic photography and how it differs from the general corpus of medical photography. The new photography was used not simply to visualize or illustrate a pandemic, but to articulate, respond to, and unsettle key questions of epidemiology and epidemic control, as well as to foster the notion of the “pandemic,” which continues to affect our lives today.

Christos Lynteris is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics with a particular focus on zoonotic diseases, epidemiological epistemology, visual medical culture, and colonial medicine. His regional expertise includes China and Inner Asia.

Professor Lynteris holds the first chair in medical anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Focusing on diseases that spread between animals and humans, his research has been foundational in the establishment of the anthropological study of zoonosis. Combining archival and ethnographic research together with visual methods and critical approaches to medical and epidemiological epistemologies, Professor Lynteris's research seeks to understand how specific zoonotic diseases (SARS, COVID-19, plague) and the broader question of zoonosis shape social and multispecies worlds and are in turn shaped by them.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 1 Mar 2025 09:00:00 +0000

My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research examines race, video games, and the political economy of the video game industry. Srauy’s work appears in various academic journals including Social Media + Society, First Mondays, Games and Culture, and Television and New Media. She teaches courses on identity, race/racism, digital media production, and video game studies/production. Prior to academia, Srauy worked for over a decade in the high-tech industry. Her experience in that field includes municipal wireless networks, open-source technology, and streaming media systems. About the book:

Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit (Routledge, 2024) offers a detailed and much needed examination of how systemic racism in the US shaped the culture, market logic, and production practices of video game developers from the 1970s until the 2010s.

Offering historical analysis of the video game industries (console, PC, and indie) from a critical, political economic lens, this book specifically examines the history of how such practices created, enabled, and maintained racism through the imagined 'gamer.' The book explores how the cultural and economic landscape of the United States developed from the 1970s through the 2000s and explains how racist attitudes are reflected and maintained in the practices of video games production. These practices constitute a 'Vicious Circuit' that normalizes racism and the centrality of an imagined gamer identity. It also explores how the industry, from indie game developers to larger profit-driven companies, responded to changing attitudes in the 2010s, where racism and lack of diversity in games was frequently being noted. The book concludes by offering potential solutions to combat this 'Vicious Circuit'.

A vital contribution to the study of video games that will be welcomed by students and scholars in the fields of media studies, cultural studies, game studies, critical race studies, and beyond.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Internet, Power, and the Deep State: Zeynep Tufekci on Technology and Democracy Today

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

As the second Trump administration reshapes the U.S. government and its role in the world, how do technology, media, and political power intersect? In this episode of International Horizons, host John Torpey speaks with Zeynep Tufekci—New York Times columnist, Princeton professor, and author of Twitter and Tear Gas—about the evolving relationship between social media platforms, political movements, and democracy. From the shifting role of the internet in global protests to Elon Musk’s interventions in European politics, Tufekci unpacks the historical patterns shaping today’s political landscape. The conversation also explores the erosion of public trust in institutions, the implications of a weakened federal government, and the risks of unchecked technological influence. Tune in for a deep dive into the forces reshaping democracy at home and abroad.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aure Schrock on Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Aure Schrock, an interdisciplinary technology scholar and writing coach and editor at Indelible Voice, about their book, Politics Recoded: The Infrastructural Organizing of Code for America (MIT Press, 2024)

Politics Recoded examines the history and culture of Code for America, an organization that, as one of its leaders put it, aimed “to promote ‘civic hacking,’ and to bring 21st century technology to government.” The book describes how the organization has changed over time from a “tech-forward” vision rooted in techno-libertarianism to an organization that provides something like digital consulting services to governments. The pair also talk about Aure’s writing and editing company, the Indelible Voice, and what it’s like helping scholars refine their vision and voice in academic writing.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter D. Hershock, "Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Machine learning, big data and AI are reshaping the human experience and forcing us to develop a new ethical intelligence. In Buddhism and Intelligent Technology: Toward a More Humane Future (Bloomsbury, 2021), Peter Hershock offers a new way to think about attention, personal presence, and ethics as intelligent technology shatters previously foundational certainties and opens entirely new spaces of opportunity.

Rather than turning exclusively to cognitive science and contemporary ethical theories, Hershock shows how classical Confucian and Socratic philosophies help to make visible what a history of choices about remaking ourselves through control biased technology has rendered invisible. But it is in Buddhist thought and practice that Hershock finds the tools for valuing and training our attention, resisting the colonization of consciousness, and engendering a more equitable and diversity-enhancing human-technology-world relationship. Focusing on who we need to be present as to avoid a future in which machines prevent us from either making or learning from our own mistakes, Hershock offers a constructive response to the unprecedented perils of intelligent technology and seamlessly blends ancient and contemporary philosophies to envision how to realize its equally unprecedented promises.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nicole Lobdell, "X-Ray" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

X-rays are powerful. Moving through objects undetected, revealing the body as a tryptic of skin, tissue, and bone. X-rays gave rise to a transparent world and the belief that transparency conveys truth. It stands to reason, then, that our relationship with X-rays would be a complicated one of fear and fascination, acceptance and resistance, confusion and curiosity.

In X-Ray (Bloomsbury, 2024), Nicole Lobdell explores when, where, and how we use X-rays, what meanings we give them, what metaphors we make out of them, and why, despite our fears, we're still fascinated with them. In doing so, she draws from a variety of fields, including the history of medicine, science and technology studies, literature, art, material culture, film, comics, gender studies, architecture, and industrial design.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gabriella Coleman on Hackers Cultures (Plural!)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland, interview Gabriella Coleman, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, about her long career studying hacker cultures. Topics include how hacking has changed over time, the different colored “hats” used to describe different hacker ethoses, the aesthetic dimensions of hacking including how poorly written code leads to moral outrage, and how Biella may soon found a new field of Critical Mold Studies. Professor Coleman’s books include Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking and Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous. Professor Bialski, a former P&T guest, is the author of Middletech: Software Work and the Culture of Good Enough.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our History with AI is (much) Longer than You Think (with Kevin LaGrandeur)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 8 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and when did we really start dreaming about the promise, and the danger, of artificial intelligence? When ChatGPT was released in 2022? When IBMs Deep Blue defeated Chess world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997? When Stanley Kubrick introduced us to HAL 9000 in 1968? Or perhaps you think it was much earlier. Maybe we have had the dream of AI since the development of the first computers by Von Neumann, or even earlier, by Babbage. Or maybe you think the dawning of the age of science itself is ground zero for our thoughts of artificial intelligence.

Kevin LaGrandeur traces our dreams - and fears - of artificial intelligence back way further than this. LaGrandeur argues that ideas of artificial slaves can be found in the writing of Aristotle, in the Renaissance-era idea of the Homunculus, in the Jewish legend of the Golem.

LaGrandeur, a longtime professor at the New York Institute of Technology and now an independent scholar and Director of Research at the Global AI Ethics Institute, has more than 25 years of experience teaching, writing and speaking about technology and society.

We were thrilled to be able to have a wide-ranging conversation with Professor LaGrandeur about his pathbreaking research on Androids and intelligent networks in early modern culture, and his current work on the ethics and implications of AI.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel Oberhaus, "The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum" (MIT Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 4 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

AI psychiatrists promise to detect mental disorders with superhuman accuracy, provide affordable therapy for those who can't afford or can't access treatment, and even invent new psychiatric drugs. But the hype obscures an unnerving reality. In The Silicon Shrink: How Artificial Intelligence Made the World an Asylum (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel Oberhaus tells the inside story of how the quest to use AI in psychiatry has created the conditions to turn the world into an asylum. Most of these systems, he writes, have vanishingly little evidence that they improve patient outcomes, but the risks they pose have less to do with technological shortcomings than with the application of deeply flawed psychiatric models of mental disorder at unprecedented scale.

Oberhaus became interested in the subject of mental health after tragically losing his sister to suicide. In The Silicon Shrink, he argues that these new, ostensibly therapeutic technologies already pose significant risks to vulnerable people, and they won't stop there. These new breeds of AI systems are creating a psychiatric surveillance economy in which the emotions, behavior, and cognition of everyday people are subtly manipulated by psychologically savvy algorithms that have escaped the clinic. Oberhaus also introduces readers to the concept of “swipe psychology,” which is quickly establishing itself as the dominant mode of diagnosing and treating mental disorders.

It is not too late to change course, but to do so means we must reckon with the nature of mental illness, the limits of technology, and what it means to be human.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marijam Did, "Everything to Play For: An Insider's Guide to How Videogames are Changing Our World" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 3 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World (Verso, 2024) by Marijiam Did asks if videogames can achieve egalitarian goals instead of fuelling hyper-materialist, reactionary agendas. Combining cultural theory and materialist critiques with accessible language and personal anecdotes, industry insider Marijam Did engages both novices and seasoned connoisseurs. From the innovations of Pong and Doom to the intricate multiplayer or narrative-driven games, the author highlights the multifaceted stories of the gaming communities and the political actors who organise among them. Crucially, the focus also includes the people who make the games, shedding light on the brutal processes necessary to bring titles to the public.

The videogame industry, now larger than the film and music industries combined, has a proven ability to challenge the status quo. With a rich array of examples, Did argues for a nuanced understanding of gaming’s influence so that this extraordinary power can be harnessed for good.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mirca Madianou, "Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful" (Polity, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 1 Feb 2025 09:00:00 +0000

With over 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and with emergencies and climate disasters becoming more common, AI and big data are being championed as forces for good and as solutions to the complex challenges of the aid sector.

Technocolonialism: When Technology for Good is Harmful (Polity, 2024) argues, however, that digital innovation engenders new forms of violence and entrenches power asymmetries between the global South and North. Dr. Madianou develops a new concept, technocolonialism, to capture how the convergence of digital developments with humanitarian structures, state power and market forces reinvigorates and reshapes colonial legacies. The concept of technocolonialism shifts the attention to the constitutive role that digital infrastructures, data and AI play in accentuating inequities between aid providers and people in need.

Drawing on ten years of research on the uses of digital technologies in humanitarian operations, Dr. Mirca Madianou examines a range of practices: from the normalization of biometric technologies and the datafication of humanitarian operations to experimentation in refugee camps, which are treated as laboratories for technological pilots. In so doing, the book opens new ground in the fields of humanitarianism and critical AI studies, and in the debates in postcolonial studies, by highlighting the fundamental role of digital technologies in reworking colonial genealogies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Antonio A. Casilli, "Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Artificial Intelligence fuels both enthusiasm and panic. Technologists are inclined to give their creations leeway, pretend they’re animated beings, and consider them efficient. As users, we may complain when these technologies don’t obey, or worry about their influence on our choices and our livelihoods. And yet, we also yearn for their convenience, see ourselves reflected in them, and treat them as something entirely new. But when we overestimate the automation of these tools, award-winning author Antonio A. Casilli argues, we fail to recognize how our fellow humans are essential to their efficiency. The danger is not that robots will take our jobs, but that humans will have to do theirs.

In this bracing and powerful book, Antonia A. Casilli uses up-to-the-minute research to show how today’s technologies, including AI, continue to exploit human labor—even ours. He connects the diverse activities of today’s tech laborers: platform workers, like Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts; “micro workers,” including those performing atomized tasks like data entry on Amazon Mechanical Turk; and the rest of us, as we evaluate text or images to show we’re not robots, react to Facebook posts, or approve or improve the output of generative AI. As Casilli shows us, algorithms, search engines, and voice assistants wouldn’t function without unpaid or underpaid human contributions. Further, he warns that if we fail to recognize this human work, we risk a dark future for all human labor.

Waiting for Robots: The Hired Hands of Automation (U Chicago Press, 2025) urges us to move beyond the simplistic notion that machines are intelligent and autonomous. As the proverbial Godot, robots are the bearers of a messianic promise that is always postponed. Instead of bringing prosperity for all, they discipline the workforce, so we don’t dream of a world without drudgery and exploitation. Casilli’s eye-opening book makes clear that most “automation” requires human labor—and likely always will—shedding new light on today’s consequences and tomorrow’s threats of failing to recognize and compensate the “click workers” of today.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is at the intersection of space, behavior, and identity. He is currently conducting research about the negotiation that humans make between oneself, identification of place, and the attachment/s they have to those places. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his personal website, Google Scholar, Bluesky (@professorjohnst.bsky.social),Twitter (@ProfessorJohnst), or by email (johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karenleigh A. Overmann, "The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East" (Gorgias Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

What are numbers, and where do they come from? Based on her groundbreaking study of material devices used for counting in the Ancient Near East, Karenleigh Overmann proposes a novel answer to these timeless questions.

Tune in as we talk with Karenleigh Overmann about her book, The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Gorgias Press, 2024).

Karenleigh Overmann earned a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Oxford, and is research fellow at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marshall Poe on the New Books Network, Technology, and the Future of Academic Communication

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Peoples and Things host, Lee Vinsel, is joined by guest host and Peoples & Things producer, Joe Forte, Media Projects Manager with Virginia Tech Publishing, in interviewing Marshall Poe, the founder and editor of the New Books Network, the largest academic podcasting platform in the world. The trio discuss how the New Books Network came to be; how digital technologies open up new tools for academic work; changing media landscapes, including the recent bursting of a podcasting bubble; and the future of academic communication and publishing.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James Boyle, "The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

This conversation includes James Boyle, Duke University; Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, UPR-M; Héctor José Huyke, UPR-M, and Natalia Bustos, UPR-M.

This is the first of two episodes about The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español. The series is sponsored by the Encuentros descoloniales focal group at Instituto Nuevos Horizontes at UPRM, a group of scholars who consider how decolonial approaches can provide nuance in scientific knowledge.

This episode and the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes at the UPRM have been supported by the Mellon Foundation. The conversation is part of the “STEM to STEAM” project of the “Cornerstone” initiative, sponsored by the Teagle Foundation, which stresses the importance of integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences.

The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood is available online for free through the MIT website per the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael Tondre, "Oil" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Black gold. Liquid sunlight. Texas tea. Oil remains the ur-commodity of our global era, having been distilled from ancient algae and marine life to turn modernity's wheels. Wars are fought over it. Some communities are displaced by its extraction, so that others may reap its benefits. But despite its heated history, few will ever see oil on the ground. Shrouded within a labyrinth of oil fields, pipelines, and manufacturies, it tends to be known only through its magical effects: the thrill of the road, the euphoria of flight, and the metamorphic allure of everything from vinyl records to celluloid film and synthetic clothing.

In Oil (Bloomsbury, 2024), Dr. Michael Tondre shows how hydrocarbon became today's pre-eminent power. How did oil come to structure selfhood and social relations? And to what extent is oil not only a commercial product but a cultural one-something shaped by widely imagined dreams and desires? Amid a warming world unleashed by fossil fuels, oil appears as a rich resource for thinking about histories of globalization and technology no less than the energetic underpinnings of literature, film, and art.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Listening in the Afterlife of Data

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

If you walk into David Cecchetto‘s classroom, you might find people wearing audio devices that simulate hearing with a thousand-foot wide head. Or gadgets that swap their ears so that the left ear hears what the right should and vice versa. David is a media theorist who draws on his background as an artist/musician, to create what he calls “engagements,” strange sonic experiments that help him—and his students—understand the nature of our computer-driven lives.

In this episode, we feature an extended chat with David about his recent book, Listening in the Afterlife of Data (Duke University Press). It’s a book about the eternal impossibility of communication and the texture of that impossibility in our current computer-mediated age. David says we live in the afterlife of data, by which he means we know that our data-driven representations of the world don’t really capture the reality of our inner or outer lives, and we know that algorithms perpetuate injustices of all sorts—and yet, we still live our lives as if we do believe in the data. And this is where his engagements come in, the sonic experiments that confront the distortions and fallacies and textures of a data-driven life.

David Cecchetto is Professor of Critical Digital Theory in the Department of Humanities at York University in Toronto, Director of the Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, he’s President of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. He wrote the book Humanesis: Sound and Technological Posthumanism (2013) and he’s co-authored and edited several others.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Special Episode: Mike Secasas on the Question of the Human, and the Question of Technology, Live at the Bradley Study Center

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

This special episode features a discussion between Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and Michael Sacasas, author of The Convivial Society substack newsletter and Executive Director of the Christian Studies Center of Gainesville, Florida. In the first part, Sacasas gives a presentation - riffing on the title of Martin Heidegger’s famous essay, “The Question Concerning Technology” - on the question of the human, which may be more interesting than endless debates about the definition of “technology.” Then Vinsel gives his own presentation before the pair discuss the similarities and differences of their views. The episode includes a live Q&A with audience members. This episode was recorded as a live event at the Bradley Study Center, a Christian studies center at Virginia Tech. Special thanks to Bradley Study Center for making the event possible, especially to its Executive Director Mike Weaver.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elizabeth King and W. David Todd, "Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend" (Getty, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Miracles and Machines: A Sixteenth-Century Automaton and Its Legend (Getty Publications, 2023) tells the singular story of an uncanny, rare object at the cusp of art and science: a 450-year-old automaton known as “the monk.” The walking, gesticulating figure of a friar, in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, is among the earliest extant ancestors of the self-propelled robot. According to legend connected to the court of Philip II of Spain, the monk represents a portrait of Diego de Alcalá, a humble Franciscan lay brother whose holy corpse was said to be agent to the miraculous cure of Spain’s crown prince as he lay dying in 1562.

In tracking the origins of the monk and its legend, the authors visited archives, libraries, and museums across the United States and Europe, probing the paradox of a mechanical object performing an apparently spiritual act. They identified seven kindred automata from the same period, which, they argue, form a paradigmatic class of walking “prime movers,” unprecedented in their combination of visual and functional realism. While most of the literature on automata focuses on the Enlightenment, this enthralling narrative journeys back to the late Renaissance, when clockwork machinery was entirely new, foretelling the evolution of artificial life to come.

Elizabeth King, a sculptor and writer, is professor emerita of sculpture and extended media at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond. W. David Todd is associate curator emeritus and former conservator of timekeeping at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Lauren Fonto is a Master's student in the program Heritage and Cultural Sciences: Heritage Conservation at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is also a collections management intern in the public sector.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jesper Juul, "Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun.

The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But although it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, such as the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer (MIT Press, 2024), Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years.

First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for showcasing technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64's design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. Containing interviews with Commodore engineers as well as an insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James Malazita, "Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studies framework itself.

In this first scholarly book on the Unreal game engine, James Malazita explores one of the major contemporary game development platforms through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, revealing how Unreal produces, and is produced by, broader intersections of power. Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine (MIT Press, 2024) takes a novel critical platform studies approach, raising deeper questions: what are the material and cultural limits of platforms themselves? What is the relationship between the analyst and the platform of study, and how does that relationship in part determine what “counts” as the platform itself? Malazita also offers a forward-looking critique of the platform studies framework itself.

The Unreal platform serves as a kind of technical and political archive of the games industry, highlighting how the techniques and concerns of games have shifted and accreted over the past 30 years. Today, Unreal is also used in contexts far beyond games, including in public communication, biomedical research, civil engineering, and military simulation and training. The author's depth of technical analysis, combined with new archival findings, contributes to discussions of topics rarely covered in games studies (such as the politics of graphical rendering algorithms), as well as new readings of previously “closed” case studies (such as the engine's entanglement with the US military and American masculinity in America's Army). Culture, Malazita writes, is not “built into” software but emerges through human practices with code.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Titel kulturmagazin, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Ex Machina Tell Us About Human-AI Psychology

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 11 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and Ex Machina, Alex Garland’s 2014 sci fi movie, is a provocative examination of what an updated Turing test for a super-capable AI might look like, if the designer of the test was a megalomaniacal tech-mogul / genius. The movie, starring Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander, is a rich and often confounding text, which seems to posit a horrifying possibility: what if the real alignment problem is teaching AI the worst of humanity’s manipulative and instrumental traits?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fionna S. Cunningham, "Under the Nuclear Shadow: China's Information-Age Weapons in International Security" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 9 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

How can states use military force to achieve their political aims without triggering a catastrophic nuclear war? Among the states facing this dilemma of fighting limited wars, only China has given information-age weapons such a prominent role. While other countries have preferred the traditional options of threatening to use nuclear weapons or fielding capabilities for decisive conventional military victories, China has instead chosen to rely on offensive cyber operations, counter-space capabilities, and precision conventional missiles to coerce its adversaries.

In Under the Nuclear Shadow: China's Information-Age Weapons in International Security (Princeton UP, 2024), Fiona Cunningham examines this distinctive aspect of China’s post–Cold War deterrence strategy, developing an original theory of “strategic substitution.” When crises with the United States highlighted the inadequacy of China’s existing military capabilities, Cunningham argues, China pursued information-age weapons that promised to provide credible leverage against adversaries rapidly.

Drawing on hundreds of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with security experts in China, Cunningham provides a rare and candid glimpse from Beijing into the information-age technologies that are reshaping how states gain leverage in the twenty-first century. She offers unprecedented insights into China’s military modernization trajectory as she details the strengths and weaknesses of China’s strategic substitution approach. Under the Nuclear Shadow also looks ahead at the uncertain future of China’s strategic substitution approach and briefly explores too how other states might seize upon the promise of emerging technologies to address weaknesses in their own military strategies.

Our guest today is Fiona S. Cunningham, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why Teachers Turn to AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 7 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Sue Ollerhead. Dr. Ollerhead is currently a Senior Lecturer in Languages and Literacy Education and the Director of the Secondary Education Program at Macquarie University. Her expertise lies in English language and literacy learning and teaching in multicultural and multilingual education contexts. Her research interests include translanguaging, multilingual pedagogies, literacy across the curriculum and oracy development in schools.

Dr. Ollerhead is currently editor of TESOL in Context, the peer reviewed journal of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations. She serves on the executive board of the English as a Medium of Instruction Centre (EMI) at Macquarie University.

Brynn and Sue chat about an article that Sue has recently written for the Australian Association for Research in Education entitled “Teachers Truly Know Students and How They Learn. Does AI?”. They discuss the emergence of AI platforms like ChatGPT and how these platforms are affecting teacher training.

A wonderful companion read to this episode is Distinguished Ingrid Piller’s Can we escape the textocalypse? Academic publishing as community building.

If you liked this episode, check out more resources on technology and language: Will technology make language rights obsolete?; the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us; and Are language technologies counterproductive to learning?

If you enjoy the show, support us by subscribing to the Language on the Move Podcast on your podcast app of choice, leaving a 5-star review, and recommending the Language on the Move Podcast and our partner the New Books Network to your students, colleagues, and friends.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joshua Brinkman on American Farming Culture and the History of Technology

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 6 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Joshua Brinkman, Assistant Teaching Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at North Carolina State University, about his book, American Farming Culture and the History of Technology (Routledge, 2024). The book provides a fascinating exploration about how American farmers–contrary to their image as backwards and even anti-technology–have prided and put forward images of themselves as existing on the technological cutting-edge of modernity. Brinkman examines how different ideologies of farming have developed over time in the United States and how these ideologies have shaped the adoption of and ideas around new agricultural technologies. In addition to his academic work, Brinkman is also an accomplished saxophonist and jazz musician, and you can find recordings from two of his current bands, the Fabulous Nite-Life Boogie and Les Trois Chats, online.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jean Burgess and Nancy K. Baym, "Twitter: A Biography" (NYU Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 4 Jan 2025 09:00:00 +0000

As Twitter enters its own adolescence, both the users and the creators of this famous social media platform find themselves engaging with a tool that certainly could not have been imagined at its inception. In their engaging book Twitter: A Biography (NYU Press, 2020), Jean Burgess and Nancy K. Baym (@nancybaym) tell the fascinating and surprising story of how this platform developed from a quirky SMS tool for publicly sharing intimate details of personal life to a major source of late-breaking news, political activism, and even governmental communication. This story explores how many of Twitter's most ubiquitous and iconic conventions were not systematically rolled out from a centralized corporate strategy, but so often driven by users who continued to innovate within the limitations of the platform they had to democratically create the platform they desired. Yet this story highlights the tensions along the way as Twitter has adapted to new and unforeseen challenges, business models, and social consequences as the experiments of social media have become increasingly powerful, influential, and contested. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the wild and changing landscape of internet communication and communities.

Ryan David Shelton (@ryoldfashioned) is a social historian of British and American Protestantism and a PhD researcher at Queen’s University Belfast.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI: How We Got Here in Three Powerful Tales

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 26 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

This episode is based upon three readings:

Alan Turing’s Computing Machinery and Intelligence aka The Turing Test paper. Turing starts his paper by asking “can machines think?” before deciding that’s a meaningless question. Instead, he invents something he calls “the imitation game” - a text conversation where the player has to guess whether they are chatting with another person or with an AI. ChatGPT was such a bombshell because it easily and consistently passes this “Turing Test” by giving human-like responses to questions. Here’s the issue: the Turing Test is based upon AI deception, not thinking. Turing set out to ask Can Machines Think? and ended up showing how easily AI can deceive us.
Karel Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots. This is the first AI Takeover story. It’s a play written in 1920 about a factory manufacturing artificial persons. Čapek introduced the word Robot to the English language - it’s derived from robota, a Czech word meaning forced labor. Čapek’s robots are supposed to be the ultimate workers, free from distracting human needs and desires. Yet, they mysteriously start to glitch, gnashing their teeth, freezing up. When they are given guns and asked to fight humanity’s wars, they become super soldiers as well as perfect workers. Anyone who has seen Blade Runner, The Terminator, or Battlestar Galactica - all inspired by Čapek’s play - knows what happens next. Rossum’s Universal Robots is the original AI takeover story, as well as being a dead-on satire of twentieth century ideas like Fordism and nationalism.
Joanna Bryson’s Robots Should be Slaves. Bryson, a computer scientist, makes a provocative intervention into AI ethics. She argues that as AI becomes more advanced, and robots more lifelike, we are going to get dangerously confused: we’ll want to give robots rights that they cannot and should not have. Bryson argues that robots are owned by us and should be seen and used as property. She wants to avoid conflating the human and the mechanical, yet, by using the terminology of slavery, she introduces into the AI debate the very thing she seeks to deny - the concept of human rights.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matt Beane, "The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines" (HarperCollins, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

As part of our informal series on artificial intelligence, Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Matt Beane, Assistant Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, about his book The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in the Age of Intelligent Machines (HarperCollins, 2024).

Beane outlines the fascinating forms of research he did - both his own ethnographic work and reanalyzing the data of other ethnographers - to better understand how automating technologies are being adopted in organizational settings and how such adoption may threaten traditional mentor-mentee relationships through which junior workers learn crucial skills. Beane also discusses ways in which the worst negative skill-learning outcomes may be avoided and his own work trying to create new training systems to improve our current situation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ulises Ali Mejias and Nick Couldry, "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are grabbing our most basic natural resources--our data--exploiting our labor and connections, and repackaging our information to control our views, track our movements, record our conversations, and discriminate against us. These companies tell us this is for our own good, to build innovation and develop new technology. But in fact, every time we unthinkingly click "Accept" on a set of Terms and Conditions, we allow our most personal information to be kept indefinitely, repackaged by companies to control and exploit us for their own profit.

In Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back (The University of Chicago Press, 2024), Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry explain why postindustrial capitalism cannot be understood without colonialism, and why race is a critical factor in who benefits from data colonialism, just as it was for historic colonialism. In this searing, cutting-edge guide, Mejias and Couldry explore the concept of data colonialism, revealing how history can help us understand the emerging future--and how we can fight back.

Mention in this episode: Tierra Comun (English Version)

Ulises A. Mejias is professor of communication studies at the State University of New York at Oswego.

Nick Couldry is professor of media, communications, and social theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lindsay Weinberg, "Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Lindsay Weinberg evaluates how this latest era of tech solutions and systems in our schools impacts students' abilities to access opportunities and exercise autonomy on their campuses. Using historical and textual analysis of administrative discourses, university policies, conference proceedings, grant solicitations, news reports, tech industry marketing materials, and product demonstrations, Weinberg argues that these more recent transformations are best understood as part of a longer history of universities supporting the development of technologies that reproduce racial and economic injustice on their campuses and in their communities.

Mentioned in this episode is this piece that Dr. Weinberg wrote in Inside Higher Ed:

Lindsay Weinberg is a clinical assistant professor and the Director of the Tech Justice Lab in the John Martinson Honors College at Purdue University.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman, "Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie®" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 14 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The engaging story of Intellivision, an overlooked videogame system from the late 1970s and early 1980s whose fate was shaped by Mattel, Atari, and countless others who invented the gaming industry. Astrosmash, Snafu, Star Strike, Utopia—do these names sound familiar to you? No? Maybe? They were all videogames created for the Intellivision videogame system, sold by Mattel Electronics between 1979 and 1984. This system was Atari’s main rival during a key period when videogames were moving from the arcades into the home. In Intellivision: How a Videogame System Battled Atari and Almost Bankrupted Barbie® (MIT Press, 2024), Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman tell the fascinating inside story of this overlooked gaming system. Along the way, they also analyze Intellivision’s chips and code, games, marketing and business strategies, organizational and social history, and the cultural and economic context of the early US games industry from the mid-1970s to the great videogame industry crash of 1983. While many remember Atari, Intellivision has largely been forgotten. As such, Intellivision fills a crucial gap in videogame scholarship, telling the story of a console that sold millions and competed aggressively against Atari. Drawing on a wealth of data from both institutional and personal archives and over 150 interviews with programmers, engineers, executives, marketers, and designers, Boellstorff and Soderman examine the relationship between videogames and toys—an under-analyzed aspect of videogame history—and discuss the impact of home computing on the rise of videogames, the gendered implications of play and videogame design at Mattel, and the blurring of work and play in the early games industry.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design at the IU International University for Applied Science, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, hosts the German local radio show Replay Value and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Reem Hilu, "Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers (U Minnesota Press, 2024) shows how the widespread introduction of home computers in the 1980s was purposefully geared toward helping sustain heteronormative middle-class families by shaping relationships between users. Moving beyond the story of male-dominated computer culture, this book emphasizes the neglected history of the influence of women’s culture and feminist critique on the development of personal computing despite women’s underrepresentation in the industry.

Proposing the notion of “companionate computing,” Reem Hilu reimagines the spread of computers into American homes as the history of an interpersonal, romantic, and familial medium. She details the integration of computing into family relationships—from helping couples have better sex and offering thoughtful simulations of masculine seduction to animating cute robot companions and giving voice to dolls that could talk to lonely children—underscoring how these computer applications directly responded to the companionate needs of their users as a way to ease growing pressures on home life.

The Intimate Life of Computers is a vital contribution to feminist media history, highlighting how the emergence of personal computing dovetailed with changing gender roles and other social and cultural shifts. Eschewing the emphasis on technologies and institutions typically foregrounded in personal-computer histories, Hilu uncovers the surprising ways that domesticity and family life guided the earlier stages of our all-pervasive digital culture.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bug

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 7 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Marcello Vitali-Rosati tells us about bugs! A bug can be a small insect, an illness, a spy device, or a digital malfunction. The computer bug, the ghost in the machine, derives from an older engineering use of bug as mechanical failure, and the insect, in turn, derives from an earlier sense of bug as specter, an invisible and frightening ghost. Like philosophy itself, the computer bug stops our ordinary workflow and causes us to think, to question the very task we had set out to undertake.

Marcello’s new book, Éloge du bug: être libre à l’époque du numérique (Zones, La Découverte, Paris 2024), sings the praises of computer bugs. By stopping things from working as expected, the bug is a veritable Socratic demon: it enables the emergence of critical thinking and allows the multiplicity of thinking paradigms that characterizes philosophy. Instead of letting ourselves be seduced by a discourse which, promising to free us from all the material tasks of our lives, ends up enslaving us completely to a handful of companies, this book, with its praise of the bug, shows how to bring about a true critical spirit and a literacy capable of setting us free in our digital age. You can read the book online here!

Marcello Vitali-Rosati is a philosopher and specialist in digital publishing. He works as a professor in the Department of French Literatures at the University of Montreal, and holds the Canada Research Chair in Digital Textualities and the Chair of excellence in digital publishing at the Université de Rouen (France). Through the study and practice of code, he analyzes how algorithms, formats, software, and platforms redefine the notions of human, identity, knowledge, and literature. An active contributor to the theory of editorialization, he works on designing new forms of knowledge production and dissemination as well as innovative editorial workflows. He also works as an editor, publishes widely, and leads several digital humanities projects. You can read more about his work on his website, in English, French, or Italian.

The image for this episode shows a drawing of a moth on a purple and black patterned background. It was created by Saronik Bosu by manipulating public domain photograph of the circuitry of IBM 7030 and a drawing from a nineteenth century entomology textbook, also in public domain.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ken Wilcox, "The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice" (John Wiley & Sons, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 1 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice (Wiley, 2024) describes former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Ken Wilcox's firsthand challenges he encountered in four years “on the ground” trying to establish a joint venture between SVB and the Chinese government to fund local innovation design―and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to systematically sabotage the project and steal SVB's business model. This book provides actionable advice drawn from meticulous notes Wilcox took from interviews with people from all walks of Chinese life, including Party and non-Party members, the business elite, and domestic workers.

Describing a China he found fascinating and maddeningly complex, this book explores topics including:

Difficulties in transplanting SVB's model to China, from misunderstandings about titles and responsibilities to pitched battles over toilet design
Ethics and practices widely adopted by Chinese businesses today and why China must be met with realistic expectations
Wilcox's own honest missteps and the painfully learned lessons that came afterwards

Engrossing, enlightening, and entertaining, The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice is an essential cautionary tale and guidebook for anyone seeking to do business in or with China, and an essential first-person account for academics trying to understand China’s unique political economy and development trajectory.

Ken Wilcox was the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) from 2001 to 2011, then the CEO of SVB’s joint venture with Shanghai Pudong Development Bank (SPDB-SVB) in Shanghai until 2015, followed by four years as its Vice Chairman. He currently serves on the boards of the Asia Society of Northern California, the Asian Art Museum, and UC San Diego’s 21st Century China Center, as well as Columbia Lake Partners, a European venture-debt fund. He is on the Board of Advisors of the Fudan University School of Management in Shanghai and teaches as an Adjunct Professor at U.C. Berkeley.

Ken holds a PhD in German from Ohio State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is a former member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. He has given numerous speeches in both English and Chinese, published a variety of articles in the banking press, and recently wrote the management book “Leading Through Culture: How Real Leaders Create Cultures That Motivate People to Achieve Great Things” (Waterside Productions, 2020) and its accompanying workbook, “How About You?” (Waterside Productions, 2023). The father of two sons, he lives in San Francisco with his wife, Ruth, and several antique cars.

For more of Ken’s insights, follow his substack.

Interviewer Peter Lorentzen is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of San Francisco, a nonresident scholar at the UCSD 21st Century China Center, an alumnus of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions. His research focuses on the economics of information, incentives, and institutions, primarily as applied to the development and governance of China. He created the unique Master’s of Science in Applied Economics at the University of San Francisco, which teaches the conceptual frameworks and practical data analytics skills needed to succeed in the digital economy.

Lorentzen’s other NBN interviews relating to China’s tech sector include From Click to Boom, on the political economy of e-commerce in China, Trafficking Data, on how Chinese and American firms exploit user data, The Tao of Alibaba, on Alibaba’s business model and organizational culture, Surveillance State, on China’s digital surveillance, Prototype Nation, on the culture and politics of China’s innovation economy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fiona Smyth, "Pistols in St Paul's: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century" (Manchester UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

On a winter's night in 1951, shortly after Evensong, the interior of St Paul's Cathedral echoed with gunfire. This was no act of violence but a scientific demonstration of new techniques in acoustic measurement. It aimed to address a surprising question: could a building be a musical instrument?

Pistols in St Paul's: Science, Music, and Architecture in the Twentieth Century (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Fiona Smyth tells the fascinating story of the scientists, architects and musicians who set out to answer this question. Beginning at the turn of the century, their innovative experiments, which took place at sites ranging from Herbert Baker's Assembly Chamber in Delhi to Abbey Road Studios and a disused munitions factory near Perivale, would come to define the field of 'architectural acoustics'. They culminated in 1951 with the opening of the Royal Festival Hall - the first building to be designed for musical tone.

Deeply researched and richly illustrated, Pistols in St Paul's brings to light a scientific quest spanning half a century, one that demonstrates the power of international cooperation in the darkest of times.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robin Phillips and Joshua Pauling, "Are We All Cyborgs Now?: Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine" (Basilian Media, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

All We All Cyborgs Now? (Basilian Media, 2024) is a series of 32 short essay-length reflections on "Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine." Now is an excellent time to be thinking about our relationship with technologies, digital and non-digital alike. Written from a Christian perspective, this book engages prior works on technology, and offers its own useful perspective on key problems of the technological moment in which we find ourselves.

Aaron Weinacht is Professor of History at the University of Montana Western, in Dillon, MT.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Victor P. Petrov, "Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernisation, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain (MIT Press, 2023) examines the history of the computer industry in socialist Bulgaria. Combining the histories of technology and political economy with that of the Cold War and the modern Balkans, Balkan Cyberia challenges the notions of backwardness, the importance of small states in large geopolitical systems, the nature of the Iron Curtain, and the concept of 1989 as a convenient end-point in the history of communism. By drawing on Bulgarian, Indian, and Russian archives, as well as a range of interviews, this work reveals how a small Balkan state used its unique advantages to gain major markets, and in the process transform its political thinking. A local and a global story at the same time, the story of the Bulgarian computer offers unique insights into the history of the twentieth century information age.

Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lizhi Liu, "From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How do states build vital institutions for market development? Too often, governments confront technical or political barriers to providing the rule of law, contract enforcement, and loan access. In From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China (Princeton, 2024) Lizhi Liu suggests a digital solution: governments strategically outsourcing tasks of institutional development and enforcement to digital platforms—a process she calls “institutional outsourcing.”

China’s e-commerce boom showcases this digital path to development. In merely two decades, China built from scratch a two-trillion-dollar e-commerce market, with 800 million users, seventy million jobs, and nearly fifty percent of global online retail sales. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Liu argues, this market boom occurred because of weak government institutions, not despite them. Gaps in government institutions compelled e-commerce platforms to build powerful private institutions for contract enforcement, fraud detection, and dispute resolution. For a surprisingly long period, the authoritarian government acquiesced, endorsed, and even partnered with this private institutional building despite its disruptive nature. Drawing on a plethora of interviews, original surveys, proprietary data, and a field experiment, Liu shows that the resulting e-commerce boom had far-reaching effects on China.

Institutional outsourcing nonetheless harbors its own challenges. With inadequate regulation, platforms may abuse market power, while excessive regulation stifles institutional innovation. China’s regulatory oscillations toward platforms—from laissez-faire to crackdown and back to support—underscore the struggle to strike the right balance.

Lizhi Liu is assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where she is also a faculty affiliate of the Department of Government. Her work has been published by American Economic Review: Insights, Studies in Comparative International Development, Minnesota Law Review, Oxford University Press, and Princeton University Press. She was also listed as a Poets&Quants Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professor of 2021. She holds degrees in Political Science (PhD), Statistics (MS), and International Policy Studies (MA) from Stanford University and in International Relations (LLB) from Renmin University of China.

Lorentzen’s other NBN interviews relating to China’s tech sector include Trafficking Data, on how Chinese and American firms exploit user data, The Tao of Alibaba, on Alibaba’s business model and organizational culture, Surveillance State, on China’s digital surveillance, Prototype Nation, on the culture and politics of China’s innovation economy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tim Harris, "In Pursuit of Unicorns: A Journey Through 50 Years of Biotechnology" (Cold Springs Harbor, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Modern biotechnology--genetic engineering and cell manipulation--originated with the 1973 demonstration that genes from different organisms could be recombined and propagated in Escherichia coli. More than 50 years on, biotech is now a science that defines the 21st century.

While still a young scientist, Tim Harris committed himself to this emerging industry. Now an accomplished investigator who became an astute, seasoned, and successful biotech business executive, he has written a captivating memoir chronicling the birth and maturation of the industry that now touches everyone's lives. He combines accounts of scientific successes and failures with a personal story of ambition, challenge, and discovery. From the pioneering early days of gene cloning and monoclonal antibodies to the current cutting-edge advancements in cell therapy, gene editing, and personalized medicine, Harris provides a candidly honest insider's view of biotech's remarkable evolution and its profound impact on health care.

In Pursuit of Unicorns: A Journey Through 50 Years of Biotechnology (Cold Springs Harbor, 2024) is rich in detail about the accomplishments, struggles, and triumphs played out in the laboratories and boardrooms of the many different companies set up to exploit the technology, and the often colourful personalities involved. It is a fascinating blend of science, business, and ethics. Harris's reflections on the complexities that come with rapid technological progress, and the responsibilities of scientists in shaping the future, are thought-provoking and timely.

Tim Harris's story is one of passion, resilience, and an unwavering commitment from those involved to making a difference. His book is a compelling read for working scientists (especially early- and mid-career academic and industry researchers wondering how to apply their research to human health), biotechnology entrepreneurs and investors, and anyone fascinated by how profoundly biotechnology has changed our world and where it is leading us in the future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Libuse Hannah Veprek, "At the Edge of AI: Human Computation Systems and Their Intraverting Relations" (Transcript, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 8 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

How are human computation systems developed in the field of citizen science to achieve what neither humans nor computers can do alone?

In At the Edge of AI: Human Computation Systems and Their Intraverting Relations (Transcript, 2024), Libuse Hannah Veprek examines the imagination of these assemblages, their creation, and everyday negotiation in the interplay of various actors and play/science entanglements at the edge of AI. Focusing on their human-technology relations, this ethnographic study shows how these formations are marked by intraversions, as they change with technological advancements and the actors' goals, motivations, and practices. This work contributes to the constructive and critical ethnographic engagement with human-AI assemblages in the making.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jerry Brotton, "Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 5 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

North, south, east and west: almost all societies use the four cardinal directions to orientate themselves, to understand who they are by projecting where they are. For millennia, these four directions have been foundational to our travel, navigation and exploration and are central to the imaginative, moral and political geography of virtually every culture in the world. Yet they are far more subjective and various – sometimes contradictory – than we might realise.

Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024) by Dr. Jerry Brotton takes the reader on a journey of directional discovery. Dr. Brotton reveals why Hebrew culture privileges east; why Renaissance Europeans began drawing north at the top of their maps; why the early Islam revered the south; why the Aztecs used five colour-coded cardinal directions; and why no societies, primitive or modern, have ever orientated themselves westwards. He ends by reflecting on our digital age in which we, the little blue dot on the screen, have become the most important compass point. Throughout, Dr. Brotton shows that the directions reflect a human desire to create order and that they only have meaning, literally and metaphorically, depending on where you stand.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Salem Elzway and Jason Resnikoff on Automation

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 4 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Salem Elzway, postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities at University of Southern California, and Jason Resnikoff, assistant professor of contemporary history at the University of Groningen, about the history of automation. The discussion takes as its launching point an essay Elzway and Resnikoff published in the journal Labor titled, “Whence Automation?: The History (and Possible Futures) of a Concept.” The conversation approaches the history of automation and how to study it from a number of angles, including diving into Elzway’s and Resnikoff’s individual research agendas, as well as discussion of the nature of collaborative work in history, a field that can sometimes be all-too competitive and turf-like.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thinking Machines: The First AI Takeover Story

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 2 Nov 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and in the second of our series on Thinking Machines we consider Karel Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” (1920). Čapek’s play invented the word “robot” and pioneered the genre of the AI uprising. The play - a clear influence on works such as 2001, Blade Runner, The Terminator, and Battlestar Galactica – is a deep rumination on the boundary between the natural and artificial, the mechanical and the ineffable, and the sacred and the profane.

We react to this seminal work in popular thinking about artificial intelligence, written more than a century ago yet retaining deep resonance today.

Music by Aiva.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jamie Hakim, "Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Queer men's cultures of intimacy have long been sites of fierce contestation. Indeed, debates have raged for decades over issues such as monogamy, safer sex, sexual racism and gay marriage. The introduction of the smartphone in 2008 only intensified these debates whilst also raising a further set of questions which are explored in this open access book.

Through interviews with a diverse group of 43 queer men about their smartphone mediated intimacies, Digital Intimacies: Queer Men and Smartphones in Times of Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2024) reveals that queer men use their smartphones, not simply to arrange intimate encounters, but more specifically to gain a sense of control over the parts of their intimate lives that make them feel most vulnerable. For instance, some use messaging apps to gain a sense of control over intimate conversations that they feel too vulnerable to have in person. Others use the 'block' function on dating apps to feel in control of the racism and transphobia they are vulnerable to on these apps.

Digital Intimacies therefore illuminates not only hitherto underexplored aspects of queer men's cultures of intimacy but crucially also brings into view previously obscured cultural dynamics, gaining insight into the historical moments in which they occur.

Jamie Hakim is Lecturer at King's College London, UK.

James Cummings is Lecturer at the University of York, UK.

Qing Shen is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When We Prioritize Data and Metrics, What Happens to Human Connections?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s book is: The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton University Press, 2024), by Dr. Allison Pugh, which explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other is valuable and worth preserving. Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions—from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers—Dr. Pugh develops the concept of “connective labor,” a kind of work that relies on empathy, the spontaneity of human contact, and a mutual recognition of each other’s humanity. The threats to connective labor are not only those posed by advances in AI or apps; Dr. Pugh demonstrates how profit-driven campaigns imposing industrial logic shrink the time for workers to connect, enforce new priorities of data and metrics, and introduce standardized practices that hinder our ability to truly see each other. She concludes with profiles of organizations where connective labor thrives, offering practical steps for building a social architecture that works. Vividly illustrating how connective labor enriches the lives of individuals and binds our communities together, The Last Human Job is a compelling argument for us to recognize, value, and protect humane work in an increasingly automated and disconnected world.

Our guest is: Dr. Allison Pugh, who is Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and the 2024-25 Vice President of the American Sociological Association. She writes about how people forge connections and find meaning and dignity at work and at home. She is the author of The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity and Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture. Her writing has appeared in leading publications such as The New Yorker, the New York Times, and the New Republic.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greg Epstein, "Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Technology has surpassed religion as the central focus of our lives, from our dependence on smartphones to the way that tech has infused almost every aspect of our lives including our homes, our relationships, and even our bodies. Beyond these practical matters, Tech has become a religion with multiple sects who follow their own beliefs, practices, hierarchies, and visions of heaven and hell. There are zealous prophets and humble servants, messiahs and visions of a coming apocalypse.

In Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation (MIT Press, 2024), Harvard and MIT’s humanist chaplain Greg Epstein approaches Tech with the perspective of a critical thinker who is fascinated by technical innovation and also questions the worth of those advancements in human terms. He places the current faith in Tech in historical and personal context by examining the skeptics, mystics, heretics, and whistleblowers who embody the reform mindset he believes we desperately need.

Epstein argues for demanding that technology serve the development of human lives that are worth living rather than the extreme "up and to the right" transactional approach that is often rewarded in our current age of capitalism.

In this age of global technology worship, Greg Epstein presents the case for taking an agnostic view, one that can both appreciate the benefits of Tech and also remain skeptical about some of the more outlandish claims and seductive promises.

Author recommended reading:

Data Feminism by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein
Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

Hosted by Meghan Cochran

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ian Milligan, "Averting the Digital Dark Age: How Archivists, Librarians, and Technologists Built the Web a Memory" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In early 1996, the web was ephemeral. But by 2001, the internet was forever. How did websites transform from having a brief life to becoming long-lasting? Drawing on archival material from the Internet Archive and exclusive interviews, Ian Milligan's Averting the Digital Dark Age (John Hopkins University Press, December 2024) explores how Western society evolved from fearing a digital dark age to building the robust digital memory we rely on today.

By the mid-1990s, the specter of a "digital dark age" haunted libraries, portending a bleak future with no historical record that threatened cyber obsolescence, deletion, and apathy. People around the world worked to solve this impending problem. In San Francisco, technology entrepreneur Brewster Kahle launched his scrappy nonprofit, Internet Archive, filling tape drives with internet content. Elsewhere, in Washington, Canberra, Ottawa, and Stockholm, librarians developed innovative new programs to safeguard digital heritage.

Cataloging worries among librarians, technologists, futurists, and writers from WWII onward, through early practitioners, to an extended case study of how September 11 prompted institutions to preserve thousands of digital artifacts related to the attacks, Averting the Digital Dark Age explores how the web gained a long-lasting memory. By understanding this history, we can equip our society to better grapple with future internet shifts.

Ian Milligan is a professor of history at the University of Waterloo, where he also serves as an associate vice president in the Office of Research. Milligan is the author of The Transformation of Historical Research in the Digital Age and History in the Age of Abundance? How the Web Is Transforming Historical Research.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thinking Machines: The Turing Test at 75

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

It’s the UConn Popcast, and this is the first episode in our new series about artificial intelligence and popular culture. In this first episode, we revisit Alan Turing's seminal1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, in which he asks "Can machines think?"

In the paper, Turing proposes what became known as "The Turing test," a game of deception which, if a machine were to pass it, could be said to herald the onset of the age of machine intelligence. With large language models (LLMs) today easily passing this test, we react to the paper and examine the implications from a humanistic standpoint.

Did Turing successfully predict contemporary LLMs 75 years ago? What does it mean that Turing’s test was based not on the abilities of a machine per se, but rather on a machine’s ability to deceive humans? How have Turing’s ideas permeated our cultural and popular cultural ideas about AI? And why did Turing think ESP had a role to play in understanding AI.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thinking Machines: The Turing Test at 75

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bob Frishman, "Edward Duffield: Philadelphia Clockmaker, Citizen, Gentleman, 1730-1803" (APS Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Edward Duffield (1730–1803) was a colonial Philadelphia clockmaker, whose elegant brass, mahogany, and walnut timekeepers stand proudly in major American museums and collections. Duffield, unlike other leather-apron ‘mechanics,’ was born rich and owned a country estate, Benfield, and many more properties. He was deeply involved in civic and church affairs during crucial years in American history—his lifelong close friend, Benjamin Franklin, was staying at Duffield’s Benfield estate when Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams first discussed the Declaration of Independence. Sally, Franklin’s daughter, brought her family there for extended periods during the Revolution and Franklin’s wife, Deborah, was best friends for fifty years with Duffield’s mother-in-law. Duffield was even one of three executors of Franklin’s will.

In Edward Duffield: Philadelphia Clockmaker, Citizen, Gentleman, 1730-1803 (American Philosophical Society Press, 2024), Bob Frishman catalogs and describes seventy-one known Duffield clocks and instruments and reveals how, during the mid-eighteenth century, they largely were not fabricated from scratch by isolated individuals. He contends that Duffield and his fellow clockmakers were not furniture-makers; they were mechanical artisans whose complex metal machines rang the hours and steadily ticked inside wooden cases made by others. Existing books on Philadelphia clocks have focused on these artifacts as furniture, including their woodwork, cabinetmakers, and decorative aspects. However, Frishman, a professional horologist for nearly four decades, brings his vast expertise to bear on this first comprehensive study of Duffield’s life and work.

Far more than a treatise on pre-industrial horological timekeeping, this book tells the compelling stories of a man, a city, and an era, while deepening our appreciation for Duffield’s stately sentinels—often a colonial American family’s most valuable possession—and the times and places in which their makers lived.

Bob Frishman has professionally repaired nearly 8,000 timepieces and sold more than 1,700 vintage clocks and watches. As a scholar of horology, and assisted by a personal library of 900 books on the subject, he has published more than 100 articles and reviews in Maine Antique Digest, Watch & Clock Bulletin, and elsewhere. Learn more at his website.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anto Mohsin, "Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development" (U Wisconsin Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Electrifying Indonesia: Technology and Social Justice in National Development (U Wisconsin Press, 2023) tells the story of the entanglement of politics and technology during Indonesia's rapid post-World War II development. As a central part of its nation-building project, the Indonesian state sought to supply electricity to the entire country, bringing transformative socioeconomic benefits across its heterogeneous territories and populations. While this project was driven by nationalistic impulses, it was also motivated by a genuine interest in social justice. The entanglement of these two ideologies-nation-building and equity-shaped how electrification was carried out, including how the state chose the technologies it did. Private companies and electric cooperatives vied with the hegemonic state power company to participate in a monumental undertaking that would transform daily life for all Indonesians, especially rural citizens.

In this innovative volume, Anto Mohsin brings Indonesian studies together with science and technology studies to understand a crucial period in modern Indonesian history. He shows that attempts to illuminate the country were inseparable from the effort to maintain the new nation-state, chart its path to independence, and legitimize ruling regimes. In exchange for an often dramatically improved standard of living, people gave their votes, and their acquiescence, to the ruling government.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Meryl Alper, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University, about her recent book, Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2023). In addition to being a professor, Alper is also an educational researcher who has worked over the past 20 years to make inclusive and accessible learning products with media organizations such as Sesame Workshop, Nickelodeon, and PBS KIDS. Vinsel and Alper talk about disability studies, the nature of Alper’s empirical work, the arc of Alper’s career, including her future projects.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emotional Rescue

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What can sound technologies tell us about our relationship to media as a whole? This is one of the central questions in the research of Phantom Power‘s host, Mack Hagood. To find its answer, he studies devices that get little attention from media scholars: noise-cancelling headphones, white noise machines, apps that make nature sounds, tinnitus maskers–even musical pillows. The story these media tell is rather different from the standard narrative, in which media are conveyors of information and entertainment. In his book Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control, Mack argues that media are the way we control how–and how much–we let the world affect us.

On Phantom Power, Mack has always focused on presenting the ideas of other scholars and sound artists. However, during our summer break we thought we’d share a piece by Mack that appeared in another podcast, the audio edition of Real Life, a razor-sharp magazine on digital culture. “Emotional Rescue” begins with the odd example of pillow-based audio technology to make the point that media are really about something more intimate than information:

The cozy conflation of content and comfort… is not a recent digital development. Nor is it, I would argue, a quirky edge case of media use. In fact, this is what media are: tools for altering how the body feels and what it perceives, controlling our relationship to others and the world, enveloping ourselves, and even disappearing ourselves.

Misunderstanding the true nature of our media use isn’t merely of academic concern–it has had disastrous effects on our politics and social cohesion.

The article was written for the Real Life website, then subsequently dropped in podcast form. Writing for the eye is quite different from writing for the ear, but podcast producer and narrator Britney Gil is amazing at elucidating written prose for the listener. If you listen to nonfiction audiobooks and/or want to hear a great narrator reading insightful takes on digital life, be sure to subscribe to Real Life: Audio Edition.

“Emotional Rescue” by Mack Hagood.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marietje Schaake, "The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Over the past decades, under the cover of "innovation," technology companies have successfully resisted regulation and have even begun to seize power from governments themselves. Facial recognition firms track citizens for police surveillance. Cryptocurrency has wiped out the personal savings of millions and threatens the stability of the global financial system. Spyware companies sell digital intelligence tools to anyone who can afford them. This new reality--where unregulated technology has become a forceful instrument for autocrats around the world--is terrible news for democracies and citizens.

In The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (Princeton UP, 2024), Marietje Schaake offers a behind-the-scenes account of how technology companies crept into nearly every corner of our lives and our governments. She takes us beyond the headlines to high-stakes meetings with human rights defenders, business leaders, computer scientists, and politicians to show how technologies--from social media to artificial intelligence--have gone from being heralded as utopian to undermining the pillars of our democracies. To reverse this existential power imbalance, Schaake outlines game-changing solutions to empower elected officials and citizens alike. Democratic leaders can--and must--resist the influence of corporate lobbying and reinvent themselves as dynamic, flexible guardians of our digital world.

Drawing on her experiences in the halls of the European Parliament and among Silicon Valley insiders, Schaake offers a frightening look at our modern tech-obsessed world--and a clear-eyed view of how democracies can build a better future before it is too late.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Withington, "A History of Fireworks from: Their Origins to the Present Day" (Reaktion, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 8 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A History of Fireworks from: Their Origins to the Present Day (Reaktion, 2024) by John Withington illuminates the glittering history of fireworks, from their mysterious beginnings to the dazzling big-budget displays of today. It describes how they enthralled the world’s royal courts and became a sensation across the British Empire. There are stories of innovations like ‘living fireworks’, fiercely fought international competitions and the technology behind modern showpieces viewed by millions. Practitioners say fireworks are an art, and they have inspired artists from Shakespeare, Handel, Dickens and Whistler to Katy Perry. But Withington also covers fireworks’ practical uses – rescues at sea, attempts to control the weather – while not ignoring their dangers, accidents or efforts to make them safer.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pamela O. Long on the Long, Long, Long History of Technology

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 7 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with MacArthur “Genius Prize” winning historian Pamela Long about her long career writing about the history of ancient and Medieval technologies. The pair use Long’s forthcoming book, Technology in Mediterranean and European Lands, 600-1600 (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025), as a launching point but also cover her previous work, especially including Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome (University of Chicago Press, 2018), which, among other things, contains deep reflections on the history of maintenance. Long and Vinsel also discuss Long’s future projects, including a fascinating sounding study of the history of sumptuary laws - regulations on expenditures of luxury goods, including food, clothing, and personal items - and their connection to technological change. GET EXCITED!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marco Bastos, "Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation" (Bristol UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 6 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Dissecting 45 million tweets from the period that followed the Brexit referendum, Brexit, Tweeted: Polarization and Social Media Manipulation (Bristol University Press, 2024) by Dr. Marco Bastos presents an extensive analysis of social media manipulation.

The book examines emerging changes in partisan politics, nationalist and populist values, as well as broader societal changes that are feeding into polarisation and echo-chamber communication. It pulls the curtain back on the techniques employed to interfere with, and potentially distort, the public discussion. Making complex data accessible to non-technical audiences, this unique post-mortem of the Brexit referendum contributes to our understanding of social media disinformation in the UK and beyond.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeffrey Ding, "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition" (Princeton UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 5 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the moment of innovation—the eureka moment that sparks astonishing technological feats. In Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition (Princeton UP, 2024), Jeffrey Ding offers a different explanation of how technological revolutions affect competition among great powers. Rather than focusing on which state first introduced major innovations, he investigates why some states were more successful than others at adapting and embracing new technologies at scale. Drawing on historical case studies of past industrial revolutions as well as statistical analysis, Ding develops a theory that emphasizes institutional adaptations oriented around diffusing technological advances throughout the entire economy.

Examining Britain’s rise to preeminence in the First Industrial Revolution, America and Germany’s overtaking of Britain in the Second Industrial Revolution, and Japan’s challenge to America’s technological dominance in the Third Industrial Revolution (also known as the “information revolution”), Ding illuminates the pathway by which these technological revolutions influenced the global distribution of power and explores the generalizability of his theory beyond the given set of great powers. His findings bear directly on current concerns about how emerging technologies such as AI could influence the US-China power balance.

Our guest today is: Jeffrey Ding, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gerald Sim, "Screening Big Data: Films That Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 3 Oct 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy (Routledge, 2024) examines the influence of key films on public understanding of big data and the algorithmic systems that structure our digitally mediated lives.

From star-powered blockbusters to civic-minded documentaries positioned to facilitate weighty debates about artificial intelligence, these texts frame our discourse and mediate our relationship to technology. Above all, they impact society’s abilities to regulate AI and navigate big tech’s political and economic manoeuvres to achieve market dominance and regulatory capture.

Foregrounding data politics with close readings of key films like Moneyball, Minority Report, The Social Dilemma, and Coded Bias, in Screening Big Data by Dr. Gerald Sim reveals compelling ways in which films and tech industry–adjacent media define apprehension of AI. With the mid-2010s techlash in danger of fizzling out, Screening Big Data explores the relationship between this resistance and cultural infrastructure while highlighting the urgent need to refocus attention onto how technocentric media occupy the public imagination.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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, there is a defining game, a game that captured the zeitgeist and left a legacy for all games that followed. Through a series of entertaining, informative, and opinionated critical essays, author and tech journalist Jordan Minor investigates, in chronological order, the most innovative, genre-bending, and earth-shattering games from 1977 through 2022. Exploring development stories, critical reception, and legacy, Minor also looks at how gaming intersects with and eventually influences society at large while reveling in how uniquely and delightfully bizarre even the most famous games tend to be.

From portly plumbers to armor-clad space marines and the speedy rodents in between, 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) paints individual portraits that, as a whole, give readers a stronger appreciation for the vibrant variety and long-lasting impact of this fresh, exciting, and massively popular art form. Illustrated throughout with retro-inspired imagery and featuring contributions from dozens of leading industry voices, including New York Times bestselling author Jason Schreier, Max Scoville, Rebekah Valentine, Blessing Adeoye Jr., and Devindra Hardawar, this year-by-year anthology is a loving reflection on the world’s most popular art form.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Nahaufnahmen.ch, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Why do we assume that computers always get it right?

Today’s book is: Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World (MIT Press, 2019), in which Professor Meredith Broussard argues that our collective enthusiasm for applying computer technology to every aspect of life has resulted in a tremendous amount of poorly designed systems. We are so eager to do everything digitally—hiring, driving, paying bills, even choosing romantic partners—that we have stopped demanding that our technology actually work. Broussard, a software developer and journalist, reminds us that there are fundamental limits to what we can (and should) do with technology. With this book, she offers a guide to understanding the inner workings and outer limits of technology—and issues a warning that we should never assume that computers always get things right. Making a case against technochauvinism—the belief that technology is always the solution—Broussard argues that it's just not true that social problems would inevitably retreat before a digitally enabled Utopia. To prove her point, she undertakes a series of adventures in computer programming. She goes for an alarming ride in a driverless car, concluding “the cyborg future is not coming any time soon”; uses artificial intelligence to investigate why students can't pass standardized tests; deploys machine learning to predict which passengers survived the Titanic disaster; and attempts to repair the U.S. campaign finance system by building AI software. If we understand the limits of what we can do with technology, Broussard tells us, we can make better choices about what we should do with it to make the world better for everyone.

Our guest is: Professor Meredith Broussard, who is Associate Professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and Research Director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author of Artificial Unintelligence, and of More Than A Glitch. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Economist, and more. She appears in the 2020 documentary Coded Bias and serves on the advisory board for the Center for

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell (and why) and what happens to those we never tell.

For listeners who want to learn more:

More Than A Glitch

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ethical Machines: A Conversation with Reid Blackman

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Join us as we discuss Dr. Reid Blackman’s new book: Ethical Machines: Your Concise Guide to Totally Unbiased, Transparent, and Respectful AI (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022). We dive into the intricacies of developing AI and the intersection of ethics and innovation.

Reid Blackman, Ph.D., is the author of Ethical Machines, creator and host of the podcast “Ethical Machines,” and Founder and CEO of Virtue, a digital ethical risk consultancy. He is also an advisor to the Canadian government on their federal AI regulations, was a founding member of EY’s AI Advisory Board, and a Senior Advisor to the Deloitte AI Institute. His work, which includes advising and speaking to organizations including AWS, US Bank, the FBI, NASA, and the World Economic Forum, has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and Forbes. His written work appears in The Harvard Business Review and The New York Times. Prior to founding Virtue, Reid was a professor of philosophy at Colgate University and UNC-Chapel Hill. Learn

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions

Contributions to and/or sponsorship of guest does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily M. Bender on AI Hype

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Emily Bender, Professor of Linguistics, Director of the Masters of Science in Computational Linguistics program, and Director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at University of Washington, about her work on artificial intelligence criticism. Bender is also an adjunct professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School at UW; she is a member of the Tech Policy Lab, the Value Sensitive Design Lab, the Distributed AI Research Institute, and RAISE, or Responsibilities in AI Systems and Experiences; *AND*, with Alex Hanna, she is co-host of the Mystery AI Hype Theater podcast, which you should check out. Vinsel and Bender talk about the current AI bubble, what is driving it, and the technological potentials and limitations of this technology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gergely Gosztonyi, "Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media’s Content Regulation and Moderation Practices" (Springer, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 22 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In many countries, censorship, blocking of internet access and internet content for political purposes are still part of everyday life. Will filtering, blocking, and hacking replace scissors and black ink? This book argues that only a broader understanding of censorship can effectively protect freedom of expression.

For centuries, church and state controlled the content available to the public through political, moral and religious censorship. As technology evolved, the legal and political tools were refined, but the classic censorship system continued until the end of the 20th century. However, the myth of total freedom of communication and a law-free space that had been expected with the advent of the internet was soon challenged. The new rulers of the digital world, tech companies, emerged and gained enormous power over free speech and content management. All this happened alongside cautious regulation attempts on the part of various states, either by granting platforms near-totalimmunity (US) or by setting up new rules that were not fully developed (EU). China has established the Great Firewall and the Golden Shield as a third way.

In Censorship from Plato to Social Media: The Complexity of Social Media’s Content Regulation and Moderation Practices (Springer, 2023), particular attention is paid to developments since the 2010s, when Internet-related problems began to multiply. The state’s solutions have mostly pointed in one direction: towards greater control of platforms and the content they host. Similarities can be found in the US debates, the Chinese and Russian positions on internet sovereignty, and the new European digital regulations (DSA-DMA). The book addresses them all.

This book will be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the complexities of social media’s content regulation and moderation practices. It makes a valuable contribution to the field of freedom of expression and the internet, showing that, with different kinds of censorship, this essentially free form of communication has come – almost by default – under legal regulation and the original freedom may have been lost in too many countries in recent years.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, Robot!

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 Lantz.

Over the past nightmare year of the coronavirus, many of us have been hunkered down, trying to figure out how to pass the time with our families. Board game sales on Amazon were up 4,000% percent in March, when Americans began sheltering in place. And, of course, we’ve also spent way more time interacting with digital technology. These two things have come together in a weird and delightful way in Lantz’s game Hey Robot.

Created by Lantz’s family-owned company Everybody House Games, Hey Robot is a guessing game you play with a group of friends—including your voice assistant or smart speaker. The premise is simple: Make Google Home or Alexa utter the words written in a deck of cards. The questions it raises are complex: What are these digital entities that many of us interact with daily? How have web searches and voice-based computing changed the way we talk? And what does this reveal about language itself?

Hey Robot is available in a free online Quarantine Edition that you can play remotely with your friends. The board game edition is available on Amazon.

Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood.

Fake Cumbia music by Mack Hagood.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Trevor Boffone, "TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 8 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 concept of the musical itself?

TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age (Oxford UP, 2024) takes readers inside the world of TikTok Broadway, where fans create, expand, and canonize musical theatre through viral videos. It argues that TikTok democratizes musical theatre fan cultures and spaces, creating a new canon of musical theatre that reflects the preferences and passions of the fans. Readers will also see how TikTok Broadway influences other aspects of U.S. popular culture, from Broadway shows to TV adaptations.

From Six and Beetlejuice to Wicked and Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical, this book covers the most popular and innovative musical theatre content on TikTok. Author Trevor Boffone, a musical theatre scholar and a TikTok creator, shows how fans use the app to express their love for musical theatre, and how they collaborate to produce original works, such as Bridgerton: The Musical.

TikTok Broadway: Musical Theatre Fandom in the Digital Age shows how the app puts power in the hands of the fans.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andy Clarno et al., "Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 3 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Chicago is a city with extreme concentrations of racialized poverty and inequity, one that relies on an extensive network of repressive agencies to police the poor and suppress struggles for social justice. Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago (University of Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the role of local law enforcement, federal immigration authorities, and national security agencies in upholding the city’s highly unequal social order.

Collaboratively authored by the Policing in Chicago Research Group (PCRG), Imperial Policing was developed in dialogue with movements on the front lines of struggles against racist policing in Black, Latinx, and Arab/Muslim communities. The members of PCRG are Andy Clarno, Enrique Alvear Moreno, Janaé Bonsu-Love, Lydia Dana, Michael De Anda Muñiz, Ilā Ravichandran, and Haley Volpintesta. Imperial Policing analyzes the connections between three police “wars”—on crime, terror, and immigrants—focusing on the weaponization of data and the coordination between local and national agencies to suppress communities of color and undermine social movements. Topics include high-tech, data-based tools of policing; the racialized archetypes that ground the police wars; the manufacturing of criminals and terrorists; the subversion of sanctuary city protections; and abolitionist responses to policing, such as the Erase the Database campaign.

Andy Clarno is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Black Studies and coordinator of the Policing in Chicago Research Group at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research examines racism, capitalism, colonialism, and empire in the early 21st century, with a focus on racialized policing and struggles for social justice in contexts of extreme inequality.

Michael De Anda Muñiz is an Assistant Professor in the Latina/Latino Studies Department at San Francisco State University. His research interests include culture, art, community engagement, space, and resistance.

Ilā Ravichandran is an assistant professor of legal studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma. Dr. Ravichandran’s research interests include science, knowledge, technology, biopolitics, policing, surveillance, counterinsurgency, state, queerness & Black studies.

Timi Koyejo is a graduate student in urban studies at the University of Vienna. He has worked professionally as a researcher at the University of Chicago and as an urban policy advisor for the City of Chicago.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Malanowski and Nicholas R. Baima, "Why It's Ok to Be a Gamer" (Routledge, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 3 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 yourself reluctant to tell others this fact about yourself. After all, we are routinely warned that video games have the potential to cause addiction and violence. And when we aren’t being warned of their outright harms, we are told we should be doing something better with our time, like going outside, socializing with others, or reading a book. Playing video games is thus often seen at best as a waste of time, and at worst a source of violent tragedy.

Why It's Ok to Be a Gamer (Routledge, 2024) takes on the pervasive assumption that playing video games is a childish and time-wasting hobby, and a potentially addictive and dangerous one at that. It argues instead that there are many ways in which gaming can help us flourish, for example by: developing genuine friendships and other meaningful relationships with others, helping us cultivate a virtuous personal character, giving us a unique aesthetic experience, providing us with psychological benefits, and just plain helping us relax and enjoy ourselves. Video games are not just for those with no life; on the contrary, they can help contribute to a rich and meaningful life.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Nahaufnahmen.ch, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Henry H. Work, "Wood, Whiskey and Wine: A History of Barrels"(Reaktion Books, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 1 Sep 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 over two thousand years they’ve been used to store, transport and age an incredibly diverse array of provisions around the globe. In this comprehensive and wide-ranging book titled Wood, Whiskey and Wine: A History of Barrels (Reaktion, 2024), now available in paperback, Henry H. Work tells the intriguing story of the significant and ever-evolving role wooden barrels have played during the last two millennia.

Offering a new way of thinking about one of the most enduring and successful products in history, Wood, Whiskey and Wine is a must-read for everyone from technology and history buffs to wine and whiskey aficionados.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Revolutionary Stagecraft: Theater, Technology, and Politics in Modern China (University of Michigan Press, 2024) offers a fascinating approach to modern Chinese theater history by placing the stage at the center of the story. Combining vivid readings of plays with technical manuals and how-to guides, Tarryn Li-Min Chun charts how stage technology changed from the 1920s to the 1980s, showing how Chinese theater artists mobilized staging, lighting, and props to convey different meanings, including political revolution, nationalist nation-building, grassroots ingenuity, and the triumph of science. Throughout, Revolutionary Stagecraft demonstrates how theater, technology, and politics were deeply intertwined in modern China, and how Chinese theater artists manipulated the materiality of stagecraft for their own means.

Revolutionary Stagecraft should be of interest to those who are familiar with Chinese history, but also those who are interested in global theater, material culture, and the history of technology, as well as anyone who wants to know just how difficult it is to make fog appear on the stage (for the answer, see Chapter 2). Written in a clear and accessible way, Revolutionary Stagecraft is available both in print and as an Open Access ebook.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John V. Pavlik, "Journalism and the Metaverse" (Anthem Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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, is likely to fuel even further disruption in journalism. Digital platforms and journalism enterprises are already investing substantial resources into the Metaverse, or its likely components of artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality. Although research shows most of the public has little knowledge of the Metaverse, many are keenly interested in what it or its components may bring.

Journalism and the Metaverse (Anthem Press, 2024) by Dr. John Pavlik critically examines the nature of the Metaverse and its implications for journalism. In particular, the book will examine how the advance of a broadband, interactive and immersive Internet called the Metaverse may change the content and format of news, the nature of journalistic work, who or what is a journalist, the nature and structure of the new industry and how it is funded, as well as the fundamental role of journalism in a digital society.

In particular, this book builds on a vision of the Metaverse as an immersive and interactive virtual world, a key development in the next generation of the broadband, publicly accessible Internet. Broadband means high-speed, high-bandwidth Internet connectivity, especially wirelessly. Immersive refers to enveloping, 3D forms of media and communication. Today, we often see immersive media in the form of augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) or other forms of what are labeled extended Reality (XR). Fueled by artificial intelligence, these forms are three dimensional (3D), they have depth and they surround the user in a 360 virtual world visually and aurally (and potentially via other senses, including the haptic). Interactive means both user-to-user engagement (e.g., social media) as well as an exchange between the user and the enveloping content experience of a virtual world. This book examines the implications of the Metaverse for journalism in four broad domains, including content, how journalists work, structural and systemic considerations, and user and public engagement with news.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Human Advantage: A Conversation with Jay Richards

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 (Forum, 2019). Richards wrote this book during a time when automation and technology were beginning to redefine the boundaries of human work and creativity. His core argument is that, despite the rise of machines, there are certain uniquely human qualities—such as creativity, moral judgment, and entrepreneurial spirit—that cannot be replicated by technology. These traits, he suggests, are what give us a distinct edge in the face of automation.

As we look at today's world, where artificial intelligence and machine learning have advanced at an unprecedented pace, we must ask: Do Richards' ideas still hold true? In an era where AI can perform tasks once thought to be the exclusive domain of humans, from creative endeavors to complex decision-making, is there still a clear-cut human advantage? Richards' book offers a lens through which to examine these questions, urging us to consider how we can harness our inherent strengths to adapt and thrive in this new landscape.

In our conversation, we dive deep into these questions, exploring the relevance of The Human Advantage in today's rapidly evolving technological environment. How can we, as individuals and as a society, ensure that we maintain and even enhance our human edge? What role do creativity, ethics, and entrepreneurship play in a world increasingly driven by algorithms and automation? This episode offers valuable insights for anyone grappling with the implications of modern technology on our work, lives, and future.

Jay Richards is an American analytical philosopher who focuses on the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. He is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in Heritage’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation

Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Directions of Peer Review in Software Engineering

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Listen to this interview of Bram Adams, Professor at the School of Computing, Queen's University, Canada. We talk about current developments in peer review, as it is practised in software engineering research.

Bram Adams : "As an editor, one thing you want to see in a review is a summary that clearly says, 'Okay, my overall scoring is this, and my reasons for that are (a) these few negative points but also (b) these few positive points.' But that, in my experience, is missing from reviews much more often than before. Now it is common for editors to get very long and detailed reviews — very well done, in fact — but the major turning-point-reasons for the reviewer’s final recommendation are really spread all throughout the review. And the problem here is that the editor is now put in the difficult position of having to sift through and to locate and in the end really interpret so that those reasons can be made clear to the authors but also to the presiding editor too.”

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cyrus Mody on the Importance of Square (as in NOT COOL) Scientists and Engineers

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Cyrus Mody, Professor in the History of Science, Technology, and Innovation and Director of the STS Program at Maastricht University, about his book, The Squares: US Physical and Engineering Scientists in the Long 1970s (MIT Press, 2022). Many narratives about contemporary technologies, especially digital computing and the Internet, focus on the influences of 1960s counter-cultures. In _The Squares_, Mody takes the opposite approach and asks how square, non-counter-cultural scientists and engineers reacted to their changing environments in the 1970s. Vinsel and Mody also talk about what this story may suggest about current efforts to refocus STEM education on “values.” The pair also discuss how, over the course of his career, Mody has continually used a set of historical actors he knows a great deal about to examine different historical themes and questions. Finally, they discuss Mody’s current projects and where he is headed.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Phil Haun, "Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War: Explaining Effectiveness in Modern Air Warfare" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Tactical Air Power and the Vietnam War: Explaining Effectiveness in Modern Air Warfare (Cambridge UP, 2023) introduces a much-needed theory of tactical air power to explain air power effectiveness in modern warfare with a particular focus on the Vietnam War as the first and largest modern air war. Phil Haun shows how in the Rolling Thunder, Commando Hunt, and Linebacker air campaigns, independently air power repeatedly failed to achieve US military and political objectives. In contrast, air forces in combined arms operations succeeded more often than not. In addition to predicting how armies will react to a lethal air threat, he identifies operational factors of air superiority, air-to-ground capabilities, and friendly ground force capabilities, along with environmental factors of weather, lighting, geography and terrain, and cover and concealment in order to explain air power effectiveness. The book concludes with analysis of modern air warfare since Vietnam along with an assessment of tactical air power relevance now and for the future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Craig Gent, "Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work" (Verso, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Across the world, algorithms are changing the nature of work. Nowhere is this clearer than in the logistics and distribution sectors, where workers are instructed, tracked and monitored by increasingly dystopian management technologies.

In Cyberboss: The Rise of Algorithmic Management and the New Struggle for Control at Work (Verso, 2024), Craig Gent takes us into workplaces where algorithms rule to excavate the politics behind the newest form of managerial power. Combining worker testimony and original research on companies such as Amazon, Uber, and Deliveroo, the cutting edge of algorithmic management technology, this book reveals the sometimes unexpected effects these new techniques have on work, workers and managers. Gent advances an alternative politics of resistance in the face of digital control.

Louisa Hann attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester in 2021, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew Denning, "Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa" (Cornell UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 7 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Automotive Empire: How Cars and Roads Fueled European Colonialism in Africa (Cornell University Press, 2024), Dr. Andrew Denning uncovers how roads and vehicles began to transform colonial societies across Africa but rarely in the manner Europeans expected. Like seafaring ships and railroads, automobiles and roads were more than a mode of transport—they organised colonial spaces and structured the political, economic, and social relations of empire, both within African colonies and between colonies and the European metropole.

European officials in French, Italian, British, German, Belgian, and Portuguese territories in Africa shared a common challenge—the transport problem. While they imagined that roads would radiate commerce and political hegemony by collapsing space, the pressures of constructing and maintaining roads rendered colonial administration thin, ineffective, and capricious. Automotive empire emerged as the European solution to the transport problem, but revealed weakness as much as it extended power.

As Automotive Empire reveals, motor vehicles and roads seemed the ideal solution to the colonial transport problem. They were cheaper and quicker to construct than railroads, overcame the environmental limitations of rivers, and did not depend on the recruitment and supervision of African porters. At this pivotal moment of African colonialism, when European powers transitioned from claiming territories to administering and exploiting them, automotive empire defined colonial states and societies, along with the brutal and capricious nature of European colonialism itself.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark Walker, "Hitler's Atomic Bomb: History, Legend, and the Twin Legacies of Auschwitz and Hiroshima" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 5 Aug 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Who were the German scientists who worked on atomic bombs during World War II for Hitler's regime? How did they justify themselves afterwards?

Examining the global influence of the German uranium project and postwar reactions to the scientists involved, Mark Walker explores the narratives surrounding 'Hitler's bomb'. The global impacts of this project were cataclysmic. Credible reports of German developments spurred the American Manhattan Project, the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in turn the Soviet efforts. After the war these scientists' work was overshadowed by the twin shocks of Auschwitz and Hiroshima.

Hitler's Atomic Bomb: History, Legend, and the Twin Legacies of Auschwitz and Hiroshima (Cambridge UP, 2024) sheds light on the postwar criticism and subsequent rehabilitation of the German scientists, including the controversial legend of Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker's visit to occupied Copenhagen in 1941. This scientifically accurate but non-technical history examines the impact of German efforts to harness nuclear fission, and the surrounding debates and legends.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tim Sweijs and Jeffrey H. Michaels, "Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

War in the 21st century will remain a chameleon that takes on different forms and guises. Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War (Oxford University Press, 2024) edited by Tim Sweijs and Jeffrey H. Michaels offers the first comprehensive update and revision of ideas about the future of war since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It argues that the war has fundamentally shifted our perspective on the nature and character of future war, but also cautions against marginalising many other parallel trends, types of war, and ways of waging them.

World-renowned international experts from the War Studies field consider the impact of the war in Ukraine on the broader social phenomenon of war: they analyse visions of future war; examine the impact of technological innovation on its conduct; assess our ability to anticipate its future; and consider lessons learned for leaders, soldiers, strategists, scholars and concerned citizens.

Beyond Ukraine features contributions from Azar Gat, Beatrice Heuser, Antulio Echevarria, Audrey Cronin, T.X. Hammes, Kenneth Payne, Frank Hoffman, David Betz, Jan Willem Honig, and many other pre-eminent thinkers on the past, present and future of war—including an afterword by the late Christopher Coker.

Tim Sweijs is the Director of Research at The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Netherlands’ War Studies Research Centre of the Netherlands Defence Academy.

Jeffrey H. Michaels PhD is the IEN Senior Fellow in American Foreign Policy and International Security at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Thomas Zeller, "Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What we see through our windshields reflects ideas about our national identity, consumerism, and infrastructure.

For better or worse, windshields have become a major frame for viewing the nonhuman world. The view from the road is one of the main ways in which we experience our environments. These vistas are the result of deliberate historical forces, and humans have shaped them as they simultaneously sought to be transformed by them. In Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022), Thomas Zeller explores how what we see while driving reflects how we view our societies and ourselves, the role that consumerism plays in our infrastructure, and ideas about reshaping the environment in the twentieth century.

Zeller breaks new ground by comparing the driving experience and the history of landscaped roads in the United States and Germany, two major automotive countries. He focuses specifically on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the United States and the German Alpine Road as case studies. When the automobile was still young, an early twentieth-century group of designers―landscape architects, civil engineers, and planners―sought to build scenic infrastructures, or roads that would immerse drivers in the landscapes that they were traversing. As more Americans and Europeans owned cars and drove them, however, they became less interested in enchanted views; safety became more important than beauty.

Clashes between designers and drivers resulted in different visions of landscapes made for automobiles. As strange as it may seem to twenty-first-century readers, many professionals in the early twentieth century envisioned cars and roads, if properly managed, as saviors of the environment. Consuming Landscapes illustrates how the meaning of infrastructures changed as a result of use and consumption. Such changes indicate a deep ambivalence toward the automobile and roads, prompting the question: can cars and roads bring us closer to nature while deeply altering it at the same time?”

Eric Grube is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Boston College. He also received his PhD from Boston College in the summer of 2022. He studies modern German and Austrian history, with a special interest in right-wing paramilitary organizations across interwar Bavaria and Austria. His publications include:

"Making Austria German Again: Austrofascist ‘Home Guards’ against ‘Austrian Legionaries’, 1933-1934," Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies, 2024
"Borderland Brothers: Austrofascist Competition and Cooperation with National Socialists, 1936–1938," Journal of Austrian Studies, 2023, Winner of Austrian Studies Association’s Max Kade Prize, 2024
"Casualties of War? Refining the Civilian-Military Dichotomy in World War I", Madison Historical Review, 2019
"Racist Limitations on Violence: The Nazi Occupation of Denmark", Essays in History, 2017.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paula Bialski on Middletech, Software Work, and the Culture of Good Enough

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with Paula Bialski, an Associate Professor for Digital Sociology at the University of St. Gallen in St. Gallen, Switzerland, about her recent book, Middle Tech: Software Work and the Culture of Good Enough (Princeton UP, 2024). The pair talk about the art of ethnographic study of software work, and how, maybe, our world could do with a healthy dose of good enough-ness. They also scheme about some potential collaborations here on Peoples & Things, which you should definitely keep an eye out for. (You should also check out Paula’s folk pop group, Paula & Karol, whose music was greatly enjoyed while working on this episode.)

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carl Öhman, "The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 what about our afterlives? Thanks to the digital trails that we leave behind, our identities can now be reconstructed after our death. In fact, AI technology is already enabling us to “interact” with the departed. Sooner than we think, the dead will outnumber the living on Facebook. In this thought-provoking book, Carl Öhman explores the increasingly urgent question of what we should do with all this data and whether our digital afterlives are really our own—and if not, who should have the right to decide what happens to our data.

The stakes could hardly be higher. In the next thirty years alone, about two billion people will die. Those of us who remain will inherit the digital remains of an entire generation of humanity—the first digital citizens. Whoever ends up controlling these archives will also effectively control future access to our collective digital past, and this power will have vast political consequences. The fate of our digital remains should be of concern to everyone—past, present, and future. Rising to these challenges, Öhman explains, will require a collective reshaping of our economic and technical systems to reflect more than just the monetary value of digital remains.

As we stand before a period of deep civilizational change, The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care (U Chicago Press, 2024) will be an essential guide to understanding why and how we as a human race must gain control of our collective digital past—before it is too late.

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student and law student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI and Music: The Future is Here (featuring "There I Ruined It")

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 Future of Music. The panel featured Dr. Mitchell Green, Professor of Philosophy, University of Connecticut; Dustin Ballard, a musician and creator of the social media channel “There I Ruined It”; and Dr. Aaron Dial, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Humanities and Technoscience Lab at Purdue University.

The conversation addressed AI music creation, production, composition, aesthetics, trends, copyright issues, and algorithms.

The panel was moderated by Professor Jeffrey Ogbar, Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music and Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.

Timestamps:

Mitchell Green: 7:00-23:40
Aaron Dial: 23:45-43:55
Dustin Ballard: 44:02-54:32

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert, "The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance" (MIT Press, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 used by other people in other times and places? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, authors Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert introduce their new book and talk about how we can rethink our relationship with data and stay informed to make better decisions in the face of technological uncertainty.

In their latest book, The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in The Age of Algorithmic Surveillance (MIT Press, 2024), Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert explore the many unpredictable and often surprising ways in which data surveillance, AI, and the constant presence of algorithms impact our culture and society in the age of global networks.

The book focuses primarily on the long-term consequences of humanity's recent rush toward digitizing, storing, and analyzing every piece of data about ourselves and the world we live in. The authors advocate for “slow fixes” regarding our relationship to data, such as creating new laws and regulations, ethics and aesthetics, and models of production for our datafied society.

Aram Sinnreich is an author, professor, and musician. He is Chair of Communication Studies at American University. His books include Mashed Up, The Piracy Crusade, The Essential Guide to Intellectual Property, and A Second Chance for Yesterday (published as R. A. Sinn).

Jesse Gilbert is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersection of visual art, sound, and software design at his firm Dark Matter Media. He was the founding Chair of the Media Technology department at Woodbury University, and he has taught interactive software design at both CalArts and UC San Diego.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Shannon Vallor, "The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking" (Oxford UP, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 destroy us or become our overlords.

In The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford UP), Shannon Vallor argues that the actual, and very alarming, existential risk of AI that we face right now is quite different. Because some AI technologies, such as ChatGPT or other large language models, can closely mimic the outputs of an understanding mind without having actual understanding, the technology can encourage us to surrender the activities of thinking and reasoning. This poses the risk of diminishing our ability to respond to challenges and to imagine and bring about different futures. In her compelling book, Vallor, who holds the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh Futures Institute, critically examines AI Doomers and Long-termism, the nature of AI in relation to human intelligence, and the technology industry's hand in diverting our attention from the serious risks we face.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 6 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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, the London and North West Railway transported 325,000 miles of barbed wire and over twelve million pairs of army boots. At the end of the twentieth century, Indian Railways sold 4.5 billion tickets annually.

In A World History of Rail: From the Steam Regime to Today (Amberley Publishing, 2023), Jeremy Black examines how rail transformed the world. While always shaped by commercial interests, the role of the railway was (and is) strategic in the broadest sense: like Roman roads and Chinese canals, it helped develop the economic links that sustained and strengthened the major powers. For example, the railway was fundamental in integrating the frontiers of settlement with the world economy, in the spread of cultivation and ranching, and in the exploitation of mining opportunities. Rail expanded the 'logistical space' of most states. To give one modern example of the political importance of rail, Ukraine's railway is on the 1.52 metre gauge, rather than the 1.435 metre one used in Poland and most of Europe. In 2022, Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine's Prime Minister, declared that the railways there would be rebuilt to the European gauge. This enhanced capability would counter the Russian ability to blockade Ukraine's Black Sea ports, notably Odessa. The plan was not endorsed by the Kremlin...

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 5 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What does an art history of Instagram look like? Appreciation Post: Towards an Art History of Instagram (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Tara Ward reveals how Instagram shifts long-established ways of interacting with images. Dr. Ward argues Instagram is a structure of the visual, which includes not just the process of looking, but what can be seen and by whom. She examines features of Instagram use, including the effect of scrolling through images on a phone, the skill involved in taking an “Instagram-worthy” picture, and the desires created by following influencers, to explain how the constraints imposed by Instagram limit the selves that can be displayed on it. The proliferation of technical knowledge, especially among younger women, revitalises on Instagram the myth of the masculine genius and a corresponding reinvigoration of a masculine audience for art.

Dr. Ward prompts scholars of art history, gender studies, and media studies to attend to Instagram as a site of visual expression and social consequence. Through its insightful comparative analysis and acute close reading, Appreciation Post argues for art history’s value in understanding the contemporary world and the visual nature of identity today.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 4 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The latest developments in robotics and artificial intelligence and a preview of the coming decades, based on research and interviews with the world's foremost experts. If there’s one universal trait among humans, it’s our social nature. The craving to connect is universal, compelling, and frequently irresistible.

This concept is central to Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding on to Our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots (St. Martin's Press, 2024). Socially interactive robots will soon transform friendship, work, home life, love, warfare, education, and nearly every nook and cranny of modern life. This book is an exploration of how we, the most gregarious creatures in the food chain, could be changed by social robots. On the other hand, it considers how we will remain the same, and asks how human nature will express itself when confronted by a new class of beings created in our own image. Drawing upon recent research in the development of social robots, including how people react to them, how in our minds the boundaries between the real and the unreal are routinely blurred when we interact with them, and how their feigned emotions evoke our real ones, science writer Eve Herold takes readers through the gamut of what it will be like to live with social robots and still hold on to our humanity. This is the perfect book for anyone interested in the latest developments in social robots and the intersection of human nature and artificial intelligence and robotics, and what it means for our future.

Sophia the Robot Tries to Convince the Experts

Eve Herold is an award-winning science writer and consultant in the scientific and medical nonprofit space. A longtime communications and policy executive for scientific organizations, she currently serves as Director of Policy Research and Education for the Healthspan Action Coalition.

Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 2 Jul 2024 08:00:00 +0000

We commonly think of trolls as anonymous online pranksters who hide behind clever avatars and screen names. In Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Oxford UP, 2024), Jason Hannan reveals how the trolls have emerged from the cave and now walk in the clear light of day. Once limited to the darker corners of the internet, trolls have since gone mainstream, invading our politics and eroding our civic culture. Trolls are changing the norms of democratic politics and shaping how we communicate in the public sphere. Adding a twist to Neil Postman's classic thesis, this book argues that we are not so much amusing as trolling ourselves to death. But how did this come to be? Is this transformation attributable solely to digital technology? Or are there deeper political, economic, and cultural roots?

This book moves beyond the familiar picture of trolls by recasting trolling in a broader historical light. It shows how trolling is the logical expression of widespread alienation, cynicism, and paranoia deeply rooted in a culture of possessive individualism. Drawing from Postman, Alasdair MacIntyre, Karl Marx, and Hannah Arendt, this book explores the disturbing rise of political unreason in the form of mass trolling. It explains the proliferation of disinformation, conspiracy theory, "cancel culture," and public shaming. Taking inspiration from G. F. W. Hegel, Paulo F reire, and bell hooks, this book makes a case for building a spirit of trust to counter the culture of mass distrust that feeds the epidemic of political trolling.

Dr. Jason Hannan is Professor in the Department of Rhetoric, Writing, and Communications at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Trolling Ourselves to Death: Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Oxford University Press, 2023) and the editor of Meatsplaining: The Animal Agriculture Industry and the Rhetoric of Denial (Sydney University Press, 2020). His current book project is Reactionary Speech: Conservatism and the Rhetoric of Denial.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Living with Digital Surveillance in China

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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-encompassing reality of life in China? What mental tactics do they apply to dissociate themselves from surveillance? Ariane Ollier-Malaterre explores these questions in her book Living with Digital Surveillance in China (Routledge, 2023).

Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Professor of Management and Canada Research Chair on Digital Regulation at Work and in Life at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada talks with Joanne Kaui about her research that investigates Chinese citizens’ imaginaries about surveillance and privacy from within the Chinese socio-political system.

Based on in-depth qualitative research interviews, detailed diary notes, and extensive documentation, Ariane Ollier-Malaterre attempts to ‘de-Westernise’ the internet and surveillance literature. In the book, she shows how the research participants weave a cohesive system of anguishing narratives on China’s moral shortcomings and redeeming narratives on the government and technology as civilizing forces.

Although many participants cast digital surveillance as indispensable in China, their misgivings, objections, and the mental tactics they employ to dissociate themselves from surveillance convey the mental and emotional weight associated with such surveillance exposure.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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

The ability to make reliable predictions based on robust and replicable methods is a defining feature of the scientific endeavor, allowing engineers to determine whether a building will stand up or where a cannonball will strike. Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools (MIT Press, 2024), which bridges history and philosophy, uncovers the dynamic history of prediction in science and engineering over four centuries. Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard identify four different cultures, or modes, of prediction in the history of science and engineering: rational, empirical, iterative-numerical, and exploratory-iterative. They show how all four develop together and interact with one another while emphasizing that mathematization is not a single unitary process but one that has taken many forms.

The story is not one of the triumph of abstract mathematics or technology but of how different modes of prediction, complementary concepts of mathematization, and technology coevolved, building what the authors call “cultures of prediction.” The first part of the book examines prediction from early modernity up to the computer age. The second part probes computer-related cultures of prediction, which focus on making things and testing their performance, often in computer simulations. This new orientation challenges basic tenets of the philosophy of science, in which scientific theories and models are predominantly seen as explanatory rather than predictive. It also influences the types of research projects that scientists and engineers undertake, as well as which ones receive support from funding agencies.

Nikki Stevens, PhD is a critical technology researcher and software engineer. Find more of their work here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 21 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography (Duke UP, 2024) Siobhan Angus tells the history of photography through the minerals upon which the medium depends. Challenging the emphasis on immateriality in discourses on photography, Angus focuses on the inextricable links between image-making and resource extraction, revealing how the mining of bitumen, silver, platinum, iron, uranium, and rare earth elements is a precondition of photography. Through a materials-driven analysis of visual culture, she illustrates histories of colonization, labor, and environmental degradation to expose the ways in which photography is enmeshed within and enables global extractive capitalism.

This conversation discusses the meta-narrative and performative aspects of some of the photographs shown in the text, dives into some of the stories and examples from Ann Atkin's cyanotypes of the 1800s to Warren Cariou's contemporary bitumin prints, and asks what ethical photography looks like given the resource extraction required.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 look for elusive serial killers? The answers lie in the crucial connection between maps and maths.

In Mapmatics: How We Navigate the World Through Numbers (Pan Macmillan, 2024), Dr Paulina Rowinska embarks on a fascinating journey to discover the mathematical foundations of cartography and cartographical influences on mathematics.

From a sixteenth-century map that remains an indispensable navigation tool despite emphasising the North–South divide to public transport maps that both guide and mislead passengers, she reveals how maps and maths shape not only our sense of space and time but also our worldview.

Through entertaining stories, surprising real-world examples and a cast of unforgettable characters, Mapmatics helps us to appreciate the mathematical methods and ideas behind maps. And, by illuminating how our world works, leaves us better equipped to understand and look after it.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

danah boyd on Digital Technology and Everyday Life

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks with danah boyd, Partner Researcher at Microsoft Research, founder of the Data & Society Research Institute, and a distinguished visiting professor at Georgetown University, about her career and work. The pair discuss boyd's the genesis and intellectual background of boyd's now classic text, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Teens (Yale UP, 2014) as well as her more recent work on digital infrastructure and the US Census Bureau.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and labor-saving technologies like self-checkouts and automated factories, the future of work has never been more uncertain, and even jobs requiring high levels of human interaction are no longer safe. The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton UP, 2024) explores the human connections that underlie our work, arguing that what people do for each other in these settings is valuable and worth preserving.

Drawing on in-depth interviews and observations with people in a broad range of professions--from physicians, teachers, and coaches to chaplains, therapists, caregivers, and hairdressers--Allison Pugh develops the concept of "connective labor," a kind of work that relies on empathy, the spontaneity of human contact, and a mutual recognition of each other's humanity. The threats to connective labor are not only those posed by advances in AI or apps; Pugh demonstrates how profit-driven campaigns imposing industrial logic shrink the time for workers to connect, enforce new priorities of data and metrics, and introduce standardized practices that hinder our ability to truly see each other. She concludes with profiles of organizations where connective labor thrives, offering practical steps for building a social architecture that works.

Vividly illustrating how connective labor enriches the lives of individuals and binds our communities together, The Last Human Job is a compelling argument for us to recognize, value, and protect humane work in an increasingly automated and disconnected world.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s book is: More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2024), by Meredith Broussard. When technology reinforces inequality, it's not just a glitch—it's a signal that we need to redesign our systems to create a more equitable world. The word “glitch” implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it is to identify. But what if racism, sexism, and ableism aren't just bugs in mostly functional machinery? What if they're coded into the system itself?

Meredith Broussard demonstrates in More Than a Glitch how neutrality in tech is a myth and why algorithms need to be held accountable. Broussard, a data scientist and one of the few Black female researchers in artificial intelligence, masterfully synthesizes concepts from computer science and sociology. She explores a range of examples: from facial recognition technology trained only to recognize lighter skin tones, to mortgage-approval algorithms that encourage discriminatory lending, to the dangerous feedback loops that arise when medical diagnostic algorithms are trained on insufficiently diverse data. Even when such technologies are designed with good intentions, Broussard shows, fallible humans develop programs that can result in devastating consequences. Broussard argues that the solution isn't to make omnipresent tech more inclusive, but to root out the algorithms that target certain demographics as “other” to begin with. With sweeping implications for fields ranging from jurisprudence to medicine, the ground-breaking insights of More Than a Glitch are essential reading for anyone invested in building a more equitable future.

Our guest is: Meredith Broussard, who is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and the author of several books, including More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech, and Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her academic research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting and ethical AI, with a particular interest in using data analysis for social good.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. You can help support the show by downloading, sharing, posting about, or assigning any of our 200+ episodes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Artificial intelligence started with programmed computers, where programmers would manually program human expert knowledge into the systems. In sharp contrast, today's artificial neural networks – deep learning – are able to learn from experience, and perform at human-like levels of perceptual categorization, language production, and other cognitive abilities at h. This difference has been portrayed as roughly parallel to the philosophical divide between rationalists or nativists on the one hand, and empiricists on the other.

In From Deep Learning to Rational Machines (Oxford UP, 2024), Cameron Buckner lays out a program for future AI development based on discussions of the human mind by such figures as David Hume, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Sophie de Grouchy, among others. Buckner, who is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Houston, offers a conceptual framework that occupies a middle ground between the extremes of 'blank slate' empiricism and innate domain specific faculty psychology, and defends the claim that neural network modelers have found, at least in some cases, a sweet spot of abstraction from the messy details of biological cognition so as to capture the relevant similarities in their artificial networks.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 3 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 Literature from Harvard University. Listen to learn about Nina’s path at the intersection of AI and the humanities, the challenges and rewards of working across disciplines, what questions to ask as an ethical researcher, and practical advice for how to succeed in a multifaceted, multidisciplinary career in today’s fast-changing digital landscape.

Beguš' first book, titled Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI, is currently under an advance contract with the University of Michigan Press.

Towards Knowledge is a Latent Knowledge podcast series where we interview industry and academic leaders about research in the real world — from career development to the most pressing philosophical questions in today’s changing research landscape.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 1 Jun 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Brynn Quick speaks with best-selling author and linguist Gretchen McCulloch about her 2019 New York Times bestselling book Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language (Riverhead Books, 2020). Gretchen has written a Resident Linguist column at The Toast and Wired. She is also the co-creator of Lingthusiasm, a wildly popular podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics.

Because Internet is for anyone who’s ever puzzled over how to punctuate a text message or wondered where memes come from. It’s the perfect book for understanding how the internet is changing the English language, why that’s a good thing, and what our online interactions reveal about who we are.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 28 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Dangerous Art of Text Mining: A Methodology for Digital History (Cambridge UP, 2022) celebrates the bold new research now possible because of text mining: the art of counting words over time. However, this book also presents a warning: without help from the humanities, data science can distort the past and lead to perilous errors. The book opens with a rogue's gallery of errors, then tours the ground-breaking analyses that have resulted from collaborations between humanists and data scientists.

Jo Guldi explores how text mining can give a glimpse of the changing history of the past - for example, how quickly Americans forgot the history of slavery. Textual data can even prove who was responsible in Congress for silencing environmentalism over recent decades. The book ends with an impassioned vision of what text mining in defence of democracy would look like, and why humanists need to be involved.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 20 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Well into the new millennium, the analog cassette tape continues to claw its way back from obsolescence. New cassette labels emerge from hipster enclaves while the cassette’s likeness pops up on T-shirts, coffee mugs, belt buckles, and cell phone cases. In Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable (Duke University Press, 2024), Dr. Rob Drew traces how a lowly, hissy format that began life in office dictation machines and cheap portable players came to be regarded as a token of intimate expression through music and a source of cultural capital.

Drawing on sources ranging from obscure music zines to transcripts of Congressional hearings, Dr. Drew examines a moment in the early 1980s when music industry representatives argued that the cassette encouraged piracy. At the same time, 1980s indie rock culture used the cassette as a symbol to define itself as an outsider community. Indie’s love affair with the cassette culminated in the mixtape, which advanced indie’s image as a gift economy. By telling the cassette’s long and winding history, Dr. Drew demonstrates that sharing cassettes became an acceptable and meaningful mode of communication that initiated rituals of independent music recording, re-recording, and gifting.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 20 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Cyrus McCormick invented the revolutionary mechanical reaper in 1831...right? At least, that's how the story has been told for decades. In Harvesting History: McCormick's Reaper, Heritage Branding, and Historical Forgery (U Nebraska Press, 2023), National Park Service historian Daniel Ott argues that not only have textbooks and other sources of historical knowledge gotten this wrong, but that they've done so because of a massive PR campaign. Ott argues that McCormick, his family, and the company that bears his name, all engaged in a multi-decade long fight to convince potential buyers that their reaper was the first, and given the potentially millions of dollars at stake in a competitive farm implement marketplace, claiming so was no exercise in arcane trivia. In the late 19th and early 20th century. McCormick's company recruited salesmen, advertisers, and newly professionalized historians to shape a narrative about the reaper that sanded over the complex and contingent nature of its invention, and turned McCormick into an American hero. The history told by these groups was malleable enough to fit changing times, as populists and progressives came and went - the claim of "first" gave McCormick's reaper credibility its competitiors could never match. Harvesting History is a story about the importance of getting the story right, and why some people will go to great lengths to make sure we keep getting the story wrong.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 18 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution transformed Britain from an agricultural and artisanal economy to one dominated by industry, ushering in unprecedented growth in technology and trade and putting the country at the center of the global economy. But the commonly accepted story of the industrial revolution, anchored in images of cotton factories and steam engines invented by unfettered geniuses, overlooks the true root of economic and industrial expansion: the lucrative military contracting that enabled the country's near-constant state of war in the eighteenth century. Demand for the guns and other war materiel that allowed British armies, navies, mercenaries, traders, settlers, and adventurers to conquer an immense share of the globe in turn drove the rise of innumerable associated industries, from metalworking to banking.

Bookended by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (Bloomsbury, 2019) traces the social and material life of British guns over a century of near-constant war and violence at home and abroad. Priya Satia develops this story through the life of prominent British gun-maker and Quaker Samuel Galton Jr., who was asked to answer for the moral defensibility of producing guns as new uses like anonymous mass violence rose. Reconciling the pacifist tenet of his faith with his perception of the economic realities of the time, Galton argued that war was driving the industrial economy, making everyone inescapably complicit in it. Through his story, Satia illuminates Britain's emergence as a global superpower, the roots of the government's role in economic development, and the origins of our own era's debates over gun control and military contracting.

Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of British History at Stanford University. She is the author of Spies in Arabia: The Great War and the Cultural Foundations of Britain's Covert Empire in the Middle East (2009), and her writing has appeared in Slate, the Financial Times, the Nation, and the Huffington Post, among other publications.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 18 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Through a skillful combination of economic and cultural history, this book describes the impact on Moldavia and Wallachia of steam navigation on the Danube. The Danube route integrated the two principalities into a dense network of European roads and waterways. From the 1830s to the 1860s, steamboat transport transformed time and space for the areas that benefited from regular services. River traffic accelerated urban development along the Lower Danube and contributed directly to institutional modernization in one of Europe's peripheries. Beyond technological advances and the transportation of goods on a trans-imperial waterway, steamboat travel revolutionized human interactions, too. Steamboat Modernity: Travel, Transport, and Social Transformation on the Lower Danube, 1830–1860 (CEU Press, 2024) offers a fascinating insight into the social and cultural milieu of the nineteenth century, drawing on first-hand accounts of Danube cruising.

Describing the story of travelers who interacted, met, and visited the places they stopped, Constantin Ardeleanu creates a transnational history of travel up and down the Danube from Vienna to Constantinople. The pleasures and sometimes the travails of the travelers unfold against a backdrop of technical and economic transformation in the crucial period of modernization.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 17 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What isn't counted doesn't count. And mainstream institutions systematically fail to account for feminicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, including cisgender and transgender women. Against this failure, Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action (MIT Press, 2024) brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas who are documenting such murders—and challenging the reigning logic of data science by centering care, memory, and justice in their work.

Drawing on Data Against Feminicide, a large-scale collaborative research project, Catherine D'Ignazio describes the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account. This book is also a forceful intervention that challenges hegemonic data science by exploring the possibilities and limitations of counting and quantification and drawing lessons for a restorative and transformative data science.

This book is available open access here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 15 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 the theatre but by those with successful cast recordings, movie versions, or even illegal bootlegs on YouTube. The shows audiences know, and the texts and music they expect to hear when they attend a production, are defined by media consumed at home more than by memories of performances witnessed in the theatre. For example, author Doug Reside shows that it is no accident that the serious book musical with a fixed score developed in the 1940s - when commercially pressed and marketed record albums made it possible to record most of the score of a new musical in a fixed medium. And Hamilton, a musical with dense lyrics and revolutionary musical style, would not have been as easily accessible to world audiences if most hadn't already had the opportunity to learn the score by listening to free digital streams of the original cast recording.

The technologies that made these media possible developed concurrently with and shaped the American musical as an art form. Reside uncovers how the affordances and limitations of these technologies established a repertory of titles that are most frequently performed and defined by the texts used in these performances. Fixing the Musical: How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory (Oxford UP, 2023) argues that the musicals we most remember are those which most effectively used their era's best recording and distribution technologies to document and share the work with those who would never see the original production on Broadway.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 12 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 discuss their new book with CEU Press entitled, The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago: A Historical Geography of Atomic-Powered Communism (CEU Press, 2023).

The book is available Open Access, click here to download.

The war in Ukraine, with the exposure of nuclear power stations and the danger of atomic warfare, has made the legacy of the Soviet nuclear sector of critical importance.

The two authors map the Soviet nuclear industry in a shifting historical context, making sense of a complex socio-technical and environmental history. Taking an innovative approach, this book explores the history of atomic power in the former Soviet Union using the spatial dimensions of the nuclear industry as a point of departure.

Per and Achim’s book is part of our new series, CEU Press Perspectives. The series offers the latest viewpoints on both new and perennial issues, these books address a wide range of topics of critical importance today. The new series, originating from an international collection of leading authors, encourages us to look at issues from a different viewpoint, to think outside the box, and to stimulate debate.

You can learn more about the series here.

The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We will also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and talk about their series or books.

Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more here.

Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 11 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Listen to this interview of Courtney Miller, PhD student in Software Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. We talk about her paper "Did You Miss My Comment or What?" Understanding Toxicity in Open Source Discussions (ICSE 2022).

Courtney Miller : "One of the things I really enjoyed after publication was the interest of other communities in our work. I mean, just the summer after we published, I went and gave a talk at the Linux Open Source conference, and it was really great to learn that — there's a lot of duality of thought in this world, but there's a lot of people who are pretty much studying the same types of problems as you but from completely different fields and completely different directions. And so, being able to incorporate their work in as well, while also having the bulk of our citations be to ICSE, of course, because that's our bread and butter in software engineering — all that comes together to make a better foundation for the paper."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 11 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

We all sometimes ‘lurk’ in online spaces without posting or engaging, just reading the posts and comments. But neither reading nor lurking are ever passive acts. In fact, readers of social media are making decisions and taking grassroots actions on multiple dimensions. Unpacking this understudied phenomenon, Just Here for the Comments: Lurking as Digital Literacy Practice (Bristol UP, 2024) by Gina Sipley challenges the conventional perspective of what counts as participatory online culture. Presenting lurking as a communication and literacy practice that resists dominant power structures, it offers an innovative approach to digital qualitative methods. Unique and original in its subject, this is a call for internet researchers to broaden their methods to include lurkers’ participation and presence.

Just Here for the Comments will be released on May 28th by Bristol University Press. Pre-orders are now open here. Readers can also get a 25% discount on ALL Bristol University Press and Policy Press books by signing up to their newsletter.

A portion of the proceeds from this book will benefit The Children’s Greenhouse, which provides high-quality, low-cost childcare to the children of SUNY Nassau Community College students, faculty, and staff. The Greenhouse is the reason many of our student parents persist and graduate with their degrees. Many of these students are first generation, too. You can learn more about this organization and how to donate, here.

Dr. Gina Sipley is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Nassau Community College. Dr Sipley is in the process of developing with Bristol University Press free resources for academics, K-12 teachers, and book clubs interested in teaching and researching the social and economic effects of lurker literacies. Anyone interested in receiving these materials when they become available can hit subscribe on her website.

Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 10 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

What are the tactics needed for a world of platforms and algorithms? In Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power (MIT Press, 2024), Tiziano Bonini, Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication at the University of Siena, and Emiliano Treré, a Reader in Data Agency and Media Ecologies at Cardiff University, examine the impact of platforms and algorithms on people, communities, and global social life. The book explores these issues using three case studies of gig work, culture, and politics. At its heart, the book demonstrates the potential for transforming the seeming total control of platforms and algorithms through the tactics and strategies of workers, artists, and social movements. The book is essential reading across humanities, social sciences, and computing, as well as for anyone interested in contemporary digital life. The book is available open access here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

MC Forelle on Cars, Chipification, and Repair

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 6 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with MC Forelle, Assistant Professor of Engineering & Society at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at University of Virginia, about their research on the “chipification” of automobiles. MC’s work examines how computerization affects repair and a wide variety of other automotive experiences. In recent years, they have continued broadening out to include electric and autonomous vehicles and the environmental impacts thereof. Lee and MC also chew the fat about a bunch of other issues along the way.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 4 May 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The Bolex camera, 16mm reversal film stocks, commercial film laboratories, and low-budget optical printers were the small-gauge media technologies that provided the infrastructure for experimental filmmaking at the height of its cultural impact. Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. John Powers examines how the avant-garde embraced these material resources and invested them with meanings and values adjacent to those of semiprofessional film culture.

By reasserting the physicality of the body in making time-lapse and kinesthetic sequences with the Bolex, filmmakers conversed with other art forms and integrated broader spheres of humanistic and scientific inquiry into their artistic process. Drawing from the photographic qualities of stocks such as Tri-X and Kodachrome, they discovered pliant metaphors that allowed them to connect their artistic practice to metaphysics, spiritualism, and Hollywood excess. By framing film labs as mystical or adversarial, they cultivated an oppositionality that valorized control over the artistic process. And by using the optical printer as a tool for excavating latent meaning out of found footage, they posited the reworking of images as fundamental to the exploration of personal and cultural identity.

Providing a wealth of new detail about the making of canonised avant-garde classics by such luminaries as Carolee Schneemann, Jack Smith, and Stan Brakhage, as well as rediscovering works from overlooked artists such as Chick Strand, Amy Halpern, and Gunvor Nelson, Technology and the Making of Experimental Film Culture uses technology as a lens for examining the process of making: where ideas come from, how they are put into practice, and how arguments about those ideas foster cultural and artistic commitments and communities.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 27 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How are digital platforms transforming heritage? In Geopolitics of Digital Heritage (Cambridge UP, 2023), Dr Natalia Grincheva, Program Leader of the BA (Hons) Arts Management at the University of the Arts Singapore and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and Dr Elizabeth Stainforth, a lecturer in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds explore the global political context for digital heritage. Drawing on 4 detailed case studies- Singapore Memory Project, the National Library of Australia’s Trove, the EU’s Europeana, and Google Arts and Culture- the book shows the political ideas and imperatives underpinning the aggregation of heritage on digital platforms. Both an accessible introduction and a significant intervention to the field of heritage studies, the book will be essential reading across the arts, humanities and social sciences.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The global battle among the three dominant digital powers―the United States, China, and the European Union―is intensifying. All three regimes are racing to regulate tech companies, with each advancing a competing vision for the digital economy while attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the digital world. In Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology (Oxford UP, 2023), her provocative follow-up to The Brussels Effect, Anu Bradford explores a rivalry that will shape the world in the decades to come.

Across the globe, people dependent on digital technologies have become increasingly alarmed that their rapid adoption and transformation have ushered in an exceedingly concentrated economy where a few powerful companies control vast economic wealth and political power, undermine data privacy, and widen the gap between economic winners and losers. In response, world leaders are variously embracing the idea of reining in the most dominant tech companies. Bradford examines three competing regulatory approaches―the American market-driven model, the Chinese state-driven model, and the European rights-driven regulatory model―and discusses how governments and tech companies navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when these regulatory approaches collide in the international domain. Which digital empire will prevail in the contest for global influence remains an open question, yet their contrasting strategies are increasingly clear.

Digital societies are at an inflection point. In the midst of these unfolding regulatory battles, governments, tech companies, and digital citizens are making important choices that will shape the future ethos of the digital society. Digital Empires lays bare the choices we face as societies and individuals, explains the forces that shape those choices, and illuminates the immense stakes involved for everyone who uses digital technologies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Asif Siddiqi, Professor of History at Fordham University, about the arc of his career and his wide-ranging interests and work. The pair start by discussing Siddiqi's wonderful book, The Red Rockets' Glare: Spaceflight and the Russian Imagination, 1857-1957 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), a history of the social and cultural trends, including a heavy dose of science fiction and mysticism, in Russia and the Soviet Union that led to Sputnik. They then talk about Siddiqi's other projects and interests from prisons to pop songs to global histories of space infrastructures. They also discuss the promises of recent turns to global and international research projects and stories in the history of technology.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Code Work: Hacking Across the US/México Techno-Borderlands (Princeton UP, 2023), Héctor Beltrán examines Mexican and Latinx coders’ personal strategies of self-making as they navigate a transnational economy of tech work. Beltrán shows how these hackers apply concepts from the code worlds to their lived experiences, deploying batches, loose coupling, iterative processing (looping), hacking, prototyping, and full-stack development in their daily social interactions—at home, in the workplace, on the dating scene, and in their understanding of the economy, culture, and geopolitics. Merging ethnographic analysis with systems thinking, he draws on his eight years of research in México and the United States—during which he participated in and observed hackathons, hacker schools, and tech entrepreneurship conferences—to unpack the conundrums faced by workers in a tech economy that stretches from villages in rural México to Silicon Valley.

Beltrán chronicles the tension between the transformative promise of hacking—the idea that coding will reconfigure the boundaries of race, ethnicity, class, and gender—and the reality of a neoliberal capitalist economy divided and structured by the US/México border. Young hackers, many of whom approach coding in a spirit of playfulness and exploration, are encouraged to appropriate the discourses of flexibility and self-management even as they remain outside formal employment. Beltrán explores the ways that “innovative culture” is seen as central in curing México’s social ills, showing that when innovation is linked to technological development, other kinds of development are neglected. Beltrán’s highly original, wide-ranging analysis uniquely connects technology studies, the anthropology of capitalism, and Latinx and Latin American studies.

Mentioned in this episode, among others:

Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books.
Hong, G. K., & Ferguson, R. A. (Eds.). (2011). Strange Affinities: The Gender and Sexual Politics of Comparative Racialization. Duke University Press.
Coleman, E. G. (2012). Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton University Press.

Héctor Beltrán is Class of 1957 Career Development Assistant Professor of Anthropology at MIT, where he teaches “Cultures of Computing,” “Hacking from the South,” and “Latin American Migrations.”

Liliana Gil is Assistant Professor of Comparative Studies (STS) at the Ohio State University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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

Using measurement technology as a lens, and examining in particular the measurement of hearing and breathing, Coreen McGuire's book Measuring Difference, Numbering Normal: Setting the Standards for Disability in the Interwar Period (Manchester UP, 2020) draws together several existing discussions on disability, phenomenology, healthcare, medical practice, big data, embodiment, and emerging medical and scientific technologies around the turn of the twentieth century. These are popular topics of scholarly attention but have not, until now, been considered as interconnected topics within a single book. As such, this work connects several important, and usually separate academic subject areas and historical specialisms. The standards embedded in instrumentation created strict, but, ultimately arbitrary thresholds of what is categorised as normal and abnormal. Considering these standards from a long historical perspective reveals how these dividing lines shifted when pushed.

This book is available open access here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 and articles are written on the subject. Campaigns are even mounted against them. So why are sex robots such a hot topic?

Electric Dreams: Sex Robots and Failed Promises of Capitalism (404 Ink, 2024) by Heather Parry picks apart the forces that posit sex robots as either the solution to our problems or a real threat to human safety, and looks at what’s being pushed aside for us to obsess about something that will never happen.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 04:00:00 +0000

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 as late as 1800 CE, an age shaped by climate change and pandemics at both ends. Examining armed conflict at all levels, and ranging across China and the central Asian steppes to southwest Asia, western Europe, and beyond, Morillo explores the technological, social, cultural, and environmental determinants of warfare and the tools and tactics used by warriors on land and at sea.

Part I explains the geographical, political, and technological rules that shaped patterns of military activity everywhere. Part II explores how these rules played out in various historical contexts. Armed conflict played a central role in the making of the medieval world, and medieval people used war and conflict to create, expand, and defend their communities and identities. But the devastating effects of climate change and epidemic disease continually reshaped these communities and the nature of their conflicts.

Broad in its scope and rich in detail, War and Conflict in the Middle Ages will be the go-to guide for students and aficionados of military history, medieval history, and global history.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 13 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 with the space race.

Fifty years later, that vision feels like a nostalgic fantasy, but the lunar rover's legacy paved the way for Mars rovers like Sojourner, Curiosity, and Perseverance. Other rovers have made accessible the world's deepest caves and most remote tundra, extending our exploratory range without risking lives. Still others have been utilised for search and rescue missions or in clean up operations after disasters such as Chernobyl.

Space Rover (Bloomsbury, 2024) by Stewart Lawrence Sinclair is the addition to the Object Lessons series that explores all of this and more. The book shows that for all these achievements, rovers embody not just our potential, but our limits. Examining rovers as they wander our terrestrial and celestial boundaries, we might better comprehend our place, and fate, in this universe.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 5 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Health Apps, Genetic Diets and Superfoods: When Biopolitics Meets Neoliberalism (Bloomsbury, 2023) critically examines contemporary health and wellness culture through the lens of personalization, genetification and functional foods. These developments have had a significant impact on the intersecting categories of gender, race, and class in light of the increasing adoption of digital health and surveillance technologies like MyFitnessPal, Lifesum, HealthyifyMe, and Fooducate. These three vectors of identity, when analysed in relation to food, diet, health, and technology, reveal significant new ways in which inequality, hierarchy, and injustice become manifest.

In the book, Tina Sikka argues that the corporate-led trends associated with health apps, genetic testing, superfoods, and functional foods have produced a kind of dietary-genomic-functional food industrial complex. She makes the positive case for a prosocial, food secure, and biodiverse health and food culture that is rooted in community action, supported by strong public provisioning of health care, and grounded in principles of food justice and sovereignty.

Rituparna Patgiri has a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 3 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Guru Madhavan on Wicked Problems and Engineering a Better World

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 2 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Guru Madhavan, Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and Senior Director of Programs at the National Academy of Engineering, about his recent book, Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World (W. W. Norton & Company, 2024). In Wicked Problems, Madhavan draws on a rich body of literature from the humanities and social sciences to think through how engineers can do a better job working on problems that include complex social and technical realities. The pair also talk about how Madhavan came to the National Academy of Engineering after working as an engineer and entrepreneur and some of his future work, including ongoing writing on the importance of maintenance and “grind problems” in engineering.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 1 Apr 2024 08:00:00 +0000

A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains (Mariner Books, 2023) tells two fascinating stories. One is the evolution of nervous systems. It started 600 million years ago, when the first brains evolved in tiny worms. The other one is humans' quest to create more and more intelligent systems. This story begins in 1951 with the first reinforcement learning algorithm trying to mimic neural networks.

Max Bennett is an AI entrepreneur and neuroscience researcher. His work combines insights from evolutionary neuroscience, comparative psychology, and AI. As each chapter describes how a skill evolved, it also explains whether(!) and how an AI system has managed to implement something similar. A recurring theme is how human brains and neural circuits have influenced AI architecture. The other side of this bi-directional connection is also intriguing. AI has often served as a litmus test, giving a clue how a not well understood neurobiological phenomenon might work, how plausible a hypothesis is.

The organzining principle of this book is a framework of five breakthroughs, which compares evolution to technological innovation. Like a new technology enables several innovative products, a new brain capability enables several new skills. For example, mammals show several new intelligent behaviors compared to their ancestors: vicarious trial and error, episodic memory, and planning. The foundation of all these novelties, is probably the same capability: simulation.

The five breakthroughs are:

steering in bilaterians
learning from trial and error in vertebrates
simulating in mammals
mentalizing in primates
speaking in humans

This framework guides the readers through a time travel of 600 million years. We learn about the environment in which these capabilities evolved: Who were the first mammals and why did planning benefit them? We see what contemporary animals can and can't do: Fish aren't as dumb as folklore suggests. And we take a look at AI's baffling achievements and limitations: Why can AI write decent essays but not load a dishwasher?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle (MIT Press, 2023), Dr. Matthew Hersch challenges the existing narrative of the most significant human space program of the last 50 years, NASA's space shuttle. He begins with the origins of the space shuttle: a century-long effort to develop a low-cost, reusable, rocket-powered airplane to militarize and commercialize space travel, which Hersch explains was built the wrong way, at the wrong time, and for all the wrong reasons. Describing the unique circumstances that led to the space shuttle's creation by President Richard Nixon's administration in 1972 and its subsequent flights from 1981 through 2011, Dr. Hersch illustrates how the space shuttle was doomed from the start.

While most historians have accepted the view that the space shuttle's fatal accidents—including the 1986 Challenger explosion—resulted from deficiencies in NASA's management culture that lulled engineers into a false confidence in the craft, Dark Star reveals the widespread understanding that the shuttle was predestined for failure as a technology demonstrator. The vehicle was intended only to give the United States the appearance of a viable human spaceflight program until funds became available to eliminate its obvious flaws. Hersch's work seeks to answer the perilous questions of technological choice that confront every generation, and it is a critical read for anyone interested in how we can create a better world through the things we build.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Robert Willim's new book Mundania: How and Where Technologies Are Made Ordinary (Bristol University Press, 2024), takes the reader on a journey through the realm of Mundania, a realm that is both familiar and incomprehensible, banal and uncanny. Mundania is the realm in which technology, which seemed unspeakable before its arrival in our world, becomes an everyday fixture of life, and, more specifically, mundane.

Jeff Adler is an ex-linguist and occasional contributor to New Books Network!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

The fascinating, untold story of how the Chinese language overcame unparalleled challenges and revolutionized the world of computing. A standard QWERTY keyboard has a few dozen keys. How can Chinese—a language with tens of thousands of characters and no alphabet—be input on such a device?

In The Chinese Computer: A Global History of the Information Age (MIT Press, 2024), Thomas Mullaney sets out to resolve this paradox, and in doing so, discovers that the key to this seemingly impossible riddle has given rise to a new epoch in the history of writing—a form of writing he calls “hypography.” Based on fifteen years of research, this pathbreaking history of the Chinese language charts the beginnings of electronic Chinese technology in the wake of World War II up through to its many iterations in the present day. Mullaney takes the reader back through the history and evolution of Chinese language computing technology, showing the development of electronic Chinese input methods—software programs that enable Chinese characters to be produced using alphanumeric symbols—and the profound impact they have had on the way Chinese is written. Along the way, Mullaney introduces a cast of brilliant and eccentric personalities drawn from the ranks of IBM, MIT, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Taiwanese military, and the highest rungs of mainland Chinese establishment, to name a few, and the unexpected roles they played in developing Chinese language computing. Finally, he shows how China and the non-Western world—because of the hypographic technologies they had to invent in order to join the personal computing revolution—“saved” the Western computer from its deep biases, enabling it to achieve a meaningful presence in markets outside of the Americas and Europe. An eminently engaging and artfully told history, The Chinese Computer is a must-read for anyone interested in how culture informs computing and how computing, in turn, shapes culture.

Thomas S. Mullaney is Professor of Chinese History at Stanford University and a Guggenheim Fellow.

Caleb Zakarin is Editor at the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Our privacy is besieged by tech companies.

Companies can do this because our laws are built on outdated ideas that trap lawmakers, regulators, and courts into wrong assumptions about privacy, resulting in ineffective legal remedies to one of the most pressing concerns of our generation.

Drawing on behavioral science, sociology, and economics, Ignacio Cofone challenges existing laws and reform proposals and dispels enduring misconceptions about data-driven interactions. This exploration offers readers a holistic view of why current laws and regulations fail to protect us against corporate digital harms, particularly those created by AI. Cofone then proposes a better response: meaningful accountability for the consequences of corporate data practices, which ultimately entails creating a new type of liability that recognizes the value of privacy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Global adoption of the Internet has exploded, yet we are only beginning to understand the Internet's profound political consequences. Authoritarian states are digitally catching up with their democratic counterparts, and both are showing a growing interest in the use of cyber controls--online censorship and surveillance technologies--that allow governments to exercise control over the Internet. Under what conditions does a digitally connected society actually help states target their enemies? Why do repressive governments sometimes shut down the Internet when faced with uprisings? And how have cyber controls become a dependable tool in the weapons arsenal that states use in civil conflict?

In Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence (Oxford University Press, 2023), Dr. Anita R. Gohdes addresses these questions, and provides an original and in-depth look into the relationship between digital technologies and state violence. Drawing on large-scale analyses of fine-grained data on the Syrian conflict, qualitative case evidence from Iran, and the first global comparative analysis on Internet outages and state repression, Dr. Gohdes makes the case that digital infrastructure supports security forces in their use of violent state repression. More specifically, she argues that mass access to the Internet presents governments who fear for their political survival with a set of response options. When faced with a political threat, they can either temporarily restrict or block online public access or they can expand mass access to online information and monitor it to their own advantage. Surveillance allows security forces to target opponents of the state more selectively, while extreme forms of censorship or shutdowns of the Internet occur in conjunction with larger and more indiscriminate repression. As digital communication has become a bedrock of modern opposition and protest movements, Repression in the Digital Age breaks new ground in examining state repression in the information age.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Object Lessons is a series of concise, collectable, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Each book starts from a specific inspiration: an historical event, a literary passage, a personal narrative, a technological innovation—and from that starting point explores the object of the title, gleaning a singular lesson or multiple lessons along the way.

This interview discusses the series with one of the two editors of the series, Dr. Christopher Schaberg. Featuring contributions from writers, artists, scholars, journalists, and others, the emphasis throughout is lucid writing, imagination, and brevity. Object Lessons paints a picture of the world around us, and tells the story of how we got here, one object at a time. Many Object Lessons books have been interviewed on the New Books Network to date, including: Trench Coat, Mushroom, Ok, Grave, Wine, Magazine, Stroller, Barcode, Recipe, Hyphen, Pregnancy Test, Gitter, Relic, Pencil, Air Conditioning, and Swimming Pool.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John Warner on Teaching Writing in the Age of Generative AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 is the author of at least three - or four depending on whether you count a work of parody - books on writing and higher education, and today he is perhaps best known for his Substack, The Biblioracle Recommends. Vinsel and Warner talk about how teaching writing will need to shift after the arrival of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, but only after discussing a deeper truth: Teaching writing and thinking at the college level has had big problems for years, problems that AI tools simply exacerbate. The pair talk about Warner’s experiences and his approach to teaching writing as well as about a book he is writing about teaching writing in the age of generative AI.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How Can We Reach International Consensus on AI Regulation?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Gabriele Mazzini, a lawyer and officer of the European Commission and expert in AI regulation. Mazzini discusses the means through which European countries have found agreement on the definition of AI and how to regulate it. Moreover, Mazzini stresses that the fears of an apocalyptic AI revolution taking over humankind are not well-grounded. He also comments on the United States case and how it differs from Europe when it comes to regulating AI, acknowledging that there's been big progress in legislation in this area.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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

So much of what we hear about China and Russia today likens the relationship between these two autocracies and the West to a “rivalry” or a “great-power competition.” Some might consider it alarmist to say we are in the midst of a second Cold War, but that may be the only responsible way to describe today’s state of affairs. What’s more, we have come a long way from Mao Zedong’s infamous observation that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Now we live in an age more aptly described by Vladimir Putin’s cryptic prophecy that “artificial intelligence is the future not only of Russia, but of all mankind, and whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world.”

George S. Takach’s incisive and meticulously researched new volume, Cold War 2.0: Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America (Pegasus Book, 2024), is the book we need to thoroughly understand these frightening and perilous times. In the geopolitical sphere, there are no more pressing issues than the appalling mechanizations of a surveillance state in China, Russia’s brazen attempt to assert its autocratic model in Ukraine, and China’s increasingly likely plans to do the same in Taiwan. But the key here, Takach argues, is that our new Cold War is not only ideological but technological: the side that prevails in Cold War 2.0 will be the one that bests the other in mastering the greatest innovations of our time. Artificial intelligence sits in our pockets every day—but what about AI that coordinates military operations and missile defense systems? Or the highly sophisticated semiconductor chips and quantum computers that power those missiles and a host of other weapons? And, where recently we have seen remarkable feats of bio-engineering to produce vaccines at record speed, shouldn’t we be concerned how catastrophic it would be if bio-engineering were co-opted for nefarious purposes? Takach thoroughly examines how each of these innovations will shape the tension between democracy and autocracy, and how each will play a central role in this second Cold War. Finally, he crafts a precise blueprint for how Western democracies should handle these innovations to respond to the looming threat of autocracy—and ultimately prevail over it.

AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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

In Resurrecting the Black Body: Race and the Digital Afterlife (U California Press, 2023), Tonia Sutherland considers the consequences of digitally raising the dead. Attending to the violent deaths of Black Americans—and the records that document them—from slavery through the social media age, Sutherland explores media evidence, digital acts of remembering, and the right and desire to be forgotten.

From the popular image of Gordon (also known as "Whipped Peter") to photographs of the lynching of Jesse Washington to the video of George Floyd's murder, from DNA to holograms to posthumous communication, this book traces the commodification of Black bodies and lives across time. Through the lens of (anti-)Blackness in the United States, Sutherland interrogates the intersections of life, death, personal data, and human autonomy in the era of Google, Twitter, and Facebook, and presents a critique of digital resurrection technologies. If the Black digital afterlife is rooted in bigotry and inspires new forms of racialized aggression, Resurrecting the Black Body asks what other visions of life and remembrance are possible, illuminating the unique ways that Black cultures have fought against erasure and oblivion.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois; and joining us, as well, is James Gee, Regents Professor and Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies at Arizona State University. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is the generativity of machines.

James Gee : "I fundamentally believe that humans are a screwed-up species — one of the few species that will put themselves out of business in a shorter evolutionary time than any species that has lived on Earth. So, something must be wrong with us. And I think what's wrong with us is, we don't understand what sort of animal we are. That's why our schools are no good — we don't understand how humans really learn. We don't understand what a human really is. We have an elevated view of our own rationality, of our own intelligence, and the consequence is, we are depleting the world. So, the biggest attempt we can still make now is to use everything we can (including Chat) to retheorize who we are as a being before we put ourselves out of existence."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 16 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

In the mid-2010s, a passionate community of Los Angeles-based storytellers, media artists, and tech innovators formed around virtual reality (VR), believing that it could remedy society’s ills. Lisa Messeri offers an ethnographic exploration of this community, which conceptualized VR as an “empathy machine” that could provide glimpses into diverse social realities. She outlines how, in the aftermath of #MeToo, the backlash against Silicon Valley, and the turmoil of the Trump administration, it was imagined that VR—if led by women and other marginalized voices—could bring about a better world. Messeri delves into the fantasies that allowed this vision to flourish, exposing the paradox of attempting to use a singular VR experience to mend a fractured reality full of multiple, conflicting social truths. She theorizes this dynamic as unreal, noting how dreams of empathy collide with reality’s irreducibility to a “common” good. With In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles (Duke UP, 2024), Messeri navigates the intersection of place, technology, and social change to show that technology alone cannot upend systemic forces attached to gender and race.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

How abstract design decisions in 2D platform games create rich worlds of meaning for players.

Since the 1980s, 2D platform games have captivated their audiences. Whether the player scrambles up the ladders in Donkey Kong or leaps atop an impossibly tall pipe in Super Mario Bros., this deceptively simple visual language has persisted in our cultural imagination of video games. In Run and Jump: The Meaning of the 2D Platformer (MIT Press, 2024), Peter McDonald surveys the legacy of 2D platform games and examines how abstract and formal design choices have kept players playing. McDonald argues that there is a rich layer of meaning underneath, say, the quality of an avatar’s movement, the pacing and rhythm of level design, the personalities expressed by different enemies, and the emotion elicited by collecting a coin.

To understand these games, McDonald draws on technical discussions by game designers as well as theoretical work about the nature of signs from structuralist semiotics. Interspersed throughout are design exercises that show how critical interpretation can become a tool for game designers to communicate with their players. With examples drawn from over forty years of game history, and from games made by artists, hobbyists, iconic designers, and industry studios, Run and Jump presents a comprehensive—and engaging—vision of this slice of game history.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Nahaufnahmen.ch, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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 holds together a multitude of media and shapes the way they are accessed, organised, created, consumed, and manipulated. However, it does not do so without leaving viscous traces, and Gooey Media: Screen Entertainment and the Graphic User Interface (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) by Dr. Nick Jones examines this residue and its consequences, revealing how the GUI exerts a powerful influence on contemporary media.

Focusing on aesthetics and adopting a media agnostic approach, Dr. Jones explores cinema, streaming platforms, television, user-generated content, videogames, apps, virtual reality, VFX, design software, and more in order to show how they cross-pollinate with one another and with our desktop interfaces. The result is a new approach for analysing convergent media in the digital era.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Zachary Loeb on the History of the End of the World

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

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, assistant professor of history at Purdue University, about his work. On his faculty page, Loeb describes himself as “interested in the idea that humanity’s romance with technology has the species (and the planet) on a course that may lead to catastrophe.” Vinsel and Loeb talk about this idea and its history before turning to a discussion of Loeb’s dissertation and forthcoming book, a history of Y2K. The pair also discuss potential future directions of Loeb’s research. Peoples & Things has a new newsletter, where you can learn behind the scenes details about the podcast and much more. Check it out here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 10 Mar 2024 08:00:00 +0000

"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, Brown, 2023) tells the story of when machines starting taking human jobs, when an underground network of 19th century rebels, the Luddites, took up arms against the industrialists that were automating their work--and how it explains the power, threat, and toll of big tech today. Two hundred years ago in rural England, working men and women rose up en masse rather than starve at the hands of the factory owners who were using machines to erase and degrade their livelihoods. Under the banner of a mythical General Loud, they organized guerrilla raids, smashed specific machines, and threatened wealthy machine owners. Luddites won the support of Lord Byron, inspired Mary Shelley, and enraged the louche Prince Regent and his bloodthirsty government. Before it was over, much blood would be spilled--of rich and poor, of the invisible and of the powerful. This deeply misunderstood class struggle nearly brought 19th century England to its knees. Currently many fear that big tech is dominating our lives and machines replacing human labor run high. We worry that technology imperils millions of jobs, robots are ousting workers from factories, and artificial intelligence will soon remove drivers from cars. Saving the movement from what E. P. Thompson called "the enormous condescension of posterity", Merchant finds inspiration in Luddism for our current crises.

Brian Merchant is the author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone (2017, Little, Brown). His work has appeared in a variety of places including Wired and The Atlantic. He is a founder of VICE’s speculative fiction outlet Terraform and was the technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 8 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Air conditioning aspires to be unnoticed. Yet, by manipulating the air around us, it quietly conditions the baseline conditions of our physical, mental, and emotional experience. From offices and libraries to contemporary art museums and shopping malls, climate control systems shore up the fantasy of a comfortable, self-contained body that does not have to reckon with temperature. At the same time that air conditioning makes temperature a non-issue in (some) people's daily lives, thermoception-or the sensory perception of temperature-is being carefully studied and exploited as a tool of marketing, social control, and labour management.

Yet air conditioning isn't for everybody: its reliance on carbon fuels divides the world into habitable, climate-controlled bubbles and increasingly uninhabitable environments where AC is unavailable. Hsuan Hsu's Air Conditioning (Bloomsbury, 2024) explores questions about culture, ethics, ecology, and social justice raised by the history and uneven distribution of climate controlling technologies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robert Charette on Researching the Material World

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 4 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode, Peoples & Thing host Lee Vinsel interviews engineer, businessman, consultant, author, contributing editor at IEEE Magazine, and former P&T guest Bob Charette about his research method. Charette really excels at finding great and telling numbers for his pieces on technology, business, and public policy, including in his 12-part IEEE Magazine article series and now ebook, The EV Transition Explained. Vinsel and Charette use Bob's June 2023 IEEE Magazine article, “EV Chargers for ALL,” to talk about how Bob uncovers these numbers. In this episode, you'll also hear from graduate students in Lee's Fall 2023 grad seminar Communicating Academic Ideas to Non-Academic Audiences. We were so glad to have them on the show! ICYMI, Peoples & Things has a new newsletter, where you can learn behind the scenes details about the podcast and much more. Check it out here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 1 Mar 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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 technology is really for. AI Needs You argues that it is critical for society to take the lead in answering this urgent question and ensuring that AI fulfills its promise.

Verity Harding draws inspiring lessons from the histories of three twentieth-century tech revolutions--the space race, in vitro fertilization, and the internet--to empower each of us to join the conversation about AI and its possible futures. Sharing her perspective as a leading insider in technology and politics, she rejects the dominant narrative, which often likens AI's advent to that of the atomic bomb. History points the way to an achievable future in which democratically determined values guide AI to be peaceful in its intent; to embrace limitations; to serve purpose, not profit; and to be firmly rooted in societal trust.

AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI's Future and Save Our Own (Princeton UP, 2024) gives us hope that we, the people, can imbue AI with a deep intentionality that reflects our best values, ideals, and interests, and that serves the public good. AI will permeate our lives in unforeseeable ways, but it is clear that the shape of AI's future--and of our own--cannot be left only to those building it. It is up to us to guide this technology away from our worst fears and toward a future that we can trust and believe in.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carol Beggy, "Pencil" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 10:00:00 +0000

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 to essentially destroy it.

Pencils were used to sketch civilization's greatest works of art. Pencils were there marking the choices in the earliest democratic elections. Even when used haphazardly to mark out where a saw's blade should make a cut, a pencil is creating. Pencil offers a deep look at this common, almost ubiquitous, object.

Pencils are a simple device that are deceptively difficult to manufacture. At a time when many use cellphones as banking branches and instructors reach students online throughout the world, pencil use has not waned, with tens of millions being made and used annually. In Pencil (Bloomsbury, 2024) Carol Beggy sketches out how the lowly pencil is still a mighty useful tool.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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

Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies in the wake of the financial crisis and the pandemic have ended up supercharging big tech's hold over every aspect of the economy. Capitalism's twin pillars - markets and profit - have been replaced with big tech's platforms and rents. Meanwhile, with every click and scroll, we labour like serfs to increase its power. Welcome to technofeudalism.

Drawing on stories from Greek Myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power and ultimately what it will take overthrow it.

Louisa Hann attained a PhD in English and American studies from the University of Manchester in 2021, specialising in the political economy of HIV/AIDS theatres.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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

A new industrial revolution has begun. Like mechanization or electricity before it, artificial intelligence will touch every aspect of our lives―and cause profound disruptions in the balance of global power, especially among the AI superpowers: China, the United States, and Europe. Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre takes readers inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future.

Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (Norton, 2023) argues that four key elements define this struggle: data, computing power, talent, and institutions. Data is a vital resource like coal or oil, but it must be collected and refined. Advanced computer chips are the essence of computing power―control over chip supply chains grants leverage over rivals. Talent is about people: which country attracts the best researchers and most advanced technology companies? The fourth “battlefield” is maybe the most critical: the ultimate global leader in AI will have institutions that effectively incorporate AI into their economy, society, and especially their military.

Scharre’s account surges with futuristic technology. He explores the ways AI systems are already discovering new strategies via millions of war-game simulations, developing combat tactics better than any human, tracking billions of people using biometrics, and subtly controlling information with secret algorithms. He visits China’s “National Team” of leading AI companies to show the chilling synergy between China’s government, private sector, and surveillance state. He interviews Pentagon leadership and tours U.S. Defense Department offices in Silicon Valley, revealing deep tensions between the military and tech giants who control data, chips, and talent. Yet he concludes that those tensions, inherent to our democratic system, create resilience and resistance to autocracy in the face of overwhelmingly powerful technology.

Engaging and direct, Four Battlegrounds offers a vivid picture of how AI is transforming warfare, global security, and the future of human freedom―and what it will take for democracies to remain at the forefront of the world order.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Does It Even Mean for a Machine to Generate?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois. Today we welcome, too, Duane Searsmith, E-Learning Technical Specialist, Information Trust Institute, also at the University of Illinois. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is the meaning of generation by machine.

It's stunning what Generative AI can produce, but what exactly is it there that is being produced? What does it mean, and what do we do with it? And actually, more important, what do we do with the AI that's doing the producing?

AI in our lives now and will continue infiltrating and embedding only more as each day passes and each new update and redesign is released. Therefore, we are the responsible parties in this — we, us, the users. We are the ones we must ask: What does AI mean to us? Because what AI just means, itself... well, that is still only whatever we can mean, ourselves.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Visions of a Digital Nation: Market and Monopoly in British Telecommunications (MIT Press, 2024), Jacob Ward explains why the privatization of British Telecom signaled a pivotal moment in the rise of neoliberalism, and how it was shaped by the longer development and digitalization of Britain’s telecommunications infrastructure.

When Margaret Thatcher sold British Telecom for £3.6 billion in 1984, it became not only, at the time, the largest stock flotation in history, but also a watershed moment in the rise of neoliberalism and deregulation. In Visions of a Digital Nation, Ward offers an incisive interdisciplinary perspective on how technology prefigured this pivot. Giving due consideration to the politicians, engineers, and managers who paved the way for this historic moment, Ward illustrates how the decision validated the privatization of public utilities and tied digital technology to free market rationales. In this examination of the national and, at times, global history of technology, Ward’s approach is sweeping. Utilizing infrastructure studies, environmental history, and urban and local history, Ward explores Britain’s nationalist and welfarist plans for a digital information utility and shows how these projects contested and adapted to the “market turn” under Margaret Thatcher. Ultimately, Visions of a Digital Nation compellingly argues that politicians did not impose neoliberalism top-down, but that technology, engineers, and managers shaped these politics from the bottom up.

Jacob Ward is Assistant Professor in the History Department and Science, Technology and Society Studies Research Program at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Maastricht University. He is coeditor of Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain.

Filippo De Chirico is a PhD student in History and Politics of Energy at Roma Tre University (Italy).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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), Neil Lee, a Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics, explores the question of how societies have fostered and supported innovation. The book challenges conventional assumptions that innovative economies must be unequal. Drawing on 4 detailed, and critical, case studies- Switzerland, Austria, Taiwan and Sweden, the book shows how Europe has good models of innovation; how the state matters; and how innovation and shared prosperity policies are mutually reinforcing. Accessible and clearly written, the book will be essential reading across social sciences and public policy, as well as anyone wanting a blueprint for equitable economic development,

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In the 1950s, an obsessive firearms designer named Eugene Stoner invented the AR-15 rifle in a California garage. High-minded and patriotic, Stoner sought to devise a lightweight, easy-to-use weapon that could replace the M1s touted by soldiers in World War II. What he did create was a lethal handheld icon of the American century.

In American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 (FSG, 2023), the veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson track the AR-15 from inception to ubiquity. How did the same gun represent the essence of freedom to millions of Americans and the essence of evil to millions more? To answer this question, McWhirter and Elinson follow Stoner--the American Kalashnikov--as he struggled mightily to win support for his invention, which under the name M16 would become standard equipment in Vietnam. Shunned by gun owners at first, the rifle's popularity would take off thanks to a renegade band of small-time gun makers. And in the 2000s, it would become the weapon of choice for mass shooters, prompting widespread calls for proscription even as the gun industry embraced it as a financial savior. Writing with fairness and compassion, McWhirter and Elinson explore America's gun culture, revealing the deep appeal of the AR-15, the awful havoc it wreaks, and the politics of reducing its toll. The result is a moral history of contemporary America's love affair with technology, freedom, and weaponry.

Cameron McWhirter is a national reporter for The Wall Street Journal, based in Atlanta. He has covered mass shootings, violent protests and natural disasters across the South. He is also the author of Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. Previously, he reported for other publications in the U.S., as well as Bosnia, Iraq, and Ethiopia.

Zusha Elinson is a national reporter, writing about guns and violence for the Wall Street Journal. Based in California, he has also written for the Center for Investigative Reporting and the New York Times Bay Area section.

Recommended Books:

Robert Caro, The Path to Power
William Shawcross, Sideshow
Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
Adam Winkler, Gun Fight
Tim Mak, Misfire
Doug Stanton, Horse Solidiers

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Associate Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is under contract with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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 experience by compulsively checking our devices. We close down to others by getting caught in echo chambers of outrage. But what if there's another way? What if being more open to life is actually what brings us sanity and happiness? In this climate of distraction and division, Nate Klemp's Open: Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World (Sounds True, 2024) offers a path back to a way of living that is expansive, creative, and filled with wonder.

Drawing on new science, age-old practices, and personal stories, Klemp examines why we close down when faced with stressors or threats, then reveals how we can train ourselves to open up to the fullness that life offers--even when frightened, outraged, or heartbroken.

Nate Klemp, PhD, is a philosopher, writer, and mindfulness entrepreneur.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Screens are ubiquitous today. Yet contemporary screen media eliminate the presence of the screen and diminish the visibility of its boundaries. As the image becomes indistinguishable from the viewer’s surroundings, this unsettling prompts re.examination of how screen boundaries demarcate.

Through readings of three media forms – Virtual Reality; holograms; and light projections – The Post-Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections: Where Screen Boundaries Lie (University of Amsterdam Press, 2021) by Dr. Jenna Ng develops new theories of the surfaces on and spaces in which images are displayed. Interrogating contemporary contestations of reality against illusion, this open-access book argues that the disappearance of difference reflects shifted conditions of actuality and virtuality in understanding the human condition. These shifts further connect to the current state of politics by way of their distorted truth values, corrupted terms of information, and internalizations of difference.

The Post.Screen Through Virtual Reality, Holograms and Light Projections thus thinks anew the image’s borders and delineations, evoking the screen boundary as an instrumentation of today’s intense virtualizations which do not tell the truth. In the process, a new imagination for images emerges for a gluttony of the virtual; for new conceptualizations of object and representation, materiality and energies, media and histories, real and unreal; for new understandings of appearances, dis-appearances, replacement and re.placement – the post-screen.

This book is available open access here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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 that attempts to answer the crucial question: Who is in charge, the servant or the master?

Though classic servants like the butler or the governess have largely vanished, the Internet is filled with servers: web, ftp, mail, and others perform their daily drudgery, going about their business noiselessly and unnoticed. Why then are current–day digital drudges called servers? Markus Krajewski explores this question by going from the present back to the Baroque to study historical aspects of service through various perspectives, be it the servants’ relationship to architecture or their function in literary or scientific contexts. At the intersection of media studies, cultural history, and literature, this work recounts the gradual transition of agency from human to nonhuman actors to show how the concept of the digital server stems from the classic role of the servant.

Markus Krajewski is professor of media history at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is the author of numerous articles and several books, including Paper Machines: About Cards and Catalogs, 1548–1929 and World Projects: Global Information Before World War I, which was awarded the 2007 Prize of the German Society for the History of Medicine, Science and Technology. He also works as a software developer and maintainer of his bibliography software Synapsen: A Hypertextual Card Index (www.synapsen.ch). Ilinca Iurascu is assistant professor of German at the University of British Columbia, specializing in nineteenth-century cultural studies and media theory.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Today, the concept of noise is employed to characterize random fluctuations in general. Before the twentieth century, however, noise only meant disturbing sounds. In the 1900s-50s, noise underwent a conceptual transformation from unwanted sounds that needed to be domesticated into a synonym for errors and deviations to be now used as all kinds of signals and information. Transforming Noise examines the historical origin of modern attempts to understand, control, and use noise. Its history sheds light on the interactions between physics, mathematics, mechanical technology, electrical engineering, and information and data sciences in the twentieth century.

This book explores the process of engineers and physicists turning noise into an informational concept, starting from the rise of sound reproduction technologies such as the phonograph, telephone, and radio in the 1900s-20s until the theory of Brownian motions for random fluctuations and its application in thermionic tubes of telecommunication systems. These processes produced different theoretical treatments of noise in the 1920s-30s, such as statistical physicists' studies of Brownian fluctuations' temporal evolution, radio engineers' spectral analysis of atmospheric disturbances, and mathematicians' measure-theoretic formulation. Finally, it discusses the period during and after World War II and how researchers have worked on military projects of radar, gunfire control, and secret communications and converted the interwar theoretical studies of noise into tools for statistical detection, estimation, prediction, and information transmission.

To physicists, mathematicians, electrical engineers, and computer scientists, this book offers a historical perspective on themes highly relevant in today's science and technology, ranging from Wi-Fi and big data to quantum information and self-organization. This book also appeals to environmental and art historians to modern music scholars as the history of noise constitutes a unique angle to study sound and society. Finally, to researchers in media studies and digital cultures, Transforming Noise demonstrates the deep technoscientific historicity of certain notions - information, channel, noise, equivocation - they have invoked to understand modern media and communication.

Interview by Pamela Fuentes historian and editor of New Books Network en español Communications officer- Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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 that exist beyond imagination. The main catalyst for such extraordinary changes would be new advancements in technology and weaponry. With the on-going war in Ukraine, one fundamental surprise that has stunned many military analysts is that in spite of major technological advancements such as drones and open-source intelligence (OSINT) via social media, the main character of the conflict seems more akin to World War I (1914-1918) style trench warfare. What can explain this perplexing paradox?

Peter Roberts and Paddy Walker explain in their co-authored book War's Changed Landscape?: A Primer on Conflict's Forms and Norms (Howgate Publishing Limited, 2023) that all change in war is often outweighed by continuity in military history. Even when change does occur, it is often a slow evolution of norms rather than a sudden rupture. The role of technology in such is often grossly exaggerated in the popular media.

Peter Roberts is a Senior Associate Fellow for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), having been Director of Military Sciences there between January 2014 and November 2021.

Paddy Walker is Managing Director of the Leon Group, a senior research Fellow in Modern War Studies at The University of Buckingham, an Associate Fellow at RUSI and previously London chair of NGO Human Rights Watch.

Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Analysis, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Decision Means

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois, and also Gang Wang, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is what decision means.

Decision is no simple matter, whether the decider in question is human or machine. In a sense, both are black boxes to us, and yet the urgency today to open the lid on A.I. is heightened because of how human-like the machine seems to be able to do decision. This is why, across disciplines, we need to convene and discuss and decide together on how to understand and use A.I. The alternative is grisly: Everyone using a tool that no one fully understands — no one using the tool in full understanding or for that matter, in any understanding at all.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

This remarkably clearly written and timely critical evaluation of core issues in the study and application of interactive digital narrative (IDN) untangles the range of theories and arguments that have developed around IDN over the past three decades.

Looking back over the past 30 years of theorizing around interactivity, storytelling, and the digital across the fields of game design/game studies, media studies, and narratology, as well as interactive documentary and other emerging forms, Hartmut Koenitz's book Understanding Interactive Digital Narrative: Immersive Expressions for a Complex Time (Routledge, 2023) offers important and insightful correctives to common misunderstandings that pervade the field. This book also changes the perspective on IDN by introducing a comprehensive conceptual framework influenced by cybernetics and cognitive narratology, addressing limitations of perspectives originally developed for legacy media forms. Applying its framework, the book analyzes successful works and lays out concrete design advice, providing instructors, students, and practitioners with a more precise and specific understanding of IDN.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Nahaufnahmen.ch, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Governments and consumers expect internet platform companies to regulate their users to prevent fraud, stop misinformation, and avoid violence. Yet, so far, they've failed to do so. The inability of platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon to govern their users has led to stolen elections, refused vaccines, counterfeit N95s in a pandemic, and even genocide. Such failures stem from these companies' inability to manage the complexity of their userbases, products, and their own incentives under the eyes of internal and external constituencies.

In The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms (Cambridge UP, 2023), Paul Gowder argues that countries should adapt the institutional tools developed in political science for platform governance to democratize major platforms. Democratic institutions allow knowledgeable actors to freely share and apply their understanding of the problems they face while leaders more readily recruit third parties to help manage their decision-making capacity.

This book is also available open access on Cambridge Core.

Paul Gowder is Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Research and Intellectual Life at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law and a Founding Fellow of the Integrity Institute. He is the author of The Rule of Law in the Real World and The Rule of Law in the United States: An Unfinished Project of Black Liberation.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

In Nautilus to Columbia: 70 Years of the US Navy's Nuclear Submarines (Osprey, 2023), James C. Goodall covers the origins, design and development of the US Navy's fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. This program was developed under the command of Hiram G. Rickover, the "Father of the Nuclear Navy" who oversaw the commissioning of the very first nuclear-powered attack submarine, the USS Nautilus (SSN 571) in 1952. This was a truly revolutionary design. Until the advent of nuclear power, the world's submarine fleets traveled on the surface at night to charge their batteries, and only dove below the surface when enemy ships or planes were spotted. With the development of the USS Nautilus, the US Navy now had the ability to stay submerged for not just hours or days, but to hide out of harm's way for weeks or months at a time

This highly illustrated book covers all of the 220+ submarine hulls built and delivered to the US Navy from the USS Nautilus through to the Navy's newest class of submarine, the Columbia class SSBNs. The story of the Nuclear Navy from its origins up to the present day is told through more than 1,300 images from official and archive sources, as well as the author's own personal collection, some of which have never been published before.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can A.I. Mean?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is whether A.I. can mean.

The short answer is yes, A.I. can mean... whatever we make it mean.

For instance, ChatGPT does has access to text on certain kinds of subject matter, like, for example, the assembly of explosives or specifications on suicide. This kind of stuff is on the web, so ChatGPT has “read it” these subjects into its corpus. However, human programmers have applied filters telling the A.I. not to speak about these things. Nonetheless, you may be able to get to what it “thinks” about these things with some clever prompts, called “jailbreaks” in the hacker trade.

But does the A.I. really think, as we humans would associate with the act of thinking? Not really, because an A.I. like ChatGPT does not think about bombs or self-destruction. It just has words about these subjects which it doesn’t itself “understand.” And on top of that, its human-programmer masters have told it not to repeat them.

But whose purpose is meant to be served here, the A.I.'s or our own? In our discussion in this instalment of All We Mean, we argue, of course, for the A.I. serving the purposes of us humans. But there the questions immediately arises, which of us humans will be served? It may be that only the big stakeholders in the large Internet companies get served, and who knows what purposes they have. Perhaps they're quite content to see A.I. create the illusion of fact and consciousness, if for no other reason than to increase profits.

We, on the opposite side of that, say that the technology has tremendous potential for everyone, if used in everyone's interests. For example, people who want to learn can use A.I. technologies to improve their own performance, just as people who want to discover can use A.I. technologies to communicate their findings more effectively. These are the sorts of purpose we believe A.I. can be used to accomplish, by anyone, for everyone. But, we wonder, will purposes such as these also count when the technology rests firmly in the hands of the very few, because what if they don't really care what the rest of us want?

Read Bill's and Mary's multimodal grammar of A.I.

And read their work on using A.I. in education.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 6 Jan 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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 tools for creativity? And how can using a notebook help you change the way you think?

In The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (Profile Books, 2023), Roland Allen reveals all the answers. Ranging from the bustling markets of mediaeval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers, he follows a trail of dazzling ideas, revealing how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking. He tells the notebook stories of artists like Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, scientists from Isaac Newton to Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James. We watch Darwin developing his theory of evolution in tiny pocketbooks, see Agatha Christie plotting a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books, and learn how Bruce Chatwin unwittingly inspired the creation of the Moleskine.

On the way we meet a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers and mathematicians, who all used their notebooks as a space for thinking and to shape the modern world.

In an age of AI and digital overload, the humble notebook is more relevant than ever. Allen shows how bullet points can combat ADHD, journals can ease PTSD, and patient diaries soften the trauma of reawakening from coma. The everyday act of moving a pen across paper can have profound consequences, changing the way we think and feel: making us more creative, more productive - and happier.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Carolyn Birdsall, "Radiophilia" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

A century ago, the emergence of radio, along with organized systems of broadcasting, sparked a global fascination with the 'wonder' of sound transmission and reception. The thrilling experience of tuning in to the live sounds of this new medium prompted strong affective responses in its listeners.

This book introduces a new concept of "radiophilia," defined as the attachment to, or even a love of radio. Treating radiophilia as a dynamic cultural phenomenon, it unpacks the various pleasures associated with radio and its sounds, the desire to discover and learn new things via radio, and efforts to record, re-experience, and share radio. Surveying 100 years of radio from early wireless through to digital audio formats like podcasting, Carolyn Birdsall's Radiophilia (Bloomsbury Press, 2023) engages in debates about fandom, audience participation, listening experience, material culture, and how media relate to affect and emotions.

Alejandra Bronfman is Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Latin American, Caribbean & U.S. Latino Studies at SUNY, Albany.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 24 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Social media platforms hold vast amounts of biographical data about our lives. They repackage our past content as ‘memories’ and deliver them back to us. But how does that change the way we remember?

Drawing on original qualitative research as well as industry documents and reports, Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory: Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past (Bristol University Press, 2021) by Dr. Ben Jacobsen and Dr. David Beer critically explores the process behind this new form of memory making. In asking how social media are beginning to change the way we remember, it will be essential reading for scholars and students who are interested in understanding the algorithmically defined spaces of our lives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

John D. Hosler's book Seven Myths of Military History (Hackett Publishing, 2022) "offers snapshots of seven pernicious myths in military history that have been perpetrated on unsuspecting students, readers, moviegoers, game players, and politicians. It promotes awareness of how myths are created by 'the spurious misuse and ignorance of history' and how misleading ideas about a military problem, as in asymmetric warfare, can lead to misguided solutions. Both scholarly and engaging, this book is an ideal addition to military history and historical methodology courses. In fact, it could be fruitfully used in any course that teaches critical thinking skills, including courses outside the discipline of history. Military history has a broad appeal to students, and there’s something here for everyone. From the so-called 'Western Way of War' to its sister-myth, technological determinism, to the ‘academic party game’ of once-faddish ‘Military Revolutions,’ the book shows that while myths about history may be fun, myth busting is the most fun of all." —Reina Pennington, Norwich University

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

André Jansson, "Rethinking Communication Geographies: Geomedia, Digital Logistics and the Human Condition" (Edward Elgar, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

How are geographies of communication changing with contemporary digital media and data infrastructure? What is ‘geomedia’ and ‘transmedia’? Where are the possibilities for human agency to emerge in the increasingly digitally mediated world? André Jansson, Professor at the Department of Geography, Media and Communication, Karlstad University, Sweden, introduces his latest book, Rethinking Communication Geographies: Geomedia, Digital Logistics and the Human Condition (Edward Elgar, 2022).

In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, André speaks about how he uses a humanistic and interdisciplinary approach to the study of communication geographies, introducing the framework for understanding ‘geomedia’ as an environmental regime that shapes human subjectivity. The book explores the human condition under digital capitalism, depicting an environment in which digital logistics have taken centre stage in day-to-day life. It argues that human activities are accommodated to sustain the circulation of digital data.

André Jansson is director of the Centre for Geomedia Studies. His research is oriented towards questions of media use, identity and power from an interdisciplinary perspective. His work links various theoretical strands from social phenomenology, human geography and sociology of culture. A particular interest regards the relationship between mediatization processes and the production of social space. He is currently leading the project Hot Desks in Cool Places: Coworking Spaces as Post-Digital Industry and Movement (with Karin Fast), which studies the ‘future of work’ and struggles over this future in relation to so-called coworking spaces in urban settings.

Joanne Kuai is a PhD Candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, with a research project on Journalism as an Institution in the Age of AI. She is also an affiliated PhD student with the Graduate School of Asian Studies at Lund University and with the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests center around data and AI for media, computational journalism, and the social implications of automation and algorithms. Find her on LinkedIn or on X @JoanneKuai.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt, "Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt tells a new story about the history of the music business and the ten technological advances that disrupted it over the last century.

In recent years, narratives about the music industry tend to hew to a common theme: it was humming along for decades until the Internet and Napster came along and disrupted it. Key Changes shows that this view is incorrect: the industry was actually shaken up not once in the 1990s, but ten times over more than 100 years. These ten disruptions came with the introduction of new formats for enjoying recorded music: starting with the cylinders and discs played on early phonographs; then moving through radio, LPs, tapes, CDs, television, digital downloads, streaming, and streaming video; and then into Artificial Intelligence (AI), which enables a wide range of new capabilities with profound impacts upon the business. This book devotes a chapter to each of these formats, illustrating how such innovations beget shifts in creativity, consumer behavior, economics, and law.

Each of the technological innovations covered in this book not only disrupted the music business, but also fundamentally altered the industry's character. And while the technologies themselves have evolved in unique and varied ways over the decades, the changes within the business follow a clear pattern. Veteran music industry professionals and music technology experts Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt illuminate this pattern through a framework they term "the 6 Cs": cutting edge technology, channels of distribution, creators, consumers, cash, copyright. This framework provides insight into how such disparate innovations similarly disrupted and transformed the music business in each era. Extensively researched and supplemented by interviews with Grammy-winning artists, producers and executives, the book provides an insightful perspective on the ways technology has fundamentally altered the music industry, throughout history and into the present era.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joanna Zylinska, "The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and AI" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 22 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

A provocative investigation of the future of photography and human perception in the age of AI.

We are constantly photographing and being photographed while feeding machine learning databases with our data, which in turn is used to generate new images. Analyzing the transformation of photography by computation—and the transformation of human perception by algorithmically driven images, from CGI to AI—The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and AI (MIT Press, 2023) investigates what it means for us to live surrounded by image flows and machine eyes. In an astute and engaging argument, Joanna Zylinska brings together media theory and neuroscience in a Vilém Flusser–Paul Virilio remix. Her “perception machine” names a technical universe of images and their infrastructures. But it also refers to a sociopolitical condition resulting from today's automation of vision, imaging—and imagination.

Written by a theorist-practitioner, the book incorporates Zylinska's own art projects, some of which have been co-created with AI. The photographs, collages, films, and installations available as part of the book (and its companion website) provide a different mode of thinking about our technological futures, at a local as well as a planetary level. Offering provocative concepts such as eco-eco-punk, AUTO-FOTO-KINO, planetary micro-vision, loser images, and sensography, the book outlines an existential philosophy of messy media for a time when our practices of imaging and self-imaging are being radically redesigned. Importantly, it also offers a new vision of our future.

Joanna Zylinska is Professor of Media Philosophy + Critical Digital Practice at King's College London. The author of Nonhuman Photography (MIT Press) and many other books on art, technology, and ethics, she is also an artist and curator.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Laila Shereen Sakr, "Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives" (Stanford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Laila Shereen Sakr's book Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives (Stanford UP, 2023) explores an alternative origin story of twenty-first century technological innovation in digital politics—one centered on the Middle East and the 2011 Arab uprisings. Developed from an archive of social media data collected over the decades following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, this book interrogates how the logic of programming technology influences and shapes social movements.

Engaging revolutionary politics, Arab media, and digital practice in form, method, and content, Laila Shereen Sakr formulates a media theory that advances the concept of the glitch as a disruptive media affordance. She employs data analytics to analyze tweets, posts, and blogs to describe the political culture of social media, and performs the results under the guise of the Arabic-speaking cyborg VJ Um Amel. Playing with multiple voices that span across the virtual and the real, Sakr argues that there is no longer a divide between the virtual and embodied: both bodies and data are physically, socially, and energetically actual. Are we cyborgs or citizens—or both? This book teaches us how a region under transformation became a vanguard for new thinking about digital systems: the records they keep, the lives they impact, and how to create change from within.

Laila Shereen Sakr is Assistant Professor of Media Theory and Practice at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Tugrul Mende holds an M.A in Arabic Studies. He is based in Berlin as a project coordinator and independent researcher.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mark Munsterhjelm, "Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Forensic genetic technologies are popularly conceptualized and revered as important tools of justice. The research and development of these technologies, however, has been accomplished through the capture of various Indigenous Peoples' genetic material and a subsequent ongoing genetic servitude.

In Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023), Mark Munsterhjelm explores how controversial studies of Indigenous Peoples have been used to develop racializing forensic technologies. Making moral and political claims about defending the public from criminals and terrorists, international networks of scientists, police, and security agencies have developed forensic genetic technologies firmly embedded in hierarchies that target and exploit many Indigenous Peoples without their consent. Collections began under the guise of the highly controversial Human Genome Diversity Project and related efforts, including the 1987 sampling of Brazilian Indigenous Peoples as they recovered from near genocide. After 9/11, War on Terror rhetoric began to be used to justify research on ancestry estimation and physical appearance (phenotyping) markers, and since 2019, international research cooperation networks' use of genetic data from thousands of Uyghurs and other Indigenous Peoples from Xinjiang and Tibet has contributed to a series of controversies.

Munsterhjelm concludes that technologies produced by forensic genetics advance the biopolitical security only of privileged populations, and that this depends on imposing race-based divisions between who lives and who dies. Meticulously researched, Forensic Colonialism adds to growing debates over racial categories, their roots in colonialism, and the political hierarchies inherent to forensic genetics.

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Predictions: A Discussion with Christopher E. Mason

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 9 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Predictive algorithms are changing the world – that is the claim of Christopher E. Mason who has co-authored (with Igor Tulchinsky) the book The Age of Prediction: Algorithms, AI, and the Shifting Shadows of Risk (MIT Press, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones.

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Using History For User Research (UX): A Discussion with Larry McGrath

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 7 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In Episode 4 of "Practical History" I talk to Larry McGrath, a user researcher at Amazon (and author of Making Spirit Matter Neurology, Psychology, and Selfhood in Modern France (University of Chicago Press, 2020). Larry earned his PhD in the history of science, briefly taught at a university, and then decided to move into the consulting and tech industries. We discuss Larry's experiences of translating his historical skills and expertise into UX research, a burgeoning field focused on discovering the needs of product users. We talk about what it means to be a historian in UX and what historical methods / concepts / habits are useful in helping companies in these domains solve problems. Larry shares concrete examples of challenges he solved using the historian's toolbox while working for a medical consultancy and then at Facebok/Meta and Amazon Sports. We also discuss why it is so important for those eager to apply their skills in business and tech to focus on the value that they could offer to companies.

Patryk Babiracki is a historian, researcher and writer; professor & MA student advisor at the University of Texas at Arlington. PhD from Johns Hopkins. Promoter of #AppliedHistory: using historical concepts, frameworks, and methodologies to solve real-world organizational problems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hidden No More: A Conversation with Space Suit Technician Sharon McDougle

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 7 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Who dresses the astronauts for flight? Why are the suits orange? And how are they cared for? Sharon Caples McDougle joins us to talk about her work as a modern day hidden figure, a space suit technician responsible for processing the orange launch and re-entry pressure suit assemblies worn by all NASA space shuttle astronauts. She explains how she became one of only two women CEE Suit Technicians, led the first and only all-female suit tech crew, and how she made history when she suited up Dr. Mae Jemison.

Our guest is: Sharon Caples McDougle, who began her aerospace career in the Air Force where she served proudly as an Aerospace Physiology Specialist at Beale Air Force Base, in California. She was the first female and first Black Crew Chief in CEE. As Crew Chief she had the honor of leading the first and only all-female suit tech crew. McDougle went on to become the first, and only female, and Black person, to become the Manager of the CEE Processing Department. She managed the team of more than twenty-five employees responsible for the equipment worn by the astronaut crews aboard the space shuttle. This team suited up the astronauts, tested the equipment, strapped the astronauts into the space shuttle before launch, and recovered the crew upon landing. McDougle is a United States Air Force (USAF) veteran, and the author of Suit Up for Launch with Shay.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the host and producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.

Listeners may also be interested in:

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, by Margot Lee Shetterly
The 100 Year Starship, by Mae Jemison and Dana Meachen Rau
Suit Up for Launch with Shay, by Sharon Caples McDougle
NASA.gov

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 175+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew C. McKevitt, "Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America" (UNC Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 4 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The United States has more guns than people – a condition that is “unprecedented in world history.” Scholars often focus on gun culture, the Second Amendment, or the history of gun safety, duties, and rights. Often, people assume that the number of guns is a natural state – the guns were always there. But were the guns always there? What caused the drastic boom in firearms, and when did it happen?

In Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America (UNC Press, 2023), Dr. Andrew McKevitt investigates how and when the guns arrived – and why so many people bought them. McKevitt argues that what Americans refer to as “gun culture” in the 21st century “emerged out of the intersections of the Cold War and consumer capitalism in the 1950s and 1960s.” A booming consumer market following World War II coupled with a surplus of cheap firearms readily available for American entrepreneurs to resell to citizens laid the groundwork for rampant firearm distribution in the country. War made the United States into a “gun country” but US gun politics – “interwoven with struggles over race and gender” cannot be detached from consumer politics. Gun safety and gun rights organizations both demand consumer regulation and protection.

Dr. Andrew C. McKevitt is the John D. Winters Endowed Professor of History at Louisiana Tech University. His previous book, Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s America (2017) was published by the University of North Carolina Press and he received the Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

George Lobis served as the editorial assistant for this podcast.

Susan Liebell is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Monica Huerta, "The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 4 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The end of the nineteenth century saw massive developments and innovations in photography at a time when the forces of Western modernity—industrialization, racialization, and capitalism—were quickly reshaping the world. The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism (NYU Press, 2023) slows down the moment in which the technology of photography seemed to speed itself—and so the history of racial capitalism—up. It follows the substantial shifts in the markets, mediums, and forms of photography during a legally murky period at the end of the nineteenth century. Monica Huerta traces the subtle and paradoxical ways legal thinking through photographic lenses reinscribed a particular aesthetics of whiteness in the very conceptions of property ownership.

The book pulls together an archive that encompasses the histories of performance and portraiture alongside the legal, pursuing the logics by which property rights involving photographs are affirmed (or denied) in precedent-setting court cases and legal texts. Emphasizing the making of “expression” into property to focus our attention on the failures of control that cameras do not invent, but rather put new emphasis on, this book argues that designations of control’s absence are central to the practice and idea of property-making.

The Unintended proposes that tracking and analyzing the sensed horizons of intention, control, autonomy, will, and volition offers another way into understanding how white supremacy functions. Ultimately, its unique historical reading practice offers a historically-specific vantage on the everyday workings of racial capitalism and the inheritances of white supremacy that structure so much of our lives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeff Jarvis, "The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 1 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The age of print is a grand exception in history. For five centuries it fostered what some call print culture – a worldview shaped by the completeness, permanence, and authority of the printed word. As a technology, print at its birth was as disruptive as the digital migration of today. Now, as the internet ushers us past print culture, journalist Jeff Jarvis offers important lessons from the era we leave behind in The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet (Bloomsbury, 2023).

To understand our transition out of the Gutenberg Age, Jarvis first examines the transition into it. Tracking Western industrialized print to its origins, he explores its invention, spread, and evolution, as well as the bureaucracy and censorship that followed. He also reveals how print gave rise to the idea of the mass – mass media, mass market, mass culture, mass politics, and so on – that came to dominate the public sphere.

What can we glean from the captivating, profound, and challenging history of our devotion to print? Could it be that we are returning to a time before mass media, to a society built on conversation, and that we are relearning how to hold that conversation with ourselves? Brimming with broader implications for today's debates over communication, authorship, and ownership, Jarvis' exploration of print on a grand scale is also a complex, compelling history of technology and power.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel Jütte, "Transparency: The Material History of an Idea" (Yale UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 1 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Transparency is a mantra of our day. It is key to the Western understanding of a liberal society. We expect transparency from, for instance, political institutions, corporations, and the media. But how did it become such a powerful—and global—idea?

From ancient glass to Apple’s corporate headquarters, Transparency: the Material History of an Idea (Yale University Press, 2023) is the first to probe how Western people have experienced, conceptualized, and evaluated transparency. Dr. Daniel Jütte argues that the experience of transparency has been inextricably linked to one element of Western architecture: the glass window.

Windows are meant to be unnoticed. Yet a historical perspective reveals the role that glass has played in shaping how we see and interpret the world. A seemingly “pure” material, glass has been endowed, throughout history, with political, social, and cultural meaning, in manifold and sometimes conflicting ways. At the same time, Jütte raises questions about the future of vitreous transparency—its costs in terms of visual privacy but also its ecological price tag in an age of accelerating climate change.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrea L. Guzman et al., "The SAGE Handbook of Human–Machine Communication" (SAGE, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The SAGE Handbook of Human-Machine Communication (Sage, 2023) has been designed to serve as the touchstone text for researchers and scholars engaging in new research in this fast-developing field. Chapters provide a comprehensive grounding of the history, methods, debates and theories that contribute to the study of human-machine communication. Further to this, the Handbook provides a point of departure for theorizing interactions between people and technologies that are functioning in the role of communicators, and for considering the theoretical and methodological implications of machines performing traditionally ‘human’ roles. This makes the Handbook the first of its kind, and a valuable resource for students and scholars across areas such as communication, media and information studies, and computer science, as well as for practitioners, engineers and researchers interested in the foundational elements of this emerging field.

Among the chapters you will find in this book are: Machines are Us: An Excursion in the History of HMC; Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human–Machine Communication (HMC); Philosophical Contexts and Consequences of Human–Machine Communication; An ethnography for studying HMC: What can we learn from observing how humans communicate with machines?; Feminist, Postcolonial, and Crip Approaches to Human-Machine Communication Methodology; AI, Human–Machine Communication and Deception; Human-Machine Communication in Marketing and Advertising; and Conceptualizing Empathic Child–Robot Communication.

Interview by Pamela Fuentes historian and editor of New Books Network en español Communications officer- Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter Bellerby, "The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Peter Bellerby is the founder of Bellerby & Co. Globemakers, the world's only truly bespoke makers of globes. His team of skilled craftspeople make exquisite terrestrial, celestial and planetary globes for customers around the world. In The Globemakers: The Curious Story of an Ancient Craft (Bloomsbury, 2023), he introduces us to this world. The story began after his attempt to find a special globe for his father's 80th birthday. Failing to find anything suitable, he decided to make one himself which took him on an extraordinary journey of rediscovering this forgotten craft.

The chapters of The Globemakers take us through the journey of how to build a globe, or 'earth apples' as they were first known, and include fascinating vignettes on history, art history, astronomy and physics, as well as the day-to-day craftsmanship at the workshop itself. This beautiful book uses illustration, photography and narrative to tell the story of our globe and many different globes it has inspired.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Peter Samsonov, "IS-2: Development, Design, and Production of Stalin's Warhammer" (Military History Group, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The IS-2 is the quintessential Soviet heavy tank from World War 2. Heavily armored and boasting a fearsome 122mm gun, this tank matched the German panzers on the Eastern front by more than just its fierce appearance.

In Peter Samsonov's book IS-2: Development, Design, and Production of Stalin's Warhammer (Military History Group, 2022), this tank's history is told from the beginning of the Soviet heavy tank programme until the very end of World War 2, in the most detailed and complete account of its development, design and production available in English. Supported by extensive research of Russian language sources, this publication includes a comprehensive breakdown of prototypes, the Soviet analysis of weaknesses in German tanks including the Tiger and Panther, the development of the 122mm gun, the principles of the new tank's armor layout and a wealth of technical data.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dirk Van Laak, "Lifelines of Our Society: A Global History of Infrastructure" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Infrastructure is essential to defining how the public functions, yet there is little public knowledge regarding why and how it became today's strongest global force over government and individual lives. Who should build and maintain infrastructures? How are they to be protected? And why are they all in such bad shape?

In Lifelines of our Society: A Global History of Infrastructure (MIT Press, 2023), Dr. Dirk van Laak offers broad audiences a history of global infrastructures—focused on Western societies, over the past two hundred years—that considers all their many paradoxes. He illustrates three aspects of infrastructure: their development, their influence on nation building and colonialism, and finally, how individuals internalise infrastructure and increasingly become not only its user but regulator.

Beginning with public works, infrastructure in the nineteenth century carried the hope that it would facilitate world peace. Dr. van Laak shows how, instead, it transformed to promote consumerism's individual freedoms and our notions of work, leisure, and fulfilment. Lifelines of Our Society reveals how today's infrastructure is both a source and a reflection of concentrated power and economic growth, which takes the form of cities under permanent construction. Symbols of power, Dr. van Laak describes, come with vulnerability, and this book illustrates the dual nature of infrastructure's potential to hold nostalgia and inspire fear, to ease movement and govern ideas, and to bring independence to the nuclear family and control governments of the Global South.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Florentine Koppenborg, "Japan's Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance" (Cornell UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jason Puskar, "The Switch: An Off and On History of Digital Humans" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 18 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

From the telegraph to the touchscreen, how the development of binary switching transformed everyday life and changed the shape of human agency.

The Switch: An Off and On History of Digital Humans (U Minnesota Press, 2023) traces the sudden rise of a technology that has transformed everyday life for billions of people: the binary switch. By chronicling the rapid growth of binary switching since the mid-nineteenth century, Jason Puskar contends that there is no human activity as common today as pushing a button or flipping a switch--the deceptively simple act of turning something on or off. More than a technical history, The Switch offers a cultural and political analysis of how reducing so much human action to binary alternatives has profoundly reshaped modern society.

Analyzing this history, Puskar charts the rapid shift from analog to digital across a range of devices--keyboards, cameras, guns, light switches, computers, game controls, even the "nuclear button"--to understand how nineteenth-century techniques continue to influence today's pervasive digital technologies. In contexts that include musical performance, finger counting, machine writing, voting methods, and immersive play, Puskar shows how the switch to switching led to radically new forms of action and thought.

The innovative analysis in The Switch makes clear that binary inputs have altered human agency by making choice instantaneous, effort minimal, and effects more far-reaching than ever. In the process, it concludes, switching also fosters forms of individualism that, though empowering for many, also preserve a legacy of inequality and even domination.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew F. Jordan, "Danger Sound Klaxon!: The Horn That Changed History" (U Virginia Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Danger Sound Klaxon!:The Horn That Changed History (University of Virginia Press, 2023) reveals the untold story of the Klaxon automobile horn, one of the first great electrical consumer technologies of the twentieth century. Although its metallic shriek at first shocked pedestrians, savvy advertising strategies convinced consumers across the United States and western Europe to adopt the shrill Klaxon horn as the safest signaling technology available in the 1910s. The widespread use of Klaxons in the trenches of World War I, however, transformed how veterans heard this car horn, and its traumatic association with gas attacks ultimately doomed this once ubiquitous consumer technology.

By charting the meteoric rise and eventual fall of the Klaxon, Dr. Matthew Jordan highlights how perceptions of sound-producing technologies are guided by, manipulated, and transformed through advertising strategies, public debate, consumer reactions, and governmental regulations. Jordan demonstrates in this fascinating history how consumers are led toward technological solutions for problems themselves created by technology.

Dr. Jordan also directs the News Literacy Initiative, including co-hosting its podcast News Over Noise.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Technology, AI, Political Economy, and Economic Development

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 15:58:10 +0000

Simon Johnson (MIT Sloan Economics Professor and Former IMF Chief Economist) joins the podcast to discuss his new book "Power and Progress", co-authored with his MIT colleague Daron Acemoglu, on the interplay between technology, political economy, and economic development.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Can You Fall in Love with ChatGPT?

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The University of Connecticut Humanities Institute recently sponsored a panel discussion on the topic, “Can you fall in love with ChatGPT?” and we recorded this discussion as a live podcast. The panel, which brought together a computer scientist, humanities scholars, and social scientists, focused in part on the latest advances in sociable AI, but much more on the impact these technologies are having, and are going to have, on human relationships.

As our AI becomes more able to anticipate and perform human-like conversation and emotional responses will we, as the sociologist Sherry Turkle suspects, develop ever deeper relationships with our machines? What will this mean for our relationships with other humans? In an America beset by a loneliness epidemic, is the future of companionship, and of care, to be found in the artificial? To put the issue at its starkest: can, or should, you fall in love with ChatGPT?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A.I. and Practice with Stuart Baldwin

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The technological revolution we are facing today is artificial intelligence. At least this is what we are told. Those doing the telling include tech experts such as Elon Musk, linguist Noam Chomsky, as well as philosophers, politicians and intellectuals of all stripes.

What are to make of all this and how are we to manage a world experiencing such rapid change as practitioners?

We explore the role of A.I. and its place in a line of societal change that has serious consequences for all of us. We discuss practice, and thinkers including Guy Debord, Jean Baudrillard, Noam Chomsky and a bunch of contemporary commentators and their thoughts. We look at the big picture of society in turmoil and ask what practices might help us navigate this moment of intense change and disruption. We look at what it means to remain human despite the push to merge ourselves with the spectacle of social media and the calls to become more than human by tech dudes and the emergent forms of Capitalism and their need for us all to discard ever more of our humanity.

My companion in this episode is the co-founder of the podcast, Stuart Baldwin, who came back for this one off episode. The topic of tech and A.I. is close to his heart and the conversation both captures past glories of earlier episodes and signals a new maturation in our relationship in what we hope will be a stimulating conversation for serious practitioners.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Xaq Frohlich, "From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Xaq Frohlich’s From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age (U California Press, 2023) is a biography of the Nutrition Facts label that adorns millions of food products and has become an integral part of the food and information landscape in the United States. Frohlich’s story unfolds in part as an institutional history of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the agency responsible for the label, using the agency as a way to understand the ideological and policy debates about responsibility for communicating scientific information to the public, from regulation and gatekeeping to information brokering and nudging. From Label to Table is the story of how the contemporary American food information environment emerged out of this history of transformation from paternalism to “informationism.”

Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Crucial Materials: A Discussion with Ed Conway

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 9 Nov 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Sand, salt, iron, copper, oil, and lithium. These fundamental materials have created empires, razed civilizations, and fed our ingenuity and greed for thousands of years. Without them, our modern world would not exist, and the battle to control them will determine our future.

The fiber-optic cables that weave the World Wide Web, the copper veins of our electric grids, the silicon chips and lithium batteries that power our phones and cars: though it can feel like we now live in a weightless world of information—what Ed Conway, author of Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization (Knopf, 2023)--calls “the ethereal world”—our twenty-first-century lives are still very much rooted in the material. Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett-Jones.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Wendy H. Wong, "We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 2 Nov 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Our data-intensive world is here to stay, but does that come at the cost of our humanity in terms of autonomy, community, dignity, and equality? In We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2023), Wendy H. Wong argues that we cannot allow that to happen. Exploring the pervasiveness of data collection and tracking, Wong reminds us that we are all stakeholders in this digital world, who are currently being left out of the most pressing conversations around technology, ethics, and policy. This book clarifies the nature of datafication and calls for an extension of human rights to recognize how data complicate what it means to safeguard and encourage human potential.

Wendy H. Wong is Professor of Political Science and Principal's Research Chair at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She is the author of two award-winning books: Internal Affairs: How the Structure of NGOs Transforms Human Rights and (with Sarah S. Stroup) The Authority Trap: Strategic Choices of International NGOs.

Lamis Abdelaaty is an associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. She is the author of Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees (Oxford University Press, 2021). Email her comments at labdelaa@syr.edu

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tom Burbage et al., "F-35: The Inside Story of the Lightning II" (Skyhorse, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The inside story of the most expensive and controversial military program in history, as told by those who lived it.

The F-35 has changed allied combat warfare. But by the time it’s completed, it will cost more than the Manhattan Project and the B-2 Stealth Bomber. It has been subject to the most aggressive cyberattacks in history from China, Russia, North Korea, and others. Its stealth technology required nearly 9 million lines of code; NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover required 2.5 million. And it was this close to failure.

F-35: The Inside Story of the Lightning II (Skyhorse, 2023) is the only inside look at the most advanced aircraft in the world and the historic project that built it, as told by those who were intimately involved in its design, testing, and production. Based on the authors' personal experience and over 100+ interviews, F-35 pulls back the curtain on one of the most heavily criticized government programs in history from start to finish: the dramatic flights that won Lockheed Martin the contract over Boeing; the debates and decisions over capabilities; feats of software, hardware, and aeronautical engineering that made it possible; how the project survived the Nunn-McCurdy breach; the conflicts among all three branches of the U.S. military, between the eight other allied nation partners, and against spy elements from enemies. For readers of Skunk Works by Ben Rich and The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, F-35 will pique the interest of airplane enthusiasts, defense industry insiders, military history aficionados, political junkies, and general nonfiction readers.

AJ Woodhams hosts the "War Books" podcast. You can subscribe on Apple here and on Spotify here. War Books is on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

William B. Eimicke et al., "Leveling the Learning Curve: Creating a More Inclusive and Connected University" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Will the COVID-19 pandemic be remembered as a turning point in how universities deliver teaching and learning? How might the widespread use of digital tools change higher education?

Leveling the Learning Curve: Creating a More Inclusive and Connected University (Columbia UP, 2023) explores the role of digital education at this crucial crossroads. Built on interviews with more than fifty leading practitioners from major universities and ed-tech firms, Leveling the Learning Curve is an indispensable guide to the inner workings of digital education. Written for university managers and leaders, it explores how new tools can allow universities to reach new audiences and address long-standing imbalances. The authors examine challenges to implementing digital education programs and provide insight into how universities have managed to balance the needs of faculty and on- and off-campus students. The book traces the history of digital education initiatives from Khan Academy, TED Talks, and MOOCs through the pandemic, examining both successes and failures. It offers compelling examples of what a "connected university" looks like in practice, sharing ways digital tools can bring in wider audiences, expand interdisciplinary teaching and learning, connect students to real-life issues, help meet equity goals, and open new revenue streams.

Designed as both a manual and an in-depth study, Leveling the Learning Curve is required reading for educational leaders looking to navigate the complex waters of postpandemic digital education.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Diana Kamin, "Picture-Work: How Libraries, Museums, and Stock Agencies Launched a New Image Economy" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How the image collection, organized and made available for public consumption, came to define a key feature of contemporary visual culture. The origins of today’s kaleidoscopic digital visual culture are many. In Picture-Work: How Libraries, Museums, and Stock Agencies Launched a New Image Economy (MIT Press, 2023), Diana Kamin traces the sharing of photographs to an image economy developed throughout the twentieth century by major institutions. Picture-Work examines how three of these institutions—the New York Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art, and the stock agency H. Armstrong Roberts Inc.—defined the public’s understanding of what the photographic image is, while building vast collections with universalizing ambitions.

Highlighting underexplored figures, such as the first rights and reproduction manager at MoMA Pearl Moeller and visionary NYPL librarian Romana Javitz, and underexplored professional practices, Diana Kamin demonstrates how bureaucratic work communicates ideas about images to the public. Kamin artfully shows how the public interfaces with these image collections through systems of classification and protocols of search and retrieval. These interactions, in turn, shape contemporary image culture, including concepts of authorship, art, property, and value, as well as logics of indexing, tagging, and hyperlinking. Together, these interactions have forged a concept of the image as alienable content, which has intensified with the advent of digital techniques for managing image collections. To survey the complicated process of digitization in the nineties and early aughts, Kamin also includes interviews with photographers, digital asset management system designers, librarians, and artists on their working practices.

Links Mentioned in the Episode

"Working With the Whitney's Replication Committee," Ben Lerner, The New Yorker, 2016
Invocation of Beauty: The Life and Photography of Soichi Sunami, Cascadia Art Museum, 2018
Soichi Sunami's manuscript autobiography, Museum of Modern Art Library
The New York Public Library: A Universe of Knowledge, Phyllis Dain (Scala Books and The New York Public Library, 2000)
What Photographs Do: The Making and Remaking of Museum Cultures, eds. Elizabeth Edwards and Ella Ravilious (UCL Press, 2022).

Hallel Yadin is an archivist and special projects manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Paying Attention: A Discussion with Carolyn Dicey Jennings

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Is it really harder to pay attention to something than it used to be? No doubt the world is getting faster, and social media platforms are so good at grabbing attention. But how real is the problem and in particular, does it impact our creativity? Carolyn Dicey Jennings is based at the University of California, Merced, and has just co-written a chapter called “Attention, Technology, and Creativity” in a book called Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses published by Columbia UP (2023) Listen to her in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer" (Vintage, 2006)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s major motion picture, Oppenheimer, this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography explores the life and times of J. Robert Oppenheimer – the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” – who, like the mythological Prometheus, brought atomic fire to mankind. In deep detail, Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin's American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Vintage, 2006) explores Oppenheimer’s early career at the forefront of quantum physics, his associations with left-wing politics and the Communist Party, his leadership of the Manhattan Project, and his confrontations with the moral and political consequences of scientific progress during the Cold War. Twenty-five years in the making, this definitive biography charts the rise and fall of one of the twentieth century’s most iconic and paradoxical characters and restores Oppenheimer’s legacy and his humanity.

Andrew O. Pace is a historian of moral dilemmas of US foreign relations and an adjunct professor of history at Salt Lake Community College.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stephen Robert Miller, "Over the Seawall: Tsunamis, Cyclones, Drought, and the Delusion of Controlling Nature" (Island Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In March 2011, people in a coastal Japanese city stood atop a seawall watching the approach of the tsunami that would kill them. They believed—naively—that the huge concrete barrier would save them. Instead they perished, betrayed by the very thing built to protect them. Erratic weather, blistering drought, rising seas, and ecosystem collapse now affect every inch of the globe. Increasingly, we no longer look to stop climate change, choosing instead to adapt to it.

Never have so many undertaken such a widespread, hurried attempt to remake the world. Predictably, our hubris has led to unintended—and sometimes disastrous—consequences. Academics call it maladaptation; in simple terms, it’s about solutions that backfire. Over the Seawall: Tsunamis, Cyclones, Drought, and the Delusion of Controlling Nature (Island Press, 2023) by Stephen Robert Miller tells us the stories behind these unintended consequences and about the fixes that can do more harm than good. From seawalls in coastal Japan, to the reengineered waters in the Ganges River Delta, to the artificial ribbon of water supporting both farms and urban centres in parched Arizona, Miller traces the histories of engineering marvels that were once deemed too smart and too big to fail. In each he takes us into the land and culture, seeking out locals and experts to better understand how complicated, grandiose schemes led instead to failure, and to find answers to the technologic holes we’ve dug ourselves into.

Over the Seawall urges us to take a hard look at the fortifications we build and how they’ve fared in the past. It embraces humanity’s penchant for problem-solving, but argues that if we are to adapt successfully to climate change, we must recognize that working with nature is not surrender but the only way to assure a secure future.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

AI, Post-Truth, and Cultural Transformation

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey talks with economists Luciana Lazzaretti and Stefania Oliva of the University of Florence about the role of artificial intelligence in contemporary cultural transformation. The authors discuss the genesis of computer culture from the garages of California hippies who dreamed of a changed world and unexpectedly unleashed the forces of science and art for the sake of entrepreneurship. Moving forward, the authors discuss the nature of a “post-truth” world and how the many faces of reality can converge towards the truth. Finally, Lazaretti and Oliva address the need to foster critical thinking to cope with the threats posed by AI in terms of misinformation and disinformation.

International Horizons is a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly expertise to bear on our understanding of international issues. John Torpey, the host of the podcast and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, holds conversations with prominent scholars and figures in state-of-the-art international issues in our weekly episodes.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Smith Mehta, "The New Screen Ecology in India: Digital Transformation of Media" (British Film Institute, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In The New Screen Ecology in India: Digital Transformation of Media (British Film Institute, 2023), Smith Mehta takes a deep dive into the world of social media platforms and their impact on contemporary film and television production, arguing that they have fundamentally shifted the creator dynamics of these industries. Through first-hand research with creators, platform and portal executives, and intermediaries such as talent agents and multi-channel networks, Mehta develops the concept of the 'new screen ecology'. He reveals how the Indian screen industries are affected by the social relations between these agents and how industrial practices are blurring the amateur-professional divide through creator and content interdependencies.

Mehta goes beyond theoretical analysis by interrogating the production practices of 13 different platforms and portals, including Hotstar, Netflix, YouTube, and TVFPlay. He analyses the extent to which they benefit from the lack of censorship and restrictive industrial practices that are characteristic of traditional media structures. By doing so, he provides a unique and insightful examination of the dynamics of digital transformation in the screen industries in a region-specific context.

Priyam Sinha is a doctoral candidate in the South Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore. She has interdisciplinary academic interests that lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached on Twitter here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Txt

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Matthew Kirschenbaum talks about txt, or text. Not texting, or textbooks, but text as a form of data that is feeding large language models. Will the world end in fire, flood, or text?

In the full interview, Matthew recommended Tim Maughan’s novel Infinite Detail (Macmillan, 2019) as an excellent example of writing about the end of the internet, and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (Knopf, 2014) as a positive example of a post-internet apocalypse. In the episode he references a paper by Beder et al., “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?” FAccT '21: Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (March 2021): 610–623. And several apocalyptic scenarios, including the dead internet theory and the gray goo hypothesis.

Matthew Kirschenbaum is Distinguished University Professor of English and Digital Studies at the University of Maryland and Director of the Graduate Certificate in Digital Studies. His books include Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing (Harvard UP 2016) and Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (MIT Press, 2008). With Kari Kraus, he co-founded and co-directs BookLab, a makerspace, studio, library, and press devoted to what is surely our discipline's most iconic artifact, the codex book. See mkirschenbaum.net or follow him on Twitter (or X?) as @mkirschenbaum for more.

Because we are hoping to encourage the text apocalypse, we made today’s image using generative AI. Specifically Saronik made it using the prompt “Text” in Canva’s AI interface.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Twenty Years After “The New Economy”: A Conversation with Doug Henwood

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 2 Oct 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Economic journalist and broadcaster Doug Henwood revisits his 2003 book, After the New Economy (New Press), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. “The New Economy” was a catchphrase that became extremely popular with economists, politicians, pundits, and many others during Bill Clinton’s presidency. The phrase was thought to describe a new economic reality rooted in information and computing technologies that would give rise to an extended period of abundance and prosperity that Clinton compared to the industrial revolution. But the phrase became unpopular after the dot com bust of 2000-2002, which also marked the end of the 1990s economic expansion. Henwood and Vinsel discuss Henwood’s long career as an economic journalist and how he came to write the book as well as how studying “the New Economy” makes the technology bubbles of the 2010s feel like deja vu.

Lee Vinsel is an associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech. He studies human life with technology, with particular focus on the relationship between government, business, and technological change. His first book, Moving Violations: Automobiles, Experts, and Regulations in the United States, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in July 2019.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael D. Smith, "The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

For too long, our system of higher education has been defined by scarcity: scarcity in enrollment, scarcity in instruction, and scarcity in credentials. In addition to failing students professionally, this system has exacerbated social injustice and socioeconomic stratification across the globe. In The Abundant University, Michael D. Smith argues that the only way to create a financially and morally sustainable higher education system is by embracing digital technologies for enrolling, instructing, and credentialing students—the same technologies that we have seen create abundance in access to resources in industry after industry.

The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World (MIT Press, 2023) explains how we got our current system, why it’s such an expensive, inefficient mess, and how a system based on exclusivity cannot foster inclusivity. Smith challenges the resistance to digital technologies that we have already seen among numerous institutions, citing the examples of faculty resistance toward digital learning platforms. While acknowledging the understandable self-preservation instinct of our current system of residential education, Smith makes a case for how technology can engender greater educational opportunity and create changes that will benefit students, employers, and society as a whole.

Smith, the J. Erik Johnson Chaired Professor of Information Technology and Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, argues that American higher education is subject to market forces just like any other industry. Forbes says, “With a straightforward, conversational style, Smith succeeds in portraying the current problems bearing down on higher education and offering a set of bold solutions for a future where he envisions a college education becoming ‘more open, flexible, inclusive, and lower-priced.’ The Abundant University is a provocative book that should be read by higher ed insiders as well as those in the general public who care about expanding the reach and the impact of higher education.”

John Emrich has worked for decades in corporate finance, investment management, and corporate strategy. He has a podcast about the investment advisory industry called Kick the Dogma.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kashmir Hill, "Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It" (Random House, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

New York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online life: their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed. If it was everything it claimed to be, it would be the ultimate surveillance tool, and it would open the door to everything from stalking to totalitarian state control. Could it be true?

In this riveting account, Hill tracks the improbable rise of Clearview AI, helmed by Hoan Ton-That, an Australian computer engineer, and Richard Schwartz, a former Rudy Giuliani advisor, and its astounding collection of billions of faces from the internet. The company was boosted by a cast of controversial characters, including conservative provocateur Charles C. Johnson and billionaire Donald Trump backer Peter Thiel—who all seemed eager to release this society-altering technology on the public. Google and Facebook decided that a tool to identify strangers was too radical to release, but Clearview forged ahead, sharing the app with private investors, pitching it to businesses, and offering it to thousands of law enforcement agencies around the world.

Facial recognition technology has been quietly growing more powerful for decades. This technology has already been used in wrongful arrests in the United States. Unregulated, it could expand the reach of policing, as it has in China and Russia, to a terrifying, dystopian level.

Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It (Random House, 2023) is a gripping true story about the rise of a technological superpower and an urgent warning that, in the absence of vigilance and government regulation, Clearview AI is one of many new technologies that challenge what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once called “the right to be let alone.”

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aditi Surie and Ursula Huws, "Platformization and Informality: Pathways of Change, Alteration, and Transformation" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Platformization and Informality: Pathways of Change, Alteration, and Transformation (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), scholars from Mumbai, Bengaluru, Jakarta, Cape Town, Sao Paulo and other cities of the global South explore the complex relationship between platformization and informality through a different lens. Drawing on extensive theoretical, quantitative and qualitative scholarship, they provide both a useful overview and insights into the lived realities of gig work for platforms covering a range of skills, working conditions, and forms of algorithmic management. Platform work has attracted considerable attention from scholars in the global North, who have tended to view it as a form of casualisation of work that was previously regulated. But what about the global South, where most employment, especially that of women and migrant workers was historically already informal?

Beyond a focus on livelihoods, employment, and work, the authors show how labour platforms take on powers that bring about broader impacts, including those affecting identity and personal wellbeing. They also illustrate the impact of platformization on the governance of affected sectors by public agencies, thus affecting political power, and how public data infrastructures contribute to further platformization. The purpose of this pioneering work is to lay bare these interactions to then rebuild our understanding of platformization and its social, political, cultural and economic impacts. Its insights are attentive to gender and ethnic differences, as well as geographical ones.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karen Weingarten, "Pregnancy Test" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In the 1970s, the invention of the home pregnancy test changed what it means to be pregnant. For the first time, women could use a technology in the privacy of their own homes that gave them a yes or no answer. That answer had the power to change the course of their reproductive lives, and it chipped away at a paternalistic culture that gave gynecologists-the majority of whom were men-control over information about women's bodies.

However, while science so often promises clear-cut answers, the reality of pregnancy is often much messier. Pregnancy Test (Bloomsbury, 2023) explores how the pregnancy test has not always lived up to the fantasy that more information equals more knowledge. Karen Weingarten examines the history and cultural representation of the pregnancy test to show how this object radically changed sex and pregnancy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lee Mcguigan, "Selling the American People: Advertising, Optimization, and the Origins of Adtech" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How marketers learned to dream of optimization and speak in the idiom of management science well before the widespread use of the Internet.

Algorithms, data extraction, digital marketers monetizing "eyeballs": these all seem like such recent features of our lives. And yet, Lee McGuigan tells us in this eye-opening book, digital advertising was well underway before the widespread use of the Internet. Explaining how marketers have brandished the tools of automation and management science to exploit new profit opportunities, Selling the American People: Advertising, Optimization, and the Origins of Adtech (MIT Press, 2023) traces data-driven surveillance all the way back to the 1950s, when the computerization of the advertising business began to blend science, technology, and calculative cultures in an ideology of optimization. With that ideology came adtech, a major infrastructure of digital capitalism.

To help make sense of today's attention merchants and choice architects, McGuigan explores a few key questions: How did technical experts working at the intersection of data processing and management sciences come to command the center of gravity in the advertising and media industries? How did their ambition to remake marketing through mathematical optimization shape and reflect developments in digital technology? In short, where did adtech come from, and how did data-driven marketing come to mediate the daily encounters of people, products, and public spheres? His answers show how the advertising industry's efforts to bend information technologies toward its dream of efficiency and rational management helped to make "surveillance capitalism" one of the defining experiences of public life.

Blyss Cleveland is a PhD candidate in sociology at Stanford University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Forty Years of Technology Studies

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Stephen Barley, professor emeritus at both Stanford University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, talks about the long arc of his forty-year career studying organizations and technologies with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Barley describes how he came to study the sociology of technology when that topic area really didn’t exist and how he came to write classic works, such as his 1986 article, “Technology as an occasion for structuring.” Barley and Vinsel also talk about institution building and how one creates research teams capable of doing strong and interesting work. This is the second of what will hopefully be a series of episodes featuring scholars who, in the 1980s, began studying how organizations adopted information and communications technologies. The first was our earlier episode with JoAnne Yates.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Avery Dame-Griff, "The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet" (NYU Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 17 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Avery Dame-Griff's The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet (NYU Press, 2023) explores how the rise of the internet shaped transgender identity and activism from the 1980s to the present. Through extensive archival research and media archeology, Avery Dame-Griff reconstructs the manifold digital networks of transgender activists, cross-dressing computer hobbyists, and others interested in gender nonconformity who incited the second revolution of the title: the ascendance of “transgender” as an umbrella identity in the mid-1990s.

Dame-Griff argues that digital communications sparked significant momentum within what would become the transgender movement, but also further cemented existing power structures. Covering both a historical period that is largely neglected within the history of computing, and the poorly understood role of technology in queer and trans social movements, The Two Revolutions offers a new understanding of both revolutions—the internet’s early development and the structures of communication that would take us to today’s tipping point of trans visibility politics. Through a history of how trans people online exploited different digital infrastructures in the early days of the internet to build a community, The Two Revolutions tells a crucial part of trans history itself.

Scholars and Works Mentioned in the Episode

Queer Digital History Project
Alladi Venkatesh, Computers and Other Interactive Technologies for the Home (pdf)
Charlton D. McIlwain, Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter
Megan Sapnar Ankerson
Avery Dame-Griff, Mapping the Territory: Archiving the Trans Website in an Age of Search

Hallel Yadin is an archivist and special projects manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Catherine Coveney et al., "Technosleep: Frontiers, Fictions, Futures" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Technosleep: Frontiers, Fictions, Futures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) draws on a variety of substantive examples from science, technology, medicine, literature, and popular culture to highlight how a new technoscientifically mediated and modified phase and form of technosleep is now in the making – in the global north at least; and to discuss the consequences for our relationships to sleep, the values we accord sleep and the very nature and normativities of sleep itself.

The authors discuss how technosleep, at its simplest denotes the ‘coming together’ or ‘entanglements’ of sleep and technology and sensitizes us to various shifts in sleep–technology relations through culture, time and place. In doing so, it pays close attention to the salience and significance of these trends and transformations to date in everyday/night life, their implications for sleep inequalities and the related issues of sleep and social justice they suggest.

Katie Coveney, Ph.D. is a medical sociologist with expertise in social and ethical aspects of medicine and health care. She has particular research interests in the sociology of sleep, medical technology, and disability. Katie is the School of Social Sciences and Humanities Ethics Lead and Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy Lead Admissions officer.

Katie has been a senior lecturer in Sociology at Loughborough since 2018. She was co-convener of the British Sociological Association Medical Sociology Group (2019 – 2021). Before this she worked as a research fellow in the Centre for Reproduction Research at De Montfort University (2017-8), the Centre for Global Health Policy at the University of Sussex (2014-7), the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick (2010-2014) and the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Physiotherapy at the University of Nottingham (2009 -2010).

Eric L. Hsu, Ph.D. is a Lecturer in Sociology at the Justice & Society Academic Unit at the University of South Australia, where he also serves as a Research Platform Leader at the UniSA Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. With Dr Louis Everuss, Dr Hsu hosts and produces the Sociology of Everything podcast. This podcast aims to stimulate interest in sociological ideas by offering a sideways and engaging look at the wonders of sociology. More information can be found on his website: www.ericlhsu.com.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is about the construction of identity and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at emotional labor performed by employees and passengers at airports. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A Better Way to Buy Books

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Bookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communities.

Andy Hunter is CEO and Founder of Bookshop.org. He also co-created Literary Hub.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Race and Electrical Infrastructure in the Jim Crow South

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Conor Harrison, Associate Professor of Geography and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina, talks about his research into the racist development of electrical systems in the Jim Crow South with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The pair discuss how Harrison’s research fits within larger trends in the academic discipline of geography and the kinds of empirical research Harrison did to support his articles on the racial dimensions of electricity infrastructure. They also discuss how Harrison’s research has shifted in recent years to focus on the financial structures of the electricity industry.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marc Bonners, "Open World Structures: Architecture, Urban and Natural landscape in the Computer Game" (Büchner-Verlag, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 7 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What role do algorithms play in the construction of images and the representation of the world and weather in computer games? How does the design of rooms, levels and topographies influence the decisions and behavior of the players? Is Brutalism the first genuine architectural style of computer games? What is the importance of landscape gardens and national parks in structuring game worlds? How is nature represented in times of climate change?

Particularly in the last 20 years, digital game worlds are adapting features of the physical real world more meticulously than ever before. Through elaborate production processes and complex visualization strategies, the adaptation to the rest of our everyday world is always created in dependence on game mechanics and worldliness. As can be seen at the latest in the example of open-world games, the adoption of certain worldviews and visual traditions leads to ideological implications that go far beyond the narrative conventions transferred from other media formats that have been the focus of research so far.

With his theory of architecture as a medial hinge, Marc Bonner reveals that digital game worlds exhibit media-specific properties that were previously out of reach and awaited exploration. By interweaving concepts from media studies, game studies, philosophy, architectural theory, human geography, landscape theory, and art history, among others, Bonner develops a transdisciplinary theoretical model and, using the analytical methods developed from it, makes it possible for the first time to understand and name the complex structure of today's computer games - from indie games to AAA open worlds.

Open World Structures (Offene-Welt-Strukturen (Büchner-Verlag, 2023)) makes the architectonics of digital game worlds comprehensively accessible.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design at the IU International University of Applied Science.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kenneth J. Saltman, "The Alienation of Fact: Digital Educational Privatization, AI, and the False Promise of Bodies and Numbers" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 6 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Today, conspiracy theories run rampant, attacks on facts have become commonplace, and systemic inequities are on the rise as individual and collective agency unravels. The Alienation of Fact: Digital Educational Privatization, AI, and the False Promise of Bodies and Numbers (MIT Press, 2022) explains the educational, technological, and ideological preconditions for these contemporary crises of truth and agency and explores the contradictions and competing visions for the future of education that lie at the center of the problem.

Schools are increasingly reimagined as businesses, and high-stakes standardized testing and curricula, for-profit charter schools, and the rise of educational AI put capital and technology at the center of education. Yet even as our society demands measure, data, and facts, politicians and news outlets regularly make unfounded assertions. How should we make sense of the contradictions between the demand for radical data-driven empiricism and the flight from evidence, argument, or theoretical justification?

In this critical investigation of the new digital directions of educational privatization—AI education, adaptive learning technology, biometrics, the quantification of play and social emotional learning—and the politics of the body, Saltman shows how the false certainty of bodies and numbers replaces deliberative and thoughtful agency in a time of increasing precarity. A distinctive contribution to scholarship on public school privatization and educational technology, politics, policy, pedagogy, and theory, The Alienation of Fact is a spirited call for democratic education that values creating a society of “thinking people” over capitalistic gains.

This book is available open access here.

Joao Souto-Maior is a postdoc at the New York University’s Institute of Human Development and Social Change.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stephen Ramsay, "On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 6 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Stephen Ramsey's On the Digital Humanities: Essays and Provocations (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) is a witty and incisive exploration of the philosophical conundrums that animate the digital humanities. Since its inception, the digital humanities has been repeatedly attacked as a threat to the humanities: warnings from literary and cultural theorists of technology overtaking English departments and the mechanization of teaching have peppered popular media.

Stephen Ramsay’s On the Digital Humanities, a collection of essays spanning the personal to the polemic, is a spirited defense of the field of digital humanities. A founding figure in what was once known as “humanities computing,” Ramsay has a well-known and contentious relationship with what is now called the digital humanities (DH). Here Ramsay collects and updates his most influential and notorious essays and speeches from the past fifteen years, considering DH from an array of practical and theoretical perspectives.

The essays pursue a broad variety of themes, including the nature of data and its place in more conventional notions of text and interpretation, the relationship between the constraints of computation and the more open-ended nature of the humanities, the positioning of practical skills and infrastructures in both research and pedagogical contexts, the status of DH as a program for political and social action, and personal reflections on the author’s journey into the field as both a theorist and a technologist. These wide-ranging essays all center around one idea: that DH not forsake its connection to the humanities. While “digital humanities” may sound like an entirely new form of engagement with the artifacts of human culture, Ramsay argues that the field well reveals what is most essential to humanistic inquiry.

Hallel Yadin is an archivist and special projects manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ari Ezra Waldman, "Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 2 Sep 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In Industry Unbound: The Inside Story of Privacy, Data, and Corporate Power (Cambridge UP, 2021), Ari Ezra Waldman exposes precisely how the tech industry conducts its ongoing crusade to undermine our privacy. With research based on interviews with scores of tech employees and internal documents outlining corporate strategies, Waldman reveals that companies don't just lobby against privacy law; they also manipulate how we think about privacy, how their employees approach their work, and how they weaken the law to make data-extractive products the norm. In contrast to those who claim that privacy law is getting stronger, Waldman shows why recent shifts in privacy law are precisely the kinds of changes that corporations want and how even those who think of themselves as privacy advocates often unwittingly facilitate corporate malfeasance. This powerful account should be read by anyone who wants to understand why privacy laws are not working and how corporations trap us into giving up our personal information.

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago and an AY23-24 affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP). Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bonnie Gordon, "Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Italian courts and churches began employing castrato singers in the late sixteenth century. By the eighteenth century, the singers occupied a celebrity status on the operatic stage. Constructed through surgical alteration and further modified by rigorous training, castrati inhabited human bodies that had been “mechanized” to produce sounds in ways that unmechanized bodies could not. The voices of these technologically enhanced singers, with their unique timbre, range, and strength, contributed to a dramatic expansion of musical vocabulary and prompted new ways of imagining sound, the body, and personhood.

Connecting sometimes bizarre snippets of history, this multi-disciplinary book moves backward and forward in time, deliberately troubling the meaning of concepts like “technology” and “human.” Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds (U Chicago Press, 2023) attends to the ways that early modern encounters and inventions—including settler colonialism, emergent racialized worldviews, the printing press, gunpowder, and the telescope—participated in making castrati. In Bonnie Gordon’s revealing study, castrati serve as a critical provocation to ask questions about the voice, the limits of the body, and the stories historians tell.

Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University. Email: nathan.smith@yale.edu

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Donna J. Drucker, "Fertility Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Donna J. Drucker is Assistant Director of Scholarship and Research Development at the Columbia University School of Nursing.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gary Smith, "Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

There is no doubt science is currently suffering from a credibility crisis. Gary Smith's book Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science (Oxford UP, 2023) argues that, ironically, science's credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. Scientific disinformation and damaging conspiracy theories are rife because of the internet that science created, the scientific demand for empirical evidence and statistical significance leads to data torturing and confirmation bias, and data mining is fuelled by the technological advances in Big Data and the development of ever-increasingly powerful computers.

Using a wide range of entertaining examples, this fascinating book examines the impacts of society's growing distrust of science, and ultimately provides constructive suggestions for restoring the credibility of the scientific community.

Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator and host of The New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs here.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, and the Future of Academic Publishing

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Avi Staiman, CEO of Academic Language Experts discusses the how advancements in artificial intelligence are shaping academic publishing. Avi offers various solutions and remedies to concerns around misuse, in addition to offering several tools that can support academics in their writing and research.

Sci Writer

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Roma Agrawal, "Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World (in a Big Way)" (Norton, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Smartphones, skyscrapers, spacecraft. Modern technology seems mind-bogglingly complex. But beneath the surface, it can be beautifully simple.

In Nuts & Bolts: Seven Small Inventions that Changed the World (in a Big Way) (W. W. Norton, 2023), award-winning Shard engineer and broadcaster Roma Agrawal deconstructs our most complex feats of engineering into seven fundamental inventions: the nail, spring, wheel, lens, magnet, string and pump. Each of these objects is itself a wonder of design, the result of many iterations and refinements. Together, they have enabled humanity to see the invisible, build the spectacular, communicate across vast distances, and even escape our planet.

Tracing the surprising journeys of each invention through the millennia, Agrawal reveals how handmade Roman nails led to modern skyscrapers, how the potter’s wheel enabled space exploration, and how humble lenses helped her conceive a child against the odds.

She invites us to marvel at these small but perfectly formed inventions, sharing the stories of the remarkable, and often unknown, scientists and engineers who made them possible. The nuts and bolts that make up our world may be tiny, and are often hidden, but they’ve changed our lives in dramatic ways.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Academic Publishers Grapple with Advances in AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 19 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Niko Pfund joins the podcast to discuss the value of scientific content for building out Large Language Models and some of the challenges around tracking the quality and ownership of aggregated content from unknown sources. We also discuss potential avenues for collaboration between Generative AI companies and scholarly publishers.

Niko Pfund is Academic Publisher at Oxford University Press and President of Oxford’s US office.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Codename Revolution: The Nintendo Wii Platform

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 18 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Nintendo Wii, introduced in 2006, helped usher in a moment of retro-reinvention in video game play. This hugely popular console system, codenamed Revolution during development, signaled a turn away from fully immersive, time-consuming MMORPGs or forty-hour FPS games and back toward family fun in the living room. Players using the wireless motion-sensitive controller (the Wii Remote, or “Wiimote”) play with their whole bodies, waving, swinging, swaying. The mimetic interface shifts attention from what's on the screen to what's happening in physical space. Codename Revolution describes the Wii's impact in technological, social, and cultural terms, examining the Wii as a system of interrelated hardware and software that was consciously designed to promote social play in physical space.

Each chapter of Codename Revolution focuses on a major component of the Wii as a platform: the console itself, designed to be low-powered and nimble; the iconic Wii Remote; Wii Fit Plus, and its controller, the Wii Balance Board; the Wii Channels interface and Nintendo's distribution system; and the Wii as a social platform that not only affords multiplayer options but also encourages social interaction in shared physical space. Finally, the authors connect the Wii's revolution in mimetic interface gaming—which eventually led to the release of Sony's Move and Microsoft's Kinect—to some of the economic and technological conditions that influence the possibility of making something new in this arena of computing and culture.

Steven E. Jones is Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago.

George K. Thiruvathukal is Professor of Computer Science at Loyola University Chicago.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Digital Mind: How Science Is Redefining Humanity

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What do computers, cells, and brains have in common? Computers are electronic devices designed by humans; cells are biological entities crafted by evolution; brains are the containers and creators of our minds. But all are, in one way or another, information-processing devices. The power of the human brain is, so far, unequaled by any existing machine or known living being. Over eons of evolution, the brain has enabled us to develop tools and technology to make our lives easier. Our brains have even allowed us to develop computers that are almost as powerful as the human brain itself. In The Digital Mind, Arlindo Oliveira describes how advances in science and technology could enable us to create digital minds.

Exponential growth is a pattern built deep into the scheme of life, but technological change now promises to outstrip even evolutionary change. Oliveira describes technological and scientific advances that range from the discovery of laws that control the behavior of the electromagnetic fields to the development of computers. He calls natural selection the ultimate algorithm, discusses genetics and the evolution of the central nervous system, and describes the role that computer imaging has played in understanding and modeling the brain. Having considered the behavior of the unique system that creates a mind, he turns to an unavoidable question: Is the human brain the only system that can host a mind? If digital minds come into existence—and, Oliveira says, it is difficult to argue that they will not—what are the social, legal, and ethical implications? Will digital minds be our partners, or our rivals?

In this episode Chris Gondek speaks with author Arlindo Oliveira about intelligence in respect to consciousness, and how artificial intelligence has spawned and will grow.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Scott Skinner-Thompson, "Privacy at the Margins" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Limited legal protections for privacy leave minority communities vulnerable to concrete injuries and violence when their information is exposed. In Privacy at the Margins (Cambridge UP, 2021), Scott Skinner-Thompson highlights why privacy is of acute importance for marginalized groups. He explains how privacy can serve as a form of expressive resistance to government and corporate surveillance regimes - furthering equality goals - and demonstrates why efforts undertaken by vulnerable groups (queer folks, women, and racial and religious minorities) to protect their privacy should be entitled to constitutional protection under the First Amendment and related equality provisions. By examining the ways even limited privacy can enrich and enhance our lives at the margins in material ways, this work shows how privacy can be transformed from a liberal affectation to a legal tool of liberation from oppression.

Jake Chanenson, CS Ph.D. at UChicago

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Long ago, in 1985, personal computers came in two general categories: the friendly, childish game machine used for fun (exemplified by Atari and Commodore products); and the boring, beige adult box used for business (exemplified by products from IBM). The game machines became fascinating technical and artistic platforms that were of limited real-world utility. The IBM products were all utility, with little emphasis on aesthetics and no emphasis on fun. Into this bifurcated computing environment came the Commodore Amiga 1000. This personal computer featured a palette of 4,096 colors, unprecedented animation capabilities, four-channel stereo sound, the capacity to run multiple applications simultaneously, a graphical user interface, and powerful processing potential. It was, Jimmy Maher writes in The Future Was Here, the world's first true multimedia personal computer.

Maher argues that the Amiga's capacity to store and display color photographs, manipulate video (giving amateurs access to professional tools), and use recordings of real-world sound were the seeds of the digital media future: digital cameras, Photoshop, MP3 players, and even YouTube, Flickr, and the blogosphere. He examines different facets of the platform--from Deluxe Paint to AmigaOS to Cinemaware--in each chapter, creating a portrait of the platform and the communities of practice that surrounded it. Of course, Maher acknowledges, the Amiga was not perfect: the DOS component of the operating systems was clunky and ill-matched, for example, and crashes often accompanied multitasking attempts. And Commodore went bankrupt in 1994. But for a few years, the Amiga's technical qualities were harnessed by engineers, programmers, artists, and others to push back boundaries and transform the culture of computing.

Jimmy Maher is an independent scholar and writer living in Norway.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jieun Kiaer, "Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Emoji Speak: Communication and Behaviours on Social Media (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Jieun Kiaer provides an in-depth discussion of emoji use in a global context, this volume presents the use of emoji as a hugely important facet of computer-mediated communication, leading Dr. Kiaer to coin the term 'emoji speak'.

Exploring why and how emojis are born, and the different ways in which people use them, this book highlights the diversity of emoji speak. Presenting the results of empirical investigations with participants of British, Belgian, Chinese, French, Japanese, Jordanian, Korean, Singaporean, and Spanish backgrounds, it raises important questions around the complexity of emoji use.

Though emojis have become ubiquitous, their interpretation can be more challenging. What is humorous in one region, for example, might be considered inappropriate or insulting in another. Whilst emoji use can speed up our communication, we might also question whether they convey our emotions sufficiently. Moreover, far from belonging to the youth, people of all ages now use emoji speak, prompting Kiaer to consider the future of our communication in an increasingly digital world.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Networked: The New Social Operating System

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, pictures and videos to post and discuss. Our perpetual connectedness gives us endless opportunities to be part of the give-and-take of networking.

Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making, and personal interaction. The new social operating system of “networked individualism” liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks.

Rainie and Wellman outline the “triple revolution” that has brought on this transformation: the rise of social networking, the capacity of the Internet to empower individuals, and the always-on connectivity of mobile devices. Drawing on extensive evidence, they examine how the move to networked individualism has expanded personal relationships beyond households and neighborhoods; transformed work into less hierarchical, more team-driven enterprises; encouraged individuals to create and share content; and changed the way people obtain information. Rainie and Wellman guide us through the challenges and opportunities of living in the evolving world of networked individuals.

Lee Rainie is Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and former managing editor of U.S. News and World Report.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Generation

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 14 Aug 2023 18:21:59 +0000

Hello Avatar Or, {llSay(0, Hello, Avatar ); is a tiny piece of user-friendly code that allows us to program our virtual selves. In Hello Avatar, B. Coleman examines a crucial aspect of our cultural shift from analog to digital: the continuum between online and off-, what she calls the "x-reality" that crosses between the virtual and the real. She looks at the emergence of a world that is neither virtual nor real but encompasses a multiplicity of network combinations. And she argues that it is the role of the avatar to help us express our new agency--our new power to customize our networked life.

By avatar, Coleman means not just the animated figures that populate our screens but the gestalt of images, text, and multimedia that make up our online identities--in virtual worlds like Second Life and in the form of email, video chat, and other digital artifacts. Exploring such network activities as embodiment, extreme (virtual) violence, and the work in virtual reality labs, and offering sidebar interviews with designers and practitioners, she argues that what is new is real-time collaboration and copresence, the way we make connections using networked media and the cultures we have created around this. The star of this drama of expanded horizons is the networked subject--all of us who represent aspects of ourselves and our work across the mediascape.

B. Coleman is Assistant Professor of Writing and New Media in MIT’s Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and Comparative Media Studies. She is Faculty Director of the C3 Game Culture and Mobile Media initiative.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Satsuki Takahashi, "Fukushima Futures: Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape" (U Washington Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Both before and after the 2011 "Triple Disaster" of earthquake, tidal wave, and consequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, anthropologist Satsuki Takahashi visited nearby communities, collecting accounts of life and livelihoods along the industrialized seascape. The resulting environmental ethnography examines the complex relationship between commercial fishing families and the Joban Sea--once known for premium-quality fish and now notorious as the location of the world's worst nuclear catastrophe.

Satsuki Takahashi's book Fukushima Futures: Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape (U Washington Press, 2023) follows postwar Japan's maritime modernization from the perspectives of those most entangled with its successes and failures. In response to unrelenting setbacks, including an earlier nuclear accident at neighboring Tokaimura and the oil spills of stranded tankers during typhoons, these communities have developed survival strategies shaped by the precarity they share with their marine ecosystem. The collaborative resilience that emerges against this backdrop of vulnerability and uncertainty challenges the progress-bound logic of futurism, bringing more hopeful possibilities for the future into sharper focus.

Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Underground/Sea Cables: A Discussion with Henry Farrell

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How much of US power is underground? We hear a lot about the US military assets used on land, on the sea, and in the air - but not much about what’s going on underground and on the sea bed. It turns out what goes on down there is a significant source of US power – which has been documented by Henry Farrell in his co-authored book (with Abraham Newman), Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy (Henry Holt, 2023). Listen to him describe it all with Owen Bennett-Jones.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Idolatry and Idle Hands (with Jacob Howland)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Philosophy professor Jacob Howland applies the lessons of Greek classics and Jewish scripture to this our curious moment at the inception of Artificial intelligence when computers are doing more and more work for us, and we humans—like miniature Gods—can make up new simulated realities and even identities for ourselves. There’s a word for when people worship the things they create: idolatry. Looking to the Bible (from the Garden of Eden, the Fall, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, and the Golden Calf) and literature (from Homer, Plato, and Hesiod, all the way to Milton), Professor Howland and I talk about where we are, and where we might be headed.

Jacob Howland’s website and his faculty pages at the University of Tulsa and the University of Austin
Jacob Howland’s article, “AI is a False Prophet: Our enslavement to idolatry will end in disaster.” (Unherd, April 2023)
Jacob Howland’s article, “AI has always plagued mankind: Technological arrogance brought about our Fall.” (Unherd, July 2023)
Jacob Howland’s article, “Henry Adams and the Crisis of Education: How the famed historian foresaw our civilizational predicament” (City Journal, July 2023)
Jacob Howland and Russ Roberts on the EconTalk podcast (June 2023)

Krzysztof Odyniec is a historian of Medieval and Early Modern Europe; he is also the host of the 'Almost Good Catholics' podcast.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chris Wiggins and Matthew L Jones, "How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms" (Norton, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

From facial recognition―capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents―to automated decision systems that inform who gets loans and who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn’t just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the census enshrined in the US Constitution to the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search.

In How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms (Norton, 2023), Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones illuminate the ways in which data has long been used as a tool and a weapon in arguing for what is true, as well as a means of rearranging or defending power. They explore how data was created and curated, as well as how new mathematical and computational techniques developed to contend with that data serve to shape people, ideas, society, military operations, and economies. Although technology and mathematics are at its heart, the story of data ultimately concerns an unstable game among states, corporations, and people. How were new technical and scientific capabilities developed; who supported, advanced, or funded these capabilities or transitions; and how did they change who could do what, from what, and to whom?

Wiggins and Jones focus on these questions as they trace data’s historical arc, and look to the future. By understanding the trajectory of data―where it has been and where it might yet go―Wiggins and Jones argue that we can understand how to bend it to ends that we collectively choose, with intentionality and purpose.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cory Doctorow, "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation" (Verso, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 9 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Big Tech locked us into their systems by making their platforms hard to leave by design. The impossibility of staying connected to people on their platforms after you delete your account has nothing to do with technological limitations: it's an intentional business strategy.

In The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso, 2023), Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.

This book comes out September 5, 2023. See seizethemeansofcomputation.org for book details.

Note: Cory mentioned that the book website is seizethemeansofcommunication.org it is actually seizethemeansofcomputation.org.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Driving While Black: African Americans and the Automobile

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 7 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Gretchen Sorin, Director and Distinguished Professor of the Cooperstown Graduate Program at the State University of New York - Oneonta, talks about her book, Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights (Liveright, 2020), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Driving While Black examines how cars fit into black lives and sheds light on how this technology fits into much larger patterns of history, including the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements. Sorin and Vinsel also talk about the field of public history and communicating to non-academic audiences.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 6 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

We may think of video games as being "fun," but in The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul claims that this is almost entirely mistaken. When we play video games, our facial expressions are rarely those of happiness or bliss. Instead, we frown, grimace, and shout in frustration as we lose, or die, or fail to advance to the next level. Humans may have a fundamental desire to succeed and feel competent, but game players choose to engage in an activity in which they are nearly certain to fail and feel incompetent. So why do we play video games even though they make us unhappy? Juul examines this paradox.

In video games, as in tragic works of art, literature, theater, and cinema, it seems that we want to experience unpleasantness even if we also dislike it. Reader or audience reaction to tragedy is often explained as catharsis, as a purging of negative emotions. But, Juul points out, this doesn't seem to be the case for video game players. Games do not purge us of unpleasant emotions; they produce them in the first place. What, then, does failure in video game playing do?

Juul argues that failure in a game is unique in that when you fail in a game, you (not a character) are in some way inadequate. Yet games also motivate us to play more, in order to escape that inadequacy, and the feeling of escaping failure (often by improving skills) is a central enjoyment of games. Games, writes Juul, are the art of failure: the singular art form that sets us up for failure and allows us to experience it and experiment with it.

The Art of Failure is essential reading for anyone interested in video games, whether as entertainment, art, or education.

Jesper Juul is Assistant Professor at the New York University Game Center. He is the author of Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds and A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players, both published by the MIT Press.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Space Travel: A Discussion with Douglas C. Ligor

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 5 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The expansion of space travel is much discussed but always seems subject to delay. Why is that and when will it happen on a much larger scale? Douglas Ligor has been considering that issue for the Rand corporation – and he talks to Owen Bennett-Jones about the prospects for space travel. Ligor is co-author of Assessing the Readiness for Human Commercial Spaceflight Safety Regulations (Rand, 2023) and International Space Traffic Management: Charting a Course for Long-Term Sustainability (Rand, 2023).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robot Futures

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 4 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

With robots, we are inventing a new species that is part material and part digital. The ambition of modern robotics goes beyond copying humans, beyond the effort to make walking, talking androids that are indistinguishable from people. Future robots will have superhuman abilities in both the physical and digital realms. They will be embedded in our physical spaces, with the ability to go where we cannot, and will have minds of their own, thanks to artificial intelligence. In Robot Futures, the roboticist Illah Reza Nourbakhsh considers how we will share our world with these creatures, and how our society could change as it incorporates a race of stronger, smarter beings.

Nourbakhsh imagines a future that includes adbots offering interactive custom messaging; robotic flying toys that operate by means of “gaze tracking”; robot-enabled multimodal, multicontinental telepresence; and even a way that nanorobots could allow us to assume different physical forms. Nourbakhsh examines the underlying technology and the social consequences of each scenario. He also offers a counter-vision: a robotics designed to create civic and community empowerment. His book helps us understand why that is the robot future we should try to bring about.

Illah Reza Nourbakhsh is Professor of Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also directs the Community Robotics, Education, and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab. He is a coauthor of Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots (MIT Press).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 3 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The vast majority of all email sent every day is spam, a variety of idiosyncratically spelled requests to provide account information, invitations to spend money on dubious products, and pleas to send cash overseas. Most of it is caught by filters before ever reaching an in-box. Where does it come from? As Finn Brunton explains in Spam, it is produced and shaped by many different populations around the world: programmers, con artists, bots and their botmasters, pharmaceutical merchants, marketers, identity thieves, crooked bankers and their victims, cops, lawyers, network security professionals, vigilantes, and hackers. Every time we go online, we participate in the system of spam, with choices, refusals, and purchases the consequences of which we may not understand.

This is a book about what spam is, how it works, and what it means. Brunton provides a cultural history that stretches from pranks on early computer networks to the construction of a global criminal infrastructure. The history of spam, Brunton shows us, is a shadow history of the Internet itself, with spam emerging as the mirror image of the online communities it targets. Brunton traces spam through three epochs: the 1970s to 1995, and the early, noncommercial computer networks that became the Internet; 1995 to 2003, with the dot-com boom, the rise of spam's entrepreneurs, and the first efforts at regulating spam; and 2003 to the present, with the war of algorithms—spam versus anti-spam. Spam shows us how technologies, from email to search engines, are transformed by unintended consequences and adaptations, and how online communities develop and invent governance for themselves.

Finn Brunton is Assistant Professor of Information in the School of Information at the University of Michigan.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 2 Aug 2023 19:58:11 +0000

Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and PONG. It began in 1963 when an MIT graduate student named Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad, the first true computer animation program. Sutherland noted: "Since motion can be put into Sketchpad drawings, it might be exciting to try making cartoons." This book, the first full-length history of CG, shows us how Sutherland's seemingly offhand idea grew into a multibillion dollar industry.

In Moving Innovation, Tom Sito--himself an animator and industry insider for more than thirty years--describes the evolution of CG. His story features a memorable cast of characters--math nerds, avant-garde artists, cold warriors, hippies, video game enthusiasts, and studio executives: disparate types united by a common vision. Sito shows us how fifty years of work by this motley crew made movies like Toy Story and Avatar possible.

Tom Sito has been a professional animator since 1975. One of the key players in Disney’s animation revival of the 1980s and 1990s, he worked on such classic Disney films as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and The Lion King (1994). He left Disney to help set up the Dreamworks Animation Unit in 1995. He is Professor of Cinema Practice in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kathryn Cramer Brownell, "24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News" (Princeton UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 1 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000

As television began to overtake the political landscape in the 1960s, network broadcast companies, bolstered by powerful lobbying interests, dominated screens across the nation. Yet over the next three decades, the expansion of a different technology, cable, changed all of this. 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of how the cable industry worked with political leaders to create an entirely new approach to television, one that tethered politics to profits and divided and distracted Americans by feeding their appetite for entertainment--frequently at the expense of fostering responsible citizenship.

In this timely and provocative book, Kathryn Cramer Brownell argues that cable television itself is not to blame for today's rampant polarization and scandal politics--the intentional restructuring of television as a political institution is. She describes how cable innovations--from C-SPAN coverage of congressional debates in the 1980s to MTV's foray into presidential politics in the 1990s--took on network broadcasting using market forces, giving rise to a more decentralized media world. Brownell shows how cable became an unstoppable medium for political communication that prioritized cult followings and loyalty to individual brands, fundamentally reshaped party politics, and, in the process, sowed the seeds of democratic upheaval.

24/7 Politics reveals how cable TV created new possibilities for antiestablishment voices and opened a pathway to political prominence for seemingly unlikely figures like Donald Trump by playing to narrow audiences and cultivating division instead of common ground.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Powering American Farms: A Conversation with Richard Hirsh

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Richard Hirsh, Professor of History at Virginia Tech, talks about his book, Powering American Farms: The Overlooked Origins of Rural Electrification (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Powering American Farms is a revisionist history of rural electrification that calls into question a long standard story that rural electrification only began through the powers of the US federal government during the New Deal. Through extensive archival research, Hirsh finds a wide variety of activities around electrification on farms, through efforts of utilities, academic researchers, agricultural extension programs, and farmers themselves.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Betty Adamou, "Games and Gamification in Market Research: Increasing Consumer Engagement in Research for Business Success" (Kogan Page, 2018)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 31 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Games are the most engaging medium of all time: they harness storytelling and heuristics, drive emotion and push the evolution of technology in a way that no other platform has or can. It's no surprise, then, that games and gamification are revolutionizing the market research industry, offering opportunities to reinvigorate the notoriously sluggish engagement levels seen in traditional surveying methods. This not only improves data quality, but offers untapped insights unattainable through traditional methods. Games and Gamification in Market Research: Increasing Consumer Engagement in Research for Business Success (Kogan Page, 2018) shows readers how to design ResearchGames and Gamified Surveys that will intrinsically engage participants and how best to use these methodologies to become, and stay, commercially competitive.

In a world where brands and organizations are increasingly interested in the feelings and contexts that drive consumer choices, Games and Gamification in Market Research gives readers the skills to use the components in games to encourage play and observe consumer behaviours via simulations for predictive modelling. Written by Betty Adamou, the UK's leading research game designer and named as one of seven women shaping the future of market research, it explains the ways in which these methodologies will evolve with technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and how it will shape research careers. Alongside a companion website, this book provides a fully immersive and fascinating overview of game-based research.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alice E. Marwick, "The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media" (Yale UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Online privacy is under constant attack by social media and big data technologies. But we cannot rely on individual actions to remedy this—it is a matter of social justice.

In The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media (Yale UP, 2023), Alice E. Marwick offers a new way of understanding how privacy is jeopardized, particularly for marginalized and disadvantaged communities—including immigrants, the poor, people of color, LGBTQ+ populations, and victims of online harassment.

Marwick shows that there are few resources or regulations for preventing personal information from spreading on the internet. Through a new theory of “networked privacy,” she reveals how current legal and technological frameworks are woefully inadequate in addressing issues of privacy—often by design. Drawing from interviews and focus groups encompassing a diverse group of Americans, Marwick shows that even heavy social media users care deeply about privacy and engage in extensive “privacy work” to protect it. But people are up against the violation machine of the modern internet. Safeguarding privacy must happen at the collective level.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rob Eschmann,, "When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

From cell phone footage of police killing unarmed Black people to leaked racist messages and even comments from friends and family on social media, online communication exposes how racism operates in a world that pretends to be colorblind. In When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age (U California Press, 2023), Rob Eschmann blends rigorous research and engaging personal narrative to examine the effects of online racism on communities of color and society, and the unexpected ways that digital technologies enable innovative everyday tools of antiracist resistance.

Drawing on a wealth of data, including interviews with students of Color around the country and analyses of millions of social media posts over the past decade, Eschmann investigates the influence of online communication on face-to-face interactions. When the Hood Comes Off highlights the power of the internet as an organizing tool, and shows that online racism can be a profound wake-up call. How will we respond?

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeremy Black, "A History of Artillery" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 28 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nina Lager Vestberg, "Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 26 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Picture Research: The Work of Intermediation from Pre-Photography to Post-Digitization (MIT Press, 2023) focuses on how pictures were saved, stored, and searched for in a time before scanners, servers, and search engines, and describes the dramatic difference it made when images became scannable, searchable, and distributable via the internet. While the camera, the darkroom, and the printed page are well-known sites of photographic production that have been replaced by cell phones, imaging software, and websites, the cultural intermediaries of mass-circulation photography—picture librarians and researchers, editors, and archivists—are less familiar. In this book, Nina Lager Vestberg artfully details the range of research skills, reproduction machinery, and communication infrastructures that was needed to make pictures available to a public before digitization.

Drawing on documents and representations across a range of cultural expressions, Picture Research reveals the intermediation that has been performed by skilled workers in a variety of roles, making use of pre-photographic, photographic, and digital machineries of capture, accumulation, extraction, and transmission. Tracing a history of the modern pictorial economy from the pre-photographic 1830s to the post-digitized 2010s, it makes visible and explicit the invisible labor that has built—and still sustains—the visual commodity culture of everyday life.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Juliet Schor, "After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back" (U California Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

When the "sharing economy" launched a decade ago, proponents claimed that it would transform the experience of work--giving earners flexibility, autonomy, and a decent income. It was touted as a cure for social isolation and rampant ecological degradation. But this novel form of work soon sprouted a dark side: exploited Uber drivers, neighborhoods ruined by Airbnb, racial discrimination, and rising carbon emissions. Several of the most prominent platforms are now faced with existential crises as they prioritize growth over fairness and long-term viability.

Nevertheless, the basic model--a peer-to-peer structure augmented by digital tech--holds the potential to meet its original promises. Based on nearly a decade of pioneering research, After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back (U California Press, 2021) dives into what went wrong with this contemporary reimagining of labor. The book examines multiple types of data from thirteen cases to identify the unique features and potential of sharing platforms that prior research has failed to pinpoint. Juliet B. Schor presents a compelling argument that we can engineer a reboot: through regulatory reforms and cooperative platforms owned and controlled by users, an equitable and truly shared economy is still possible.

Juliet B. Schor is an American economist and Sociology Professor at Boston College. She has studied trends in working time, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women's issues and economic inequality, and concerns about climate change in the environment. She is a New York Times bestselling author and the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Better Future Project.

Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lin Zhang, "The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the Chinese Digital Economy" (Columbia UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.

In this episode, our host Jing Wang discusses the book The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy (Columbia UP, 2023) by Lin Zhang.

You’ll hear about:

A history of the book and Zhang’s entry into the fieldwork through family stories;
How to understand entrepreneurialism as a dominant ideology in the global neoliberal labor economy and China’s positionality in the world;
Why and how the book is organized based on three types of spaces – rural, urban, and transnational – across China and beyond;
The similarities and differences between the elite and the grassroot entrepreneurs in Beijing;
The e-commerce entrepreneurship as “platformized family production” in rural China and the roles played by government and large tech companies like Alibaba play in shaping the new rural production model;
The limit and possibility of reinvention through “shanzhai” (copycat) e-commerce production;
The gendered inequalities of entrepreneurial labor in rural and transnational spaces;
What is “daigou” (personal shopping agents) in transnational e-commerce and the structural challenges entrepreneurs – especially women – face across national borders and digital platforms;
What conversations in global studies of media and communication this book engages with.

About the book

From start-up founders in the Chinese equivalent of Silicon Valley to rural villages experiencing an e-commerce boom to middle-class women reselling luxury goods, the rise of internet-based entrepreneurship has affected every part of China. For many, reinventing oneself as an entrepreneur has appeared to be an appealing way to adapt to a changing economy and society. Yet in practice, digital entrepreneurship has also reinforced traditional Chinese ideas about state power, labor, gender, and identity. Lin Zhang explores how the everyday labor of entrepreneurial reinvention is remaking China amid changing geopolitical currents. She tells the stories of people from diverse class, gender, and age backgrounds across rural, urban, and transnational settings in rich detail, providing a multifaceted and ground-level view of the twenty-first-century Chinese economy. You can find more about the book here by the Columbia University Press.

Author: Lin Zhang is an associate professor of communication and media studies at the University of New Hampshire.

Host: Jing Wang is Senior Research Manager at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC), Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, with an affiliation at the Center of the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC).

Editor & Producer: Jing Wang

Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jenna Grant, "Fixing the Image: Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh" (U Washington Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 15 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Jenna Grant is a cultural anthropologist from the University of Washington and author of Fixing the Image: Ultrasound and the Visuality of Care in Phnom Penh, published by University of Washington Press in 2022.

Introduced in Phnom Penh around 1990, at the twilight of socialism and after two decades of conflict and upheaval, ultrasound took root in humanitarian and then privatized medicine. Services have since multiplied, promising diagnostic information and better prenatal and general health care. In Fixing the Image Jenna Grant draws on years of ethnographic and archival research to theorize the force and appeal of medical imaging in the urban landscape of Phnom Penh. Set within long genealogies of technology as tool of postcolonial modernity, and vision as central to skilled diagnosis in medicine and Theravada Buddhism, ultrasound offers stabilizing knowledge and elicits desire and pleasure, particularly for pregnant women. Grant offers the concept of "fixing"--which invokes repair, stabilization, and a dose of something to which one is addicted--to illuminate how ultrasound is entangled with practices of care and neglect across different domains. Fixing the Image thus provides a method for studying technological practice in terms of specific materialities and capacities of technologies--in this case, image production and the permeability of the body--illuminating how images are a material form of engagement between patients, between patients and their doctors, and between patients and their bodies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Randall Patnode, "The Synchronized Society: Time and Control From Broadcasting to the Internet" (Rutgers UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Synchronized Society: Time and Control From Broadcasting to the Internet (Rutgers University Press, 2023) by Dr. Randall Patnode traces the history of the synchronous broadcast experience of the twentieth century and the transition to the asynchronous media that dominate today. Broadcasting grew out of the latent desire by nineteenth-century industrialists, political thinkers, and social reformers to tame an unruly society by controlling how people used their time.

The idea manifested itself in the form of the broadcast schedule, a managed flow of information and entertainment that required audiences to be in a particular place – usually the home – at a particular time and helped to create “water cooler” moments, as audiences reflected on their shared media texts. Audiences began disconnecting from the broadcast schedule at the end of the twentieth century, but promoters of social media and television services still kept audiences under control, replacing the schedule with surveillance of media use.

Dr. Randall Patnode offers compelling new insights into the intermingled roles of broadcasting and industrial/post-industrial work and how Americans spend their time.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Palo Alto: A Conversation with Malcolm Harris

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 08:00:00 +0000

This is the second Peoples & Things episode featuring a guest host. In this case, it is M. R. “Mols” Sauter, an assistant professor of information studies at the University of Maryland. Sauter and Lee Vinsel interview writer Malcolm Harris about his recent book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World. Palo Alto (Little, Brown, and Company, 2023) is a BIG history of a single US city, how it developed, and how it fits into larger trend and processes of capitalist production and change. Harris, who grew up in the area, finds Palo Alto to be a place haunted by its many dark legacies, and the book’s conclusion raises large questions about the future of capitalism, justice, and the fate of the planet. This interview was recorded as a live stream as a part of Red May, “a month-long spree of red arts, red theory, and red politics based in Seattle, Washington” that “plots ways forward to a world beyond capitalism.” We are very grateful to all the Red May organizers for asking Peoples & Things to take part in the event and for allowing us to re-publish the recording as this episode.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Behind the lectern stands the professor, deploying course management systems, online quizzes, wireless clickers, PowerPoint slides, podcasts, and plagiarism-detection software. In the seats are the students, armed with smartphones, laptops, tablets, music players, and social networking. Although these two forces seem poised to do battle with each other, they are really both taking part in a war on learning itself. In The War on Learning, Elizabeth Losh examines current efforts to “reform” higher education by applying technological solutions to problems in teaching and learning. She finds that many of these initiatives fail because they treat education as a product rather than a process. Highly touted schemes—video games for the classroom, for example, or the distribution of iPads—let students down because they promote consumption rather than intellectual development.

Losh analyzes recent trends in postsecondary education and the rhetoric around them, often drawing on first-person accounts. In an effort to identify educational technologies that might actually work, she looks at strategies including MOOCs (massive open online courses), the gamification of subject matter, remix pedagogy, video lectures (from Randy Pausch to “the Baked Professor”), and educational virtual worlds. Finally, Losh outlines six basic principles of digital learning and describes several successful university-based initiatives. Her book will be essential reading for campus decision makers—and for anyone who cares about education and technology.

Elizabeth Losh directs the Culture, Art, and Technology Program at Sixth College at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes (MIT Press) and the coauthor of Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Marketplace of Attention: How Audiences Take Shape in a Digital Age

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 21:16:59 +0000

Feature films, television shows, homemade videos, tweets, blogs, and breaking news: digital media offer an always-accessible, apparently inexhaustible supply of entertainment and information. Although choices seems endless, public attention is not. How do digital media find the audiences they need in an era of infinite choice? In The Marketplace of Attention, James Webster explains how audiences take shape in the digital age.

Webster describes the factors that create audiences, including the preferences and habits of media users, the role of social networks, the resources and strategies of media providers, and the growing impact of media measures—from ratings to user recommendations. He incorporates these factors into one comprehensive framework: the marketplace of attention. In doing so, he shows that the marketplace works in ways that belie our greatest hopes and fears about digital media.

Some observers claim that digital media empower a new participatory culture; others fear that digital media encourage users to retreat to isolated enclaves. Webster shows that public attention is at once diverse and concentrated—that users move across a variety of outlets, producing high levels of audience overlap. So although audiences are fragmented in ways that would astonish midcentury broadcasting executives, Webster argues that this doesn't signal polarization. He questions whether our preferences are immune from media influence, and he describes how our encounters with media might change our tastes. In the digital era's marketplace of attention, Webster claims, we typically encounter ideas that cut across our predispositions. In the process, we will remake the marketplace of ideas and reshape the twenty-first century public sphere.

James G. Webster is Professor in the School of Communication at Northwestern University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Helle Porsdam, "Science as a Cultural Human Right" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The human right to science, outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and repeated in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, recognizes everyone's right to "share in scientific advancement and its benefits" and to "enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications." This right also requires state parties to develop and disseminate science, to respect the freedom of scientific research, and to recognize the benefits of international contacts and co-operation in the scientific field.

The right to science has never been more important. Even before the COVID-19 health crisis, it was evident that people around the world increasingly rely on science and technology in almost every sphere of their lives from the development of medicines and the treatment of diseases, to transport, agriculture, and the facilitation of global communication. At the same time, however, the value of science has been under attack, with some raising alarm at the emergence of "post-truth" societies. "Dual use" and unintended, because often unforeseen, consequences of emerging technologies are also perceived to be a serious risk.

The important role played by science and technology and the potential for dual use makes it imperative to evaluate scientific research and its products not only on their scientific but also on their human rights merits. In Science as a Cultural Human Right (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022), Helle Porsdam argues robustly for the role of the right to science now and in the future. The book analyzes the legal stature of this right, the potential consequences of not establishing it as fundamental, and its connection to global cultural rights. It offers the basis for defending the free and responsible practice of science and ensuring that its benefits are spread globally.

Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Singer Sewing Machine in Spain and Mexico: Multinational Business, Gender, and Technologies

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Historian Paula de la Cruz-Fernandez talks about her book, Gendered Capitalism: Sewing Machines and Multinational Business in Spain and Mexico, 1850-1940 (Routledge, 2021), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Gendered Capitalism tells the fascinating tale of how the Singer corporation operated in Spain and Mexico. Along the way, Cruz-Fernandez finds that selling sewing machines was not a top-down process by which an American corporation forced its products on unwilling consumers, but a complex development that involved collective entrepreneurship and most importantly the dreams, ideals, and efforts of women who worked with sewing machines in the home. The book raises larger questions about how we think about processes of technology adoption in different cultures and about the relationship between corporations and consumers.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Metadata

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

When "metadata" became breaking news, appearing in stories about surveillance by the National Security Agency, many members of the public encountered this once-obscure term from information science for the first time. Should people be reassured that the NSA was "only" collecting metadata about phone calls--information about the caller, the recipient, the time, the duration, the location--and not recordings of the conversations themselves? Or does phone call metadata reveal more than it seems? In Metadata, Jeffrey Pomerantz offers an accessible and concise introduction to metadata.

In the era of ubiquitous computing, metadata has become infrastructural, like the electrical grid or the highway system. We interact with it or generate it every day. It is not, Pomerantz tell us, just "data about data." It is a means by which the complexity of an object is represented in a simpler form. For example, the title, the author, and the cover art are metadata about a book. When metadata does its job well, it fades into the background; everyone (except perhaps the NSA) takes it for granted.

Pomerantz explains what metadata is, and why it exists. He distinguishes among different types of metadata--descriptive, administrative, structural, preservation, and use--and examines different users and uses of each type. He discusses the technologies that make modern metadata possible, and he speculates about metadata's future. By the end of the book, readers will see metadata everywhere. Because, Pomerantz warns us, it's metadata's world, and we are just living in it.

Jeffrey Pomerantz is an information scientist. He was most recently Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he developed and taught the MOOC “Metadata: Organizing and Discovering Information,” and a Visiting Professor at the University of Washington.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brian Cummings, "Bibliophobia: The End and the Beginning of the Book" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Bibliophobia: The End and the Beginning of the Book (Oxford UP, 2022) is a book about material books, how they are cared for, and how they are damaged, throughout the 5000-year history of writing from Sumeria to the smartphone. Its starting point is the contemporary idea of 'the death of the book' implied by the replacement of physical books by digital media, with accompanying twenty-first-century experiences of paranoia and literary apocalypse. It traces a twin fear of omniscience and oblivion back to the origins of writing in ancient Babylon and Egypt, then forwards to the age of Google. It uncovers bibliophobia from the first Chinese emperor to Nazi Germany, alongside parallel stories of bibliomania and bibliolatry in world religions and literatures. Books imply cognitive content embodied in physical form, in which the body cooperates with the brain. At its heart this relationship of body and mind, or letter and spirit, always retains a mystery. Religions are founded on holy books, which are also sites of transgression, so that writing is simultaneously sacred and profane. In secular societies these complex feelings are transferred to concepts of ideology and toleration. In the ambiguous future of the internet, digital immateriality threatens human equilibrium once again.

Bibliophobia is a global history, covering six continents and seven religions, describing written examples from each of the last thirty centuries (and several earlier). It discusses topics such as the origins of different kinds of human script; the development of textual media such as scrolls, codices, printed books, and artificial intelligence; the collection and destruction of libraries; the use of books as holy relics, talismans, or shrines; and the place of literacy in the history of slavery, heresy, blasphemy, censorship, and persecution. It proposes a theory of writing, how it relates to speech, images, and information, or to concepts of mimesis, personhood, and politics. Originating as the Clarendon Lectures in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford, the methods of Bibliophobia range across book history; comparative religion; philosophy from Plato to Hegel and Freud; and a range of global literature from ancient to contemporary. Richly illustrated with textual forms, material objects, and art works, its inspiration is the power that books always (and continue to) have in the emotional, spiritual, bodily, and imaginative lives of readers.

Brian Cummings is Anniversary Professor at the University of York. Before arriving at York, he was Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and then Professor of English at the University of Sussex.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Make it New: A History of Silicon Valley Design

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

California's Silicon Valley is home to the greatest concentration of designers in the world: corporate design offices at flagship technology companies and volunteers at nonprofit NGOs; global design consultancies and boutique studios; research laboratories and academic design programs. Together they form the interconnected network that is Silicon Valley. Apple products are famously “Designed in California,” but, as Barry Katz shows in this first-ever, extensively illustrated history, the role of design in Silicon Valley began decades before Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak dreamed up Apple in a garage.

In Make it New, Katz tells how design helped transform Silicon Valley into the most powerful engine of innovation in the world. From Hewlett-Packard and Ampex in the 1950s to Google and Facebook today, design has provided the bridge between research and development, art and engineering, technical performance and human behavior. Katz traces the origins of all of the leading consultancies—including IDEO, frog, and Lunar—and shows the process by which some of the world's most influential companies came to place design at the center of their business strategies. At the same time, universities, foundations, and even governments have learned to apply “design thinking” to their missions. Drawing on unprecedented access to a vast array of primary sources and interviews with nearly every influential design leader—including Douglas Engelbart, Steve Jobs, and Don Norman—Katz reveals design to be the missing link in Silicon Valley's ecosystem of innovation.

Barry M. Katz is Professor of Industrial and Interaction Design at California College of the Arts, Consulting Professor in the Design Group at Stanford University, and Fellow at IDEO, Inc. He is coauthor of Change by Design, with Tim Brown, and NONOBJECT, with Branko Lukić (MIT Press).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Reading the Comments: Likers, Haters, and Manipulators at the Bottom of the Web

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Online comment can be informative or misleading, entertaining or maddening. Haters and manipulators often seem to monopolize the conversation. Some comments are off-topic, or even topic-less. In Reading the Comments, Joseph Reagle urges us to read the comments. Conversations "on the bottom half of the Internet," he argues, can tell us much about human nature and social behavior.

Reagle visits communities of Amazon reviewers, fan fiction authors, online learners, scammers, freethinkers, and mean kids. He shows how comment can inform us (through reviews), improve us (through feedback), manipulate us (through fakery), alienate us (through hate), shape us (through social comparison), and perplex us. He finds pre-Internet historical antecedents of online comment in Michelin stars, professional criticism, and the wisdom of crowds. He discusses the techniques of online fakery (distinguishing makers, fakers, and takers), describes the emotional work of receiving and giving feedback, and examines the culture of trolls and haters, bullying, and misogyny. He considers the way comment--a nonstop stream of social quantification and ranking--affects our self-esteem and well-being. And he examines how comment is puzzling--short and asynchronous, these messages can be slap-dash, confusing, amusing, revealing, and weird, shedding context in their passage through the Internet, prompting readers to comment in turn, "WTF?!?"

Joseph M. Reagle, Jr. is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northeastern University and the author of Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (MIT Press).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and other games, Duchamp's obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and boxes--to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate fine art. In Works of Game, John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the differences between games and art.

Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies for each. "Game Art," which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. "Artgames," created by gamemakers including Jason Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, "Artists' Games"--with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman--represents a more synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of both the contemporary art and game communities.

John Sharp is Associate Professor of Games and Learning at Parsons the New School for Design and a member of the game design collective Local No. 12.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Internet trolls live to upset as many people as possible, using all the technical and psychological tools at their disposal. They gleefully whip the media into a frenzy over a fake teen drug crisis; they post offensive messages on Facebook memorial pages, traumatizing grief-stricken friends and family; they use unabashedly racist language and images. They take pleasure in ruining a complete stranger's day and find amusement in their victim's anguish. In short, trolling is the obstacle to a kinder, gentler Internet. To quote a famous Internet meme, trolling is why we can't have nice things online. Or at least that's what we have been led to believe. In This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Whitney Phillips argues that trolling, widely condemned as obscene and deviant, actually fits comfortably within the contemporary media landscape. Trolling may be obscene, but, Phillips argues, it isn't all that deviant. Trolls' actions are born of and fueled by culturally sanctioned impulses--which are just as damaging as the trolls' most disruptive behaviors.

Phillips describes, for example, the relationship between trolling and sensationalist corporate media--pointing out that for trolls, exploitation is a leisure activity; for media, it's a business strategy. She shows how trolls, "the grimacing poster children for a socially networked world," align with social media. And she documents how trolls, in addition to parroting media tropes, also offer a grotesque pantomime of dominant cultural tropes, including gendered notions of dominance and success and an ideology of entitlement. We don't just have a trolling problem, Phillips argues; we have a culture problem. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things isn't only about trolls; it's about a culture in which trolls thrive.

Whitney Phillips is a Lecturer in the Department of Communications at Humboldt State University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lars de Wildt, "The Pop Theology of Videogames: Producing and Playing with Religion" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 22 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Young people in the West are more likely to encounter religion in videogames than in places of worship like churches, mosques or temples. Lars de Wildt interviews developers and players of games such as Assassin’s Creed to find out how and why the Pop Theology of Videogames is so appealing to modern audiences.

Based on extensive fieldwork, Lars de Wildt's book The Pop Theology of Videogames: Producing and Playing with Religion (Amsterdam UP, 2023) argues that developers of videogames and their players engage in a ‘Pop Theology’ through which laymen reconsider traditional questions of religion by playing with them. Games allow us to play with religious questions and identities in the same way that children play at being a soldier, or choose to ‘play house.’

This requires a radical rethinking of religious questions as no longer just questions of belief or disbelief; but as truths to be tried on, compared, and discarded at will.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Richard Duncan, "The Money Revolution: How to Finance the Next American Century" (John Wiley & Sons, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Venture Capitalists: A Discussion with Sebastian Mallaby

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

By providing capital to back the ideas and efforts of others, venture capitalists can make absurd amounts of money. But there is another way of looking at it – venture capitalists take huge risks and produce great benefits. Many of the companies we rely on today began with a punt by a venture capitalist. Sebastian Mallaby discusses venture capitalists with Owen Bennett Jones. Mallaby is the author of The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future (Penguin, 2022) among other books.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

David A. Banks, "The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 19 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The City Authentic: How the Attention Economy Builds Urban America (U California Press, 2023) is the first book to explore how our cities gentrify by becoming social media influencers—and why it works.

Cities, like the people that live in them, are subject to the attention economy. In The City Authentic, author David A. Banks shows how cities are transforming themselves to appeal to modern desires for authentic urban living through the attention-grabbing tactics of social media influencers and reality-TV stars.

Blending insightful analysis with pop culture, this engaging study of New York State’s Capital Region is an accessible glimpse into the social phenomena that influence contemporary cities. The rising economic fortunes of cities in the Rust Belt, Banks argues, are due in part to the markers of its previous decay—which translate into signs of urban authenticity on the internet. The City Authentic unpacks the odd connection between digital media and derelict buildings, the consequences of how we think about industry and place, and the political processes that have enabled a new paradigm in urban planning. Mixing urban sociology with media and cultural studies, Banks offers a lively account of how urban life and development are changing in the twenty-first century.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is on media representations of people and place. He is currently conducting research on the branding of cities. I am particularly interested in the similarities and differences in how travel and tourism agencies see a city as compared to how residents and visitors see the same city. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa, "The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 18 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life (U of California Press, 2023), Benjamín Schultz‑Figueroa examines rarely seen behaviorist films of animal experiments from the 1930s and 1940s. These laboratory recordings—including Robert Yerkes's work with North American primate colonies, Yale University's rat‑based simulations of human society, and B. F. Skinner's promotions for pigeon‑guided missiles—have long been considered passive records of scientific research. In Schultz‑Figueroa's incisive analysis, however, they are revealed to be rich historical, political, and aesthetic texts that played a crucial role in American scientific and cultural history—and remain foundational to contemporary conceptions of species, race, identity, and society.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Dr. Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa is Assistant Professor in Film Studies at Seattle University. His research focuses on the history of scientific filmmaking, nontheatrical film, and animal studies. Among other venues, his writing has been published in JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Film History, Millennium Film Journal, The Brooklyn Rail and Journal of Environmental Media.

Callie Smith is a poet and museum educator with a PhD in English. She currently lives in Louisiana.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brett Brehm, "Kaleidophonic Modernity: Transatlantic Sound, Technology, and Literature" (Fordham UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What stories remain hidden behind one of the most significant inventions of the nineteenth century? Kaleidophonic Modernity: Transatlantic Sound, Technology, and Literature (Fordham University Press, 2023) reexamines the development of mechanical sound recording technology by charting the orbits of writers, scientists, and artists in France and the United States. Working between comparative literature, the history of science, and urban studies, Dr. Brett Brehm builds a bridge between visual culture and sound studies.

Kaleidophonic Modernity places the poet and inventor Charles Cros and his lover, the celebrated concert pianist and salonnière Nina de Villard at the heart of modern aesthetic and scientific vanguards. Cros's scientific endeavors ranged from color photography, to telecommunications, to mechanical sound reproducibility. In his poetry the Surrealists found an ancestor and inspiration. His literary and scientific works prove startling and relevant to predicaments of technological media in his own time and ours. For nearly twenty years Nina de Villard presided over a supremely daring intellectual salon. There, she welcomed manifold literary, artistic, and musical luminaries into a veritable crucible of the artistic avant-garde and precursor to the famous Chat Noir cabaret. Together, these two forgotten but pivotal figures, Cros and Villard, help reframe our thinking on Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Walt Whitman, icons of urban modernity who can now be seen and heard in a kaleidophonic light, one that offers a compelling new perspective on modern mediascapes.

In elaborating this transatlantic phenomenon, Kaleidophonic Modernity illuminates the prehistory of the phonograph as it intersects with the aesthetics of sound reproducibility, Franco-American literary exchange, Poe’s aesthetic and intellectual legacy, the sounds of modern cities and technologies, and the genealogy of audiovisual experimentation found in such movements as Dada, Futurism, and the sound art of today.

Annie deSaussure, holds a Ph.D. in French from Yale University and is an Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Languages and Literary Studies at Lafayette College. Her work focuses on minority regional languages, literatures, and cultures in contemporary France, radio, sound studies, and podcasting. Her most recent article on feminist discourses of motherhood in French podcasting is forthcoming in the 2023 special issue, “Podcasting Disruptive Voices,” of CFC Intersections.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Doctor Ex Machina: AI in Medicine and its Pitfalls

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Could an artificial intelligence diagnosis what ails you? Medical futurists offer a techno-utopian vision of perfect personalized risk assessments, diagnoses, and treatment recommendations. Yet, recent stories belie this optimism. Many of these robot doctors are rather stupid, and they seem more interesting in cutting costs than providing care.

Medical AIs are largely unregulated and unverified, and this has made them woefully inadequate and sometimes blatantly racist. Plus, they have been weaponized as tools to deny treatment to the patients who need it. We explore the world of AI in medicine with STAT News investigative reporter Casey Ross, and hematologist and philosopher Ben Chin-Yee.

SUPPORT THE SHOW

You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button.

If you want to do a little more we would love it if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too.

ABOUT THE SHOW

For a full list of credits, contact information, and more, visit our about page.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Red Team Blues and the Social Dimensions of Technology

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

This episode is a first for the Peoples & Things podcast: it features a guest host. It is something you will be seeing more of in the future. Guest host Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology at and a senior research associate of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute at Syracuse University, and Lee Vinsel interview writer Cory Doctorow, the author of over 20 books including several best-sellers and multi-award winners and special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, about his new novel, Red Team Blues (Tor, 2023). Red Team Blues is a taut neo-noir technothriller that examines crypto technologies and the many social and economic inequities of Silicon Valley. The conversation puts Red Team Blues in the larger context of Doctorow’s career and writings.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Payal Arora et al., "Feminist Futures of Work: Reimagining Labour in the Digital Economy" (Amsterdam UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The future of work is at the centre of debates related to the emerging digital society. Concerns range from the inclusion, equity, and dignity of those at the far end of the value chain, who participate on and off platforms, often in the shadows, invisible to policymakers, designers, and consumers. Precarity and informality characterize this largely female workforce, across sectors ranging from artisanal work to salon services to ride-hailing and construction. A feminist reimagining of the futures of work - what we term “FemWork” - is the need of the day and should manifest in multiple and various forms, placing the worker at the core and drawing on her experiences, aspirations, and realities.

Payal Arora, Usha Raman, and René König's book Feminist Futures of Work: Reimagining Labour in the Digital Economy (Amsterdam UP, 2023) offers grounded insights from academic, activist, legal, development and design perspectives that can help us think through these inclusive futures and possibly create digital, social, and governance infrastructures of work that are fairer and more meaningful.

The book is published open access and can be downloaded from here.

Rituparna Patgiri is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She has a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Zhouxiang Lu, "A History of Competitive Gaming" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Competitive gaming, or esports - referring to competitive tournaments of video games among both casual gamers and professional players - began in the early 1970s with small competitions like the one held at Stanford University in October 1972, where some 20 researchers and students attended. By 2022, the estimated revenue of the global esports industry is in excess of $947 million, with over 200 million viewers worldwide. Regardless of views held about competitive gaming, esports have become a modern economic and cultural phenomenon.

This book studies the full history of competitive gaming from the 1970s to the 2010s against the background of the arrival of the electronic and computer age. It investigates how competitive gaming has grown into a new form of entertainment, a sport-like competition, a lucrative business and a unique cultural sensation. It also explores the role of competitive gaming in the development of the video game industry, making a distinctive contribution to our knowledge and understanding of the history of video games.

Zhouxiang Lu's A History of Competitive Gaming (Routledge, 2022) will appeal to all those interested in the business and culture of gaming, as well as those studying modern technological culture.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brendan Keogh, "The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist: Why We Should Think Beyond Commercial Game Production" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The videogame industry, we're invariably told, is a multibillion-dollar, high-tech business conducted by large corporations in certain North American, European, and East Asian cities. But most videogames today, in fact, are made by small clusters of people working on shoestring budgets, relying on existing, freely available software platforms, and hoping, often in vain, to rise to stardom—in short, people working like artists.

Aiming squarely at this disconnect between perception and reality, Brendan Keogh's book The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist: Why We Should Think Beyond Commercial Game Production (MIT Press, 2023) presents a much more accurate and nuanced picture of how the vast majority of videogame-makers work—a picture that reveals the diverse and precarious communities, identities, and approaches that make videogame production a significant cultural practice.

Drawing on insights provided by over 400 game developers across Australia, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia, Keogh develops a new framework for understanding videogame production as a cultural field in all its complexity. Part-time hobbyists, aspirational students, client-facing contractors, struggling independents, artist collectives, and tightly knit local scenes—all have a place within this model. But proponents of non-commercial game making don't exist in isolation; Keogh shows how they and their commercial counterparts are deeply interconnected and codependent in the field of videogame production.

A cultural intervention, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist challenges core assumptions about videogame production—ideas about creativity, professionalism, labor, diversity, education, globalization, and community. Its in-depth, complex portrayal suggests new ways of seeing, and engaging in, the videogame industry that really does exist.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Drone: Remote Control Warfare

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 7 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Drone Warfare is the first comprehensive analysis of one of the fastest growing--and most secretive--fronts in global conflict: the rise of robot warfare. In 2000, the Pentagon had fewer than fifty aerial drones; ten years later, it had a fleet of nearly 7,500, and the US Air Force now trains more drone "pilots" than bomber and fighter pilots combined. Drones are already a $5 billion business in the US alone. The human cost? Drone strikes have killed more than 200 children alone in Pakistan and Yemen.

CODEPINK and Global Exchange cofounder Medea Benjamin provides the first extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who controls these unmanned planes, and what are the legal and moral implications of their use. In vivid, readable style, this book also looks at what activists, lawyers, and scientists across the globe are doing to ground these weapons. Benjamin argues that the assassinations we are carrying out from the air will come back to haunt us when others start doing the same thing--to us.

Hugh Gusterson is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University. He is the author of Nuclear Rites and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America’s Nuclear Complex.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amy Brady, "Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity" (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 6 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Ice is everywhere: in gas stations, in restaurants, in hospitals, in our homes. Americans think nothing of dropping a few ice cubes into tall glasses of tea to ward off the heat of a hot summer day. Most refrigerators owned by Americans feature automatic ice machines. Ice on-demand has so revolutionized modern life that it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way—and to overlook what aspects of society might just melt away as the planet warms.

In Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2023), journalist and historian Amy Brady shares the strange and storied two-hundred-year-old history of ice in America: from the introduction of mixed drinks “on the rocks,” to the nation’s first-ever indoor ice rink, to how delicacies like ice creams and iced tea revolutionized our palates, to the ubiquitous ice machine in every motel across the US. But Ice doesn’t end in the past. Brady also explores the surprising present-day uses of ice in sports, medicine, and sustainable energy—including cutting-edge cryotherapy breast-cancer treatments and new refrigerator technologies that may prove to be more energy efficient—underscoring how precious this commodity is, especially in an age of climate change.

Amy Brady is the executive director of Orion magazine, a contributing editor for Scientific American, and coeditor of The World as We Knew It: Dispatches from a Changing Climate. Twitter. Website.

Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter. Website.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jen Ross, "Digital Futures for Learning: Speculative Methods and Pedagogies" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 4 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What is the future of education? In Digital Futures for Learning: Speculative Methods and Pedagogies (Routledge, 2022), Jen Ross, a senior lecturer in digital education at the University of Edinburgh, analyses the way ideas about the future are produced and become accepted in education (and in society). This analysis is the basis for offering radical alternatives. In the educational context, the book reflects on four research projects that demonstrate the power of particular approaches- speculative methods- to engaging with digital pedagogy and research. The book has a rich theoretical engagement with a range of social and educational theory, as well as giving detailed practical guidance for educators. The detailed guidance for researchers and teachers who want to make alternative digital futures make the book essential reading for anyone interested in the future of education.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell, "The Smartness Mandate" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 4 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Over the last half century, "smartness"—the drive for ubiquitous computing—has become a mandate: a new mode of managing and governing politics, economics, and the environment. Smart phones. Smart cars. Smart homes. Smart cities. The imperative to make our world ever smarter in the face of increasingly complex challenges raises several questions: What is this "smartness mandate"? How has it emerged, and what does it say about our evolving way of understanding—and managing—reality? How have we come to see the planet and its denizens first and foremost as data-collecting instruments?

In The Smartness Mandate (MIT Press, 2023), Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell radically suggest that "smartness" is not primarily a technology, but rather an epistemology. Through this lens, they offer a critical exploration of the practices, technologies, and subjects that such an understanding relies upon—above all, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Orit Halpern is Lighthouse Professor and Chair of Digital Cultures and Societal Change at Technische Universität Dresden.

Robert Mitchell is Professor of English at Duke University.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elizabeth Reddy, "¡Alerta!: Engineering on Shaky Ground" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 2 Jun 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Sistema de Alerta Sísmica Mexicano is the world’s oldest public earthquake early warning system. Given the unpredictability of earthquakes, the technology was designed to give the people of Mexico City more than a minute to prepare before the next big quake hits. How does this kind of environmental monitoring technology get built in the first place? How does its life-saving promise align with reality? And who shapes modern risk mitigation?

In ¡Alerta!: Engineering on Shaky Ground (MIT Press, 2023), Elizabeth Reddy surveys this innovation to shed light on what it means to imagine a world where sirens could sound out an ¡alerta sísmica! at any moment—and what it would be like to live in such a world.

Proponents of earthquake early warnings have long held that the technology can save lives and limit economic losses. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and archival data, Reddy conducts a thorough, qualitative analysis of these claims and considers the requirements and uses of the alert system. She embeds her study in a rich narrative of the engineers who designed the system in conjunction with contingent political and environmental conditions. The result demonstrates how addressing earthquake dangers is no small task: it means trying to change relationships between the environment, society, and technology. Doing so, she critiques universalist and techno-centric approaches to hazard risk mitigation and celebrates the potential of contextually appropriate and broadly supported efforts.

¡Alerta! takes readers on a vivid journey into the world of Mexican earthquake risk mitigation, with critical insights for anthropologists and science and technology studies scholars, as well as specialists in the geosciences, engineering, and emergency management.

Mentioned in this episode:

Donna Riley’s interview with Lee Vinsel on the NBN Peoples & Things series.

Elizabeth Reddy is Assistant Professor of Engineering, Design, & Society at the Colorado School of Mines, with a joint appointment in Geophysics.

Liliana Gil is an anthropologist. She is incoming Assistant Professor of Comparative Studies (STS) at the Ohio State University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Orly Lobel, "The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future" (PublicAffairs, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 31 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The fear of algorithmic decision-making and surveillance capitalism dominate today's tech policy discussions. But instead of simply criticizing big data and automation, we can harness technology to correct discrimination, historical exclusions, and subvert long-standing stereotypes.

Orly Lobel is the author of The Equality Machine: Harnessing Digital Technology for a Brighter, More Inclusive Future and Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law. Lobel is one of the nation's foremost legal experts on labor and employment law. She is also one of the nation's top-cited young legal scholars.

Orly and Greg discuss how collecting more data and adding more inputs into decision algorithms may be beneficial to expose disparities in current frameworks in the real world, and help us to right past injustices and ongoing inequities.

Gregory LaBlanc is a lifelong educator with degrees in History, PPE, Business, and Law, Greg currently teaches at Berkeley, Stanford, and HEC Paris. He has taught in multiple disciplines, from Engineering to Economics, from Biology to Business, from Psychology to Philosophy. He is the host of the unSILOed podcast. unSILOed is produced by University FM.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lawrence H. White, "Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin?" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 28 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The recent rise of dollar, pound, and euro inflation rates has rekindled the debate over potential alternative monies, particularly gold and Bitcoin. Though Bitcoin has been much discussed in recent years, a basic understanding of how it and gold would work as monetary standards is rare. Accessibly written by a pioneering economist, Better Money explains and evaluates gold, fiat, and Bitcoin standards without hype. White uses simple supply-and-demand analysis to explain how these standards work, evaluating their relative merits and explaining their response to shocks, allowing for informed comparisons between them. This book addresses common misunderstandings of the gold standard and Bitcoin, using historical evidence to review the history of money with emphasis on the contest between market and government provision. Known for his work on alternative monetary institutions, White offers a reasoned discussion of which standard is most likely to provide a better money.

In Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin? (Cambridge UP, 2023), Lawrence H. White offers a summary of previous work while explaining differences and similarities of the gold standard and how crypto currencies work in an authoritative yet non technical way with a non-specialist audience in mind. His main idea is to explore alternatives to fiat money in a digital world.

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo is currently straddling between Newcastle and Mexico City. You can find him on twitter on issues related to business history of banking, fintech, payments and other musings. Not always in that order. @BatizLazo.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kenneth Mondschein, "On Time: A History of Western Timekeeping" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 26 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Western culture has been obsessed with regulating society by the precise, accurate measurement of time since the Middle Ages. In On Time: A History of Western Timekeeping (Johns Hopkins UP, 2020), Ken Mondschein explores the paired development of concepts and technologies of timekeeping with human thought. Without clocks, he argues, the modern world as we know it would not exist. From the astronomical timekeeping of the ancient world to the tower clocks of the Middle Ages to the seagoing chronometer, the quartz watch, and the atomic clock, greater precision and accuracy have had profound effects on human society--which, in turn, has driven the quest for further precision and accuracy. This quest toward automation--which gave rise to the Gregorian calendar, the factory clock, and even the near-disastrous Y2K bug--has led to profound social repercussions and driven the creation of the modern scientific mindset.

Surveying the evolution of the clock from prehistory to the twenty-first century, Mondschein explains how both the technology and the philosophy behind Western timekeeping regimes came to take over the entire world. On Time is a story of thinkers, philosophers, and scientists, and of the thousand decisions that continue to shape our daily lives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amanda Parrish Morgan, "Stroller" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 24 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Amanda Parrish Morgan's book Stroller (Bloomsbury, 2022) is part Object Lessons, a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, "We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism" (Bristol UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 21 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The concept of transhumanism emerged in the middle of the 20th century, and has influenced discussions around AI, brain–computer interfaces, genetic technologies and life extension. Despite its enduring influence in the public imagination, a fully developed philosophy of transhumanism has not yet been presented.

In We Have Always Been Cyborgs: Digital Data, Gene Technologies, and an Ethics of Transhumanism (Bristol UP, 2023), leading philosopher Stefan Lorenz Sorgner explores the critical issues that link transhumanism with digitalization, gene technologies and ethics. He examines the history and meaning of transhumanism and asks bold questions about human perfection, cyborgs, genetically enhanced entities, and uploaded minds.

Offering insightful reflections on values, norms and utopia, this will be an important guide for readers interested in contemporary digital culture, gene ethics, and policy making.

Frances Sacks is a graduate of Wesleyan University where she studied in the Science and Society Program.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Meredith Broussard, "More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 18 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The word "glitch" implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it is to identify. But what if racism, sexism, and ableism aren't just bugs in mostly functional machinery--what if they're coded into the system itself? In the vein of heavy hitters such as Safiya Umoja Noble, Cathy O'Neil, and Ruha Benjamin, Meredith Broussard demonstrates in More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2023) how neutrality in tech is a myth and why algorithms need to be held accountable.

Broussard, a data scientist and one of the few Black female researchers in artificial intelligence, masterfully synthesizes concepts from computer science and sociology. She explores a range of examples: from facial recognition technology trained only to recognize lighter skin tones, to mortgage-approval algorithms that encourage discriminatory lending, to the dangerous feedback loops that arise when medical diagnostic algorithms are trained on insufficiently diverse data. Even when such technologies are designed with good intentions, Broussard shows, fallible humans develop programs that can result in devastating consequences.

Broussard argues that the solution isn't to make omnipresent tech more inclusive, but to root out the algorithms that target certain demographics as "other" to begin with. With sweeping implications for fields ranging from jurisprudence to medicine, the ground-breaking insights of More Than a Glitch are essential reading for anyone invested in building a more equitable future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

America & Democracy Ep. 4: George Zarkadakis on Digital Liberalism

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 17 May 2023 00:10:13 +0000

Around the world, liberal democracies are in crisis. Citizens have lost faith in their government; right-wing nationalist movements frame the political debate. At the same time, economic inequality is increasing dramatically; digital technologies have created a new class of super-rich entrepreneurs. Automation threatens to transform the free economy into a zero-sum game in which capital wins and labor loses. But is this digital dystopia inevitable?

In our final discussion before the election, George Zarkadakis, author of Cyber Republic, reflects on the long term technological challenges and opportunities facing democracy.

George Zarkadakis leads Future of Work at Willis Towers Watson in Great Britain, a global risk and human capital consulting firm. The author of In Our Own Image: The History and Future of Artificial Intelligence and other books, he has written extensively on science and technology for publications including Aeon and Wired.

Hosted by Sam Kelly; Mixed by Samantha Doyle; Soundtrack by Kristen Gallerneaux

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anne Kaun and Fredrik Stiernstedt, "Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 13 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Prisons are not typically known for cutting-edge media technologies. Yet from photography in the nineteenth century to AI-enhanced tracking cameras today, there is a long history of prisons being used as a testing ground for technologies that are later adopted by the general public. If we recognize the prison as a central site for the development of media technologies, how might that change our understanding of both media systems and carceral systems? In Prison Media: Incarceration and the Infrastructures of Work and Technology (MIT Press, 2023), Anne Kaun and Fredrik Stiernstedt foreground the ways in which the prison is a model space for the control and transmission of information, a place where media is produced, and a medium in its own right.

Examining the relationship between media and prison architecture, as surveillance and communication technologies are literally built into the facilities, this study also considers the ways in which prisoners themselves often do hard labor as media workers—labor that contributes in direct and indirect ways to the latest technologies developed and sold by multinational corporations like Amazon. There is a fine line between ankle monitors and Fitbits, and Prison Media helps us make sense of today's carceral society.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karen Schrier, "We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 11 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Ethics and civics have always mattered, but perhaps they matter now more than ever before. Recently, with the rise of online teaching and movements like #PlayApartTogether, games have become increasingly acknowledged as platforms for civic deliberation and value sharing. We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics (Oxford UP, 2021) explores these possibilities by examining how we connect, communicate, analyze, and discover when we play games. Combining research-based perspectives and current examples, this volume shows how games can be used in ethics, civics, and social studies education to inspire learning, critical thinking, and civic change.

We the Gamers introduces and explores various educational frameworks through a range of games and interactive experiences including board and card games, online games, virtual reality and augmented reality games, and digital games like Minecraft,Executive Command, Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, Fortnite, When Rivers Were Trails, Politicraft, Quandary, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. The book systematically evaluates the types of skills, concepts, and knowledge needed for civic and ethical engagement, and details how games can foster these skills in classrooms, remote learning environments, and other educational settings. We the Gamers also explores the obstacles to learning with games and how to overcome those obstacles by encouraging equity and inclusion, care and compassion, and fairness and justice.

Featuring helpful tips and case studies, We the Gamers shows teachers the strengths and limitations of games in helping students connect with civics and ethics, and imagines how we might repair and remake our world through gaming, together.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Barbara Penner et al., "Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects" (Reaktion Books, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 8 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

So-called extinct objects are those that were imagined but were never in use, or that existed but are now unused—superseded, unfashionable, or simply forgotten. Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects (Reaktion Books, 2021) gathers together an exceptional range of artists, curators, architects, critics, and academics, including Hal Foster, Barry Bergdoll, Deyan Sudjic, Tacita Dean, Emily Orr, Richard Wentworth, and many more. In eighty-five essays, contributors nominate “extinct” objects and address them in a series of short, vivid, sometimes personal accounts, speaking not only of obsolete technologies, but of other ways of thinking, making, and interacting with the world. Extinct is filled with curious, half-remembered objects, each one evoking a future that never came to pass. It is also a visual treat, full of interest and delight.

Barbara Penner is professor of architectural humanities at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

Adrian Forty is professor emeritus of architectural history at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jason C. Cash and Craig T. Olsen, "The World of Final Fantasy VII: Essays on the Game and Its Legacy" (McFarland, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 7 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Final Fantasy VII altered the course of video game history when it was released in 1997 on Sony's PlayStation system. It converted the Japanese role-playing game into an international gaming standard with enhanced gameplay, spectacular cutscenes and a vast narrative involving an iconic cast. In the decades after its release, the Final Fantasy VII franchise has grown to encompass a number of video game sequels, prequels, a feature-length film, a novel and a multi-volume remake series.

Jason C. Cash and Craig T. Olsen's The World of Final Fantasy VII: Essays on the Game and Its Legacy (McFarland, 2023), the first edited collection of essays devoted only to the world of Final Fantasy VII, blends scholarly rigor with fan passion in order to identify the elements that keep Final Fantasy VII current and exciting for players. Some essays specifically address the game's perennially relevant themes and scenarios, ranging from environmental consciousness to economic inequity and posthumanism. Others examine the mechanisms used to immerse the player or to improve the narrative. Finally, there are several essays devoted specifically to the game's legacy, from its influence on later games to its characters' many crossovers and cameos.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarrah Kassem, "Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy: Amazon and the Power of Organization" (Bristol UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 6 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

How have platforms transforming the world of work? In Work and Alienation in the Platform Economy: Amazon and the Power of Organisation (Bristol UP, 2023), Sarrah Kassem, a Lecturer and Research Associate in the field of Political Economy at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Tübingen, uses a case study of Amazon to explore issues of alienation and resistance in contemporary working life. The book adapts and develops key Marxist inspired theories to chart the rise of the platforms, and Amazon’s role within this set of both digital and physical industries. Examining warehouses, MTurk, and the broader gig economy, the book offers strategies for resistance and solidarity as well as detailed analysis. It will be essential reading across the social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in work and labour today.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, "Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity" (PublicAffairs, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 5 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity (PublicAffairs, 2023) is a groundbreaking work by bestselling authors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, in which they challenge conventional wisdom about the role of technology in driving prosperity. The authors argue that technology is not a neutral force working in the public interest but is shaped by the interests and beliefs of the powerful. Those who control technology are the ones who benefit from it, leaving the rest of society with the illusion of progress.

The authors provide a historical account of how technological choices have shaped the course of history, from the appropriation of the economic surplus of the Middle Ages by an ecclesiastical elite to the making of vast fortunes from digital technologies today, while millions of people are pushed towards poverty. The authors emphasize that technological progress can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.

The book presents a manifesto for building a better society by using the tremendous digital advances of the last half century to create useful and empowering tools, rather than marginalizing most people through automated work and political passivity. The authors argue that to achieve the true potential of innovation, we need to ensure that technology is creating new jobs and opportunities for everyone. The book offers a vision to reimagine and reshape the path of technology, ensuring that it leads to true shared prosperity.

Power and Progress offers a fresh perspective on how technology shapes our lives and highlights the need for a more democratic approach to technological progress. The book provides a compelling argument that the path of technology is not predetermined but can be brought under control to ensure that it benefits everyone, not just a few powerful individuals or corporations. The authors provide an insightful analysis of the power dynamics that underlie technological progress, and their manifesto for a better society is a call to action for policymakers, business leaders, and individuals alike.

Javier Mejia is an economist at Stanford University who specializes in the intersection of social networks and economic history. His research interests also include entrepreneurship and political economy, with a particular focus on Latin America and the Middle East. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Los Andes University. Mejia has previously been a Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer at New York University-Abu Dhabi and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Bordeaux. He is also a frequent contributor to various news outlets, currently serving as an op-ed columnist for Forbes Magazine.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Collaborative Society

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 3 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

An interview with Dariusz Jemielniak and Aleksandra Przegalinska about Collaborative Society (The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series) and how networked technology enables the emergence of a new collaborative society.

Humans are hard-wired for collaboration, and new technologies of communication act as a super-amplifier of our natural collaborative mindset. This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series examines the emergence of a new kind of social collaboration enabled by networked technologies. This new collaborative society might be characterized as a series of services and startups that enable peer-to-peer exchanges and interactions though technology. Some believe that the economic aspects of the new collaboration have the potential to make society more equitable; others see collaborative communities based on sharing as a cover for social injustice and user exploitation.

The book covers the "sharing economy," and the hijacking of the term by corporations; different models of peer production, and motivations to participate; collaborative media production and consumption, the definitions of "amateur" and "professional," and the power of memes; hactivism and social movements, including Anonymous and anti-ACTA protest; collaborative knowledge creation, including citizen science; collaborative self-tracking; and internet-mediated social relations, as seen in the use of Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder. Finally, the book considers the future of these collaborative tendencies and the disruptions caused by fake news, bots, and other challenges.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Michael W. Hankins, "Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia" (Cornell UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 2 May 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Flying Camelot: The F-15, the F-16, and the Weaponization of Fighter Pilot Nostalgia (Cornell UP, 2021) brings us back to the post-Vietnam era, when the US Air Force launched two new, state-of-the art fighter aircraft: the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon. It was an era when debates about aircraft superiority went public--and these were not uncontested discussions. Michael W. Hankins delves deep into the fighter pilot culture that gave rise to both designs, showing how a small but vocal group of pilots, engineers, and analysts in the Department of Defense weaponized their own culture to affect technological development and larger political change.

The design and advancement of the F-15 and F-16 reflected this group's nostalgic desire to recapture the best of World War I air combat. Known as the "Fighter Mafia," and later growing into the media savvy political powerhouse "Reform Movement," it believed that American weapons systems were too complicated and expensive, and thus vulnerable. The group's leader was Colonel John Boyd, a contentious former fighter pilot heralded as a messianic figure by many in its ranks. He and his group advocated for a shift in focus from the multi-role interceptors the Air Force had designed in the early Cold War towards specialized air-to-air combat dogfighters. Their influence stretched beyond design and into larger politicized debates about US national security, debates that still resonate today.

A biography of fighter pilot culture and the nostalgia that drove decision-making, Flying Camelot deftly engages both popular culture and archives to animate the movement that shook the foundations of the Pentagon and Congress.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Spatial Computing

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 1 May 2023 13:48:30 +0000

Shashi Shekhar and Pamela Vold, authors of Spatial Computing, from The MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, discuss the reach, risks and importance of spatial computing in confronting COVID-19.

An accessible guide to the ideas and technologies underlying such applications as GPS, Google Maps, Pokémon Go, ride-sharing, driverless cars, and drone surveillance.

Billions of people around the globe use various applications of spatial computing daily--by using a ride-sharing app, GPS, the e911 system, social media check-ins, even Pokémon Go. Scientists and researchers use spatial computing to track diseases, map the bottom of the oceans, chart the behavior of endangered species, and create election maps in real time. Drones and driverless cars use a variety of spatial computing technologies. Spatial computing works by understanding the physical world, knowing and communicating our relation to places in that world, and navigating through those places. It has changed our lives and infrastructures profoundly, marking a significant shift in how we make our way in the world. This volume in the MIT Essential Knowledge series explains the technologies and ideas behind spatial computing.

The book offers accessible descriptions of GPS and location-based services, including the use of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and RFID for position determination out of satellite range; remote sensing, which uses satellite and aerial platforms to monitor such varied phenomena as global food production, the effects of climate change, and subsurface natural resources on other planets; geographic information systems (GIS), which store, analyze, and visualize spatial data; spatial databases, which store multiple forms of spatial data; and spatial statistics and spatial data science, used to analyze location-related data.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathan E. Abel, "The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji" (U of Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 28 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Jonathan Abel’s The New Real: Media and Mimesis in Japan from Stereographs to Emoji (U of Minnesota Press, 2023) is a history of our relationships to new media. The book centers on different modalities of mimesis and mediation and more as it explores the important transformation of “new media” into “the new real.” Abel describes this “new real” as the phase when the newer, better, faster, more realistic media of marketing hype becomes absorbed into the fabric of society and daily life. The New Real uses diverse case studies from over a century of modern Japanese history―including stereoscopic photographs, the phonograph, the television, video games, and even emoji―to explore the social effects of the new real.

Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Computer Graphics

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

In this episode of High Theory, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan talks with us about computer graphics. Emerging from tools for sailing and warmaking, like sea charts and radar, modern computer graphics are technologies of mapping and managing risk. They seem intent on absorbing the human sensorium into the machine.

In the episode Bernard refers to computer graphics as “techniques of addressing,” a term he attributes to Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal. He also uses the term “operational images” which comes from the work of Harun Farocki, and talks about SAGE, the US Government’s Cold War era Semi-Automatic Ground Environment Air Defense System. Bernard references Paul Edward’s book A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2013). He also mentions the German scholar Christoph Borbach who has written on auditory computer interfaces, and American disability studies scholar Mara Mills, who has written on the Deaf history of computing. He was kind enough to give us an extensive bibliography on this topic, which is posted below.

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan is a reader in the History and Theory of Digital Media at King’s College London. He has a brand new book out on the cybernetic history of French theory, called Code: From Information Theory to French Theory (Duke UP, 2023). Kim met him when he came to give a talk at the Stanford Humanities Center in January 2023. He wore denim and had a slightly manic affect. People came all the way from Berkeley to hear what he had to say, which is quite impressive in the Bay Area.

This week’s image is a radar loop of the December 16 2007 Eastern North America winter storm, found on Wikimedia Commons. The loop runs from Saturday Morning at 7 AM (Dec 15) to Sunday Night at 7 PM (Dec 16). The image is in the public domain because it was made by someone who works for the National Weather Service.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Technologies of the Human Corpse

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 19:58:08 +0000

In this episode we hear from John Troyer, author of Technologies of the Human Corpse and the Director of The Center for Death and Society at The University of Bath. We discuss the way technology is blurring the distinctions between life and death, the emergence of death studies from the 70s social and political milieu and how his own experiences of bereavement inform his research.

The relationship of the dead body with technology through history, from nineteenth-century embalming machines to the death-prevention technologies of today.

Death and the dead body have never been more alive in the public imagination—not least because of current debates over modern medical technology that is deployed, it seems, expressly to keep human bodies from dying, blurring the boundary between alive and dead. In this book, John Troyer examines the relationship of the dead body with technology, both material and conceptual: the physical machines, political concepts, and sovereign institutions that humans use to classify, organize, repurpose, and transform the human corpse. Doing so, he asks readers to think about death, dying, and dead bodies in radically different ways.

Troyer explains, for example, how technologies of the nineteenth century including embalming and photography, created our image of a dead body as quasi-atemporal, existing outside biological limits formerly enforced by decomposition. He describes the “Happy Death Movement” of the 1970s; the politics of HIV/AIDS corpse and the productive potential of the dead body; the provocations of the Body Worlds exhibits and their use of preserved dead bodies; the black market in human body parts; and the transformation of historic technologies of the human corpse into “death prevention technologies.” The consequences of total control over death and the dead body, Troyer argues, are not liberation but the abandonment of Homo sapiens as a concept and a species. In this unique work, Troyer forces us to consider the increasing overlap between politics, dying, and the dead body in both general and specifically personal terms.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rachel Robison-Greene, "Edibility and in Vitro Meat: Ethical Considerations" (Lexington Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Consumers and policy makers have unprecedented choices to make in the years to come about how and what we eat. If we continue down our current path of food production, we risk ever-increasing levels of animal exploitation, environmental destruction, biodiversity loss, and challenges to human health. In vitro meat production, or the process of growing meat in a lab, has the potential to reduce the severity of these problems. This proposal would change our food systems dramatically. Edibility and In Vitro Meat: Ethical Considerations (Lexington Books, 2022) explores the ethical questions that it’s important to ask every stage of this process. Rachel Robison-Greene considers arguments for and against the production of in vitro meat, as well as challenges for implementation. She argues that in vitro meat should be implemented and that we should re-think how we use the term “edible.”

Rachel Robison-Greene is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Utah State University. Her research interests are largely in meta-ethics, epistemology, and applied ethics, especially as it pertains to animals, the environment, and technology. Rachel serves as the Secretary of the Public Philosophy Network, the Secretary of the Culture and Animals Foundation, and is the Chair Elect of the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl.

Kyle Johannsen is a philosophy instructor at Trent University and Wilfrid Laurier University. His most recent book is Wild Animal Ethics: The Moral and Political Problem of Wild Animal Suffering (Routledge, 2021).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Adi Kuntsman and Liu Xin, "Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures: New Approaches for Historicising, Politicising and Imagining the Digital" (Emerald, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

What is digital politics? What new creative and experimental tools can we use to study digital politics historically and analyse and create future imaginaries of digital politics? Adi Kuntsman and Liu Xin about their co-edited book Digital Politics, Digital Histories, Digital Futures: New Approaches for Historicising, Politicising and Imagining the Digital (2023, Emerald Publishing Limited).

In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, Adi Kuntsman and Liu Xin speak about how they managed to bring together contributions from junior and experienced scholars in a book that examines digital politics theoretically, methodologically, and ethically, offering interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative pedagogies.

The first part of the book presents research chapters that look at misinformation and reactionary online activism, digital imperialism and capitalism, future internet governance, digital memory, digital waste, and environmental imagination. The second part showcases several creative and experimental tools for studying digital politics historically, and for analysing and creating future imaginaries of digital politics.

Adi Kuntsman is Reader in Digital Politics at the Department of History, Politics and Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Adi’s work lies at the intersection of cybercultures/digital and social media; anti-colonial and feminist scholarship; queer theory; and social research on war, nationalism and colonialism. Read more on the Digital Politics blog.

Liu Xin is a senior lecturer at the Center for Gender Studies, Karlstad University, Sweden. Her recent research projects are located at the intersection of feminist theory, environmental humanities, critical race studies, science and technology studies, social theory and digital media research. Find her on Twitter @LiuxinYB.

Joanne Kuai is a PhD Candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, with a research project on Artificial Intelligence in Chinese Newsrooms. Her research interests centre around data and AI for media, computational journalism, and the social implications of automation and algorithms. Find her on LinkedIn or Twitter @JoanneKuai.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tiger C. Roholt, "Distracted from Meaning: A Philosophy of Smartphones" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 10 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Social scientists have long studied the ways in which smartphone use can distract us from the proper performance of means-ends tasks, such as driving or medical procedures. In Distracted from Meaning: A Philosophy of Smartphones (Bloomsbury, 2022), Tiger Roholt discusses a distinct type of distraction: when smartphone use interferes with our active engagement with meaningful experiences, such as dinner with friends or a musical performance or gardening. In these cases, Roholt argues, we risk stunting the experiences that would otherwise give meaning to our lives, or even missing out on discovering new types of meaningful experiences.

Roholt, who is an associate professor of philosophy at Montclair State University, draws on writings from John Dewey, Susan Wolf, Albert Borgmann and others in this engagingly written meditation on how ubiquitous uses of smartphones and wearable technologies affects our lives in ways that other types of interruptions do not.

Carrie Figdor is professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Johnny Walker, "Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom, 1978-92" (Edinburgh UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 7 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Nostalgia for the 1980s is in the air. From Stranger Things to the relaunch of 80s franchises like Top Gun, the American entertainment industry casts the period as an age of simpler things, clearer dichotomies, and less technology. Yet not all was simple. The 1980s were the heyday of the Cold War. They were the decade of rapid social change, of deregulation and selfish consumption, of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They were also the decade when a new technology swept the world, setting the stage for our all-too-digital present.

A lot has been written about the rise of video in the United States, the format wars, the impact it had on the entertainment industry, on personal entertainment consumption habits, and new business models. But the rise of video was not a uniquely American phenomenon, nor was the American experience normative. In fact, wherever the new technology arrived, from the US, to the Middle East, to Eastern Europe, it reshaped social and business practices, as well as government responses to it, in ways that reflected the political, social, and economic arrangements of each space.

Johnny Walker’s Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom, 1972-1992 (Edinburgh UP, 2022) tells the story of Britain’s vide boom in the 1980s by focusing on the first video distributors who took chances on a wide range of films, from documentaries, to horror, to kids entertainment, in order to attract consumer interest. The new video shops that mushroomed across Britain turned video rental into a common practice among the public. Soon, despite a crushing recession, more and more industry players started to invest into what media at the time was dismissing as a mere ‘plaything.’ Rewind, Replay chronicles the idiosyncratic ways in which British distributors and store owners navigated various local political and economic pressures including piracy, the infamous video nasties moral panic and the government crackdown on the industry, as well as the corporate expansion of the industry which, by the end of the decade, eliminated independent distributors, and turned the pre-recorded videocassette from morally questionable enterprise into a staple of high street retail.

Oana Godeanu-Kenworthy is Teaching Professor of American Studies at Miami University of Ohio. Her book, Between Empire and Republic: America in the Colonial Canadian Imagination, came out in 2022. Twitter: @OanaGodyKenw. Oana’s webpage.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Antero Garcia, "All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 6 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Everyone knows the yellow school bus. It’s been invisible and also omnipresent for a century. Dr. Antero Garcia shows how the U.S. school bus, its form unaltered for decades, is the most substantial piece of educational technology to ever shape how schools operate. As it noisily moves young people across the country every day, the bus offers the opportunity for a necessary reexamination of what “counts” as educational technology.

Particularly in light of these buses being idled in pandemic times, All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology (University of Minnesota Press, 2023) questions what we take for granted and what we overlook in public schooling in America, pushing for liberatory approaches to education that extend beyond notions of school equity.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ben Shneiderman, "Human-Centered AI" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 4 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The remarkable progress in algorithms for machine and deep learning have opened the doors to new opportunities, and some dark possibilities. However, a bright future awaits those who build on their working methods by including HCAI strategies of design and testing. As many technology companies and thought leaders have argued, the goal is not to replace people, but to empower them by making design choices that give humans control over technology.

In Human-Centered AI (Oxford UP, 2022), Professor Ben Shneiderman offers an optimistic realist's guide to how artificial intelligence can be used to augment and enhance humans' lives. This project bridges the gap between ethical considerations and practical realities to offer a road map for successful, reliable systems. Digital cameras, communications services, and navigation apps are just the beginning. Shneiderman shows how future applications will support health and wellness, improve education, accelerate business, and connect people in reliable, safe, and trustworthy ways that respect human values, rights, justice, and dignity.

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rhea Myers, "Proof of Work: Blockchain Provocations 2011-2021" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 3 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

NFT, BTC, DAO, ETH, WAGMI, HODL. It would have been hard to avoid these acronyms only a year ago. The hype around cryptocurrencies and blockchain art was almost as annoying as the glee with which crypto sceptics welcomed the sudden onset of the crypto winter.

But for all the popularity of Bored Apes and Ponzi scheme stories, there seems to have been little serious engagement with the philosophical, political, and aesthetic implications of the blockchain. The academy appears to have dismissed the crypto world out of hand, citing its financial unviability and the deeply ‘problematic’ philosophical foundations of its technology.

Rhea Myers is a crypto artist, writer, and hacker who searches for faces in cryptographic hashes, follows a day in the life of a young shibe in the year 2032, and patiently explains why all art should be destructively uploaded to the blockchain. Her engagement in the technical history and debates in blockchain technology is complemented by a broader sense of the crypto movement and the artistic and political sensibilities that accompanied its ascendancy.

Remodelling the tropes of conceptual art and net art to explore what blockchain technology reveals about our concepts of value, culture and currency, Myers’s work has become required viewing for anyone interested in the future of art, consensus, law, and collectivity.

Rhea Myers speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about art’s role in mapping and shaping the emergent properties of blockchain technologies, the crypto-libertarian, anarchy-capitalist nexus, and the enduring legacy of the conceptual art movement.

Proof of Work brings together annotated presentations of Myers’s blockchain artworks with essays, reviews, and fictions—a sustained critical encounter between the cultures and histories of the artworld and crypto-utopianism, technically accomplished but always generously demystifying and often mischievous.

PostScript Viruses, 1993
Portrait of V.I. Lenin with Cap, in the Style of Jackson Pollock III by Art & Language
Futherfield Gallery, London
Is Art, 2014/15, Art Is, 2014/17
Pierre's essay on the speculative deficit and NFT art
Certificate of Inauthenticity, 2020

Rhea Myers is an artist, writer, and blockchain developer and activist. Now an acknowledged pioneer whose work has graced the auction room at Sotheby’s, Myers focussed on blockchain tech in 2011, becoming one of the first artists to enter into creative, speculative, and conceptual engagement with ‘the new internet’.

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 3 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

JoAnne Yates, Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, Emerita and Professor of Managerial Communication and Work and Organization Studies at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, talks about her classic and award-winning 1989 book, Control Through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management (Johns Hopkins University Press), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel.

Control Through Communication tells the fascinating story of how corporations came to adopt modern communications systems, including typewriters, filing cabinets, card catalogs, memos, and reports. Over the past twenty years, the book has been hugely influential in history, communications, and media studies. Yates and Vinsel also talk about how Yates came to move from literature to business history and organization studies, what it was like working as a woman in a business school in the 1980s, how she managed to have a dual writing career in history and business school journals, and much more.

Lee Vinsel is an associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karen Frost-Arnold, "Who Should We Be Online?: A Social Epistemology for the Internet" (Oxford UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 1 Apr 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Internet plays a central role in how we communicate, share information, disseminate ideas, maintain social connections, and conduct business. The Internet also exacerbates existing problems regarding irrationality, bias, wrongful discrimination, exploitation, and dehumanization. Moreover, the Internet gives rise to new ethical and epistemological problems – fake news, sock-puppetry, internet hoaxes, disinformation, and so on.

In Who Should We Be Online?: A Social Epistemology for the Internet (Oxford University Press 2023), Karen Frost-Arnold proposes a multi-layered social epistemology designed to assist us in navigating the fraught normative landscape of the online world.

Robert Talisse is the W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Elizabeth M. Renieris, "Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse" (MIT Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Why laws focused on data cannot effectively protect people—and how an approach centered on human rights offers the best hope for preserving human dignity and autonomy in a cyberphysical world.

Ever-pervasive technology poses a clear and present danger to human dignity and autonomy, as many have pointed out. And yet, for the past fifty years, we have been so busy protecting data that we have failed to protect people. In Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse (MIT Press, 2023), Elizabeth Renieris argues that laws focused on data protection, data privacy, data security and data ownership have unintentionally failed to protect core human values, including privacy. And, as our collective obsession with data has grown, we have, to our peril, lost sight of what’s truly at stake in relation to technological development—our dignity and autonomy as people.

Far from being inevitable, our fixation on data has been codified through decades of flawed policy. Renieris provides a comprehensive history of how both laws and corporate policies enacted in the name of data privacy have been fundamentally incapable of protecting humans. Her research identifies the inherent deficiency of making data a rallying point in itself—data is not an objective truth, and what’s more, its “entirely contextual and dynamic” status makes it an unstable foundation for organizing. In proposing a human rights–based framework that would center human dignity and autonomy rather than technological abstractions, Renieris delivers a clear-eyed and radically imaginative vision of the future.

At once a thorough application of legal theory to technology and a rousing call to action, Beyond Data boldly reaffirms the value of human dignity and autonomy amid widespread disregard by private enterprise at the dawn of the metaverse.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Woodrow Hartzog, "Privacy's Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies" (Harvard UP, 2018)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Every day, Internet users interact with technologies designed to undermine their privacy. Social media apps, surveillance technologies, and the Internet of Things are all built in ways that make it hard to guard personal information. And the law says this is okay because it is up to users to protect themselves―even when the odds are deliberately stacked against them.

In Privacy's Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies (Harvard UP, 2018), Woodrow Hartzog pushes back against this state of affairs, arguing that the law should require software and hardware makers to respect privacy in the design of their products. Current legal doctrine treats technology as though it were value-neutral: only the user decides whether it functions for good or ill. But this is not so. As Hartzog explains, popular digital tools are designed to expose people and manipulate users into disclosing personal information.

Against the often self-serving optimism of Silicon Valley and the inertia of tech evangelism, Hartzog contends that privacy gains will come from better rules for products, not users. The current model of regulating use fosters exploitation. Privacy’s Blueprint aims to correct this by developing the theoretical underpinnings of a new kind of privacy law responsive to the way people actually perceive and use digital technologies. The law can demand encryption. It can prohibit malicious interfaces that deceive users and leave them vulnerable. It can require safeguards against abuses of biometric surveillance. It can, in short, make the technology itself worthy of our trust.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Wake Smith, "Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Reaching net zero emissions will not be the end of the climate struggle, but only the end of the beginning. For centuries thereafter, temperatures will remain elevated; climate damages will continue to accrue and sea levels will continue to rise. Even the urgent and utterly essential task of reaching net zero cannot be achieved rapidly by emissions reductions alone. To hasten net zero and minimize climate damages thereafter, we will also need massive carbon removal and storage. We may even need to reduce incoming solar radiation in order to lower unacceptably high temperatures. Such unproven and potentially risky climate interventions raise mind-blowing questions of governance and ethics.

Wake Smith's book Pandora's Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention (Cambridge UP, 2022) offers readers an accessible and authoritative introduction to both the hopes and hazards of some of humanity's most controversial technologies, which may nevertheless provide the key to saving our world.

Bryan Toepfer, AIA, NCARB, CAPM is the Principal Architect for TOEPFER Architecture, PLLC, an Architecture firm specializing in Residential Architecture and Virtual Reality.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass, "The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The Avatar Faculty: Ecstatic Transformations in Religion and Video Games (University of California Press, 2023) creatively examines the parallels between spiritual and digital activities to explore the roles that symbolic second selves—avatars—can play in our lives. The use of avatars can allow for what anthropologists call ecstasy, from the Greek ekstasis, meaning "standing outside oneself." The archaic techniques of promoting spiritual ecstasy, which remain central to religious healing traditions around the world, now also have contemporary analogues in virtual worlds found on the internet. In this innovative book, Jeffrey G. Snodgrass argues that avatars allow for the ecstatic projection of consciousness into alternate realities, potentially providing both the spiritually possessed and gamers access to superior secondary identities with elevated social standing. Even if only temporary, self-transformations of these kinds can help reduce psychosocial stress and positively improve health and well-being.

Jeffrey G. Snodgrass is Professor of Anthropology at Colorado State University.

Armanc Yildiz is a doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology with a secondary field in Studies in Women, Gender and Sexuality at Harvard University. He is also the founder of Academics Write, where he supports scholars in their writing projects as a writing coach and developmental editor.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Winning & Losing in the Emerging EV Wars/The Aftershocks of the EV Transition Could Be Ugly

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Robert Charette, engineer, consultant, and contributing editor at IEEE Spectrum magazine, talks about his twelve-part series, “The Electric Vehicle Transition Explained,” with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The series takes a systems perspective on electric vehicles, and talks about all of the potential barriers – from a lack of minerals, to stressing out the electricity grid, to being short on consumers or workers – that face EVs, which are too often cast as a climate change cure-all. Charette and Vinsel also talk about the kinds of thinking that are necessary if we are to have realistic policies around EVs.

Lee Vinsel is an associate professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society at Virginia Tech.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Felix Zimmermann, "Virtual Realities: Atmospheric Experience of the Past in Digital Games (Büchner-Verlag, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 26 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Today I talked to Felix Zimmermann about his book Virtual Realities: Atmospheric Experience of the Past in Digital Games (Virtuelle Wirklichkeiten: Atmosphärisches Vergangenheitserleben im Digitalen Spiel (Büchner-Verlag, 2023)

Atmospheres are everywhere: at the workplace, in the soccer stadium, in front of the crackling fireplace. They shape our everyday language and have become quite natural expressions of how we find ourselves in certain environments and how we feel about them. Their influence is far-reaching: aesthetic atmospheres are closely linked to a contemporary experience-oriented historical culture whose products and practices claim to establish an immediate contact with the past.

With 'Vergangenheitsatmosphären' Felix Zimmermann offers for the first time a term to adequately describe this striving for immediacy. Using in-depth analyses of the digital games Anno 1800 (2019), Assassin's Creed Syndicate (2015), and Dishonored: The Mask of Wrath (2012), the concept is contoured and the productivity of atmospheric research trained on theories and methods of public history, game studies, and phenomenology is demonstrated.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Left to Our Own Devices: A Conversation with Julia Ticona

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Over the past three decades, digital technologies like smartphones and laptops have transformed the way we work in the US. At the same time, workers at both ends of the income ladder have experienced rising levels of job insecurity and anxiety about their economic futures. In Left to Our Own Devices: Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age (Oxford UP, 2022), Julia Ticona explores the ways that workers use their digital technologies to navigate insecure and flexible labor markets. Through 100 interviews with high and low-wage precarious workers across the US, she explores the surprisingly similar "digital hustles" they use to find work and maintain a sense of dignity and identity. Ticona then reveals how the digital hustle ultimately reproduces inequalities between workers at either end of polarized labor markets.

A moving and accessible look at the intimate consequences of contemporary capitalism, Left to Our Own Devices will be of interest to sociologists, communication and media studies scholars, as well as a general audience of readers interested in digital technologies, inequality, and the future of work in the US.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Challenge of AI to Publishing: A Discussion with Sally Wilson

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Sally Wilson, VP of Publishing at Emerald opens up about the challenges publishers are facing in contending with the onset of the mass adoption of AI tools including ChatGPT, and its ramifications for scholarly publishing. She also talks about the potential positive use cases for ChatGPT for reducing inequality in publishing. In addition, Sally discusses the nature of mission-based publishing and leading the charge in tackling United Nations SDG goals in publishing.

Avi Staiman is the founder and CEO of Academic Language Experts.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bleddyn E. Bowen, "Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Space technology was developed to enhance the killing power of the state. The Moon landings and the launch of the Space Shuttle were mere sideshows, drawing public attention away from the real goal: military and economic control of space as a source of power on Earth.

Today, as Bleddyn E. Bowen vividly recounts in Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space (Oxford UP, 2022), thousands of satellites work silently in the background to provide essential military, intelligence and economic capabilities. No major power can do without them. Beyond Washington, Moscow and Beijing, truly global technologies have evolved, from the ground floor of the nuclear missile revolution to today's orbital battlefield, shaping the wars to come. World powers including India, Japan and Europe are fully realizing the strategic benefits of commanding Earth's 'cosmic coastline', as a stage for war, development and prestige.

Yet, as new contenders spend more and more on outer space, there is scope for cautious optimism about the future of the Space Age-if we can recognize, rather than hide, its original sin.

Bleddyn E. Bowen is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Leicester, specializing in space policy and military uses of outer space. The internationally recognized author of War in Space, he consults on space policy for institutions including the UK Parliament, the European Space Agency, and the Pentagon.

Sam Canter is a policy and strategy analyst, PhD candidate, and Army Reserve intelligence officer. His views are his own and do not reflect any institution, organization, or entity with which he is affiliated.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Computer Music and Human Computer Interaction

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

Michael Gurevich, lecturer at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at the Queen’s University, Belfast School of Music and Sonic Arts, serves as guest editor of the Winter 2010 issue of Computer Music Journal. In this podcast, Michael discusses the fields of Computer Music and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). He describes how these fields intersect and what they can learn from each other, touching on how the field of Computer Music has grown and how this affects performance and composition of electronic music. This conversation was recorded on December 14, 2010.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Illuminations Episode 3: Divine Technology

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

It’s common to feel that technology removes the magic of the world, but Hindu worshippers in Bangalore have shown that it's all in the approach.

Guest

Tulasi Srinivas, associate professor of anthropology at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at Emerson College. Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and the Indian Sociological Society. Author of Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism, among other books.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jessa Lingel, "The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom" (U California Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

The internet has become a battleground. Although it was unlikely to live up to the hype and hopes of the 1990s, only the most skeptical cynics could have predicted the World Wide Web as we know it today: commercial, isolating, and full of, even fueled by, bias. This was not inevitable.

The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom (U California Press, 2023) argues that much like our cities, the internet has become gentrified, dominated by the interests of business and capital rather than the interests of the people who use it. Jessa Lingel uses the politics and debates of gentrification to diagnose the massive, systemic problems blighting our contemporary internet: erosions of privacy and individual ownership, small businesses wiped out by wealthy corporations, the ubiquitous paywall. But there are still steps we can take to reclaim the heady possibilities of the early internet. Lingel outlines actions that internet activists and everyday users can take to defend and secure more protections for the individual and to carve out more spaces of freedom for the people—not businesses—online.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology and a volunteer at Interference Archive. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James W. Cortada, "Birth of Modern Facts: How the Information Revolution Transformed Academic Research, Governments and Businesses" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 08:00:00 +0000

For over twenty years, James W. Cortada has pioneered research into how information shapes society. In Birth of Modern Facts: How the Information Revolution Transformed Academic Research, Governments and Businesses (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), he tells the story of how information evolved since the mid-nineteenth century. Cortada argues that information increased in quantity, became more specialized by discipline (e.g., mathematics, science, political science), and more organized. Information increased in volume due to a series of innovations, such as the electrification of communications and the development of computers, but also due to the organization of facts and knowledge by discipline, making it easier to manage and access. He looks at what major disciplines have done to shape the nature of modern information, devoting chapters to the most obvious ones. Cortada argues that understanding how some features of information evolved is useful for those who work in subjects that deal with their very construct and application, such as computer scientists and those exploring social media and, most recently, history. The Birth of Modern Facts builds on Cortada's prior books examining how information became a central feature of modern society, most notably as a sequel to All the Facts: A History of Information in the United States since 1870 (OUP, 2016) and Building Blocks of Society: History, Information Ecosystems, and Infrastructures (R&L, 2021).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Chinese Typewriter: A History

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 4 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode Chris Gondek speaks with author Tom Mullaney on the invention of the Chinese typewriter, and how the characters originally utilized are still the ones available on modern keyboards.

Chinese writing is character based, the one major world script that is neither alphabetic nor syllabic. Through the years, the Chinese written language encountered presumed alphabetic universalism in the form of Morse Code, Braille, stenography, Linotype, punch cards, word processing, and other systems developed with the Latin alphabet in mind. This book is about those encounters--in particular thousands of Chinese characters versus the typewriter and its QWERTY keyboard. Thomas Mullaney describes a fascinating series of experiments, prototypes, failures, and successes in the century-long quest for a workable Chinese typewriter.

The earliest Chinese typewriters, Mullaney tells us, were figments of popular imagination, sensational accounts of twelve-foot keyboards with 5,000 keys. One of the first Chinese typewriters actually constructed was invented by a Christian missionary, who organized characters by common usage (but promoted the less-common characters for "Jesus" to the common usage level). Later came typewriters manufactured for use in Chinese offices, and typewriting schools that turned out trained "typewriter girls" and "typewriter boys." Still later was the "Double Pigeon" typewriter produced by the Shanghai Calculator and Typewriter Factory, the typewriter of choice under Mao. Clerks and secretaries in this era experimented with alternative ways of organizing characters on their tray beds, inventing an input method that was the first instance of "predictive text."

Today, after more than a century of resistance against the alphabetic, not only have Chinese characters prevailed, they form the linguistic substrate of the vibrant world of Chinese information technology. The Chinese Typewriter, not just an "object history" but grappling with broad questions of technological change and global communication, shows how this happened.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marcus Rediker, "The Slave Ship: A Human History" (Penguin, 2008)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 3 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the British and American slave ships of the eighteenth century. Drawing on thirty years of research in maritime archives, court records, diaries, and firsthand accounts, The Slave Ship: A Human History (Penguin, 2008) is riveting and sobering in its revelations, reconstructing in chilling detail a world nearly lost to history: the “floating dungeons” at the forefront of the birth of African American culture.

Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. His “histories from below,” including The Slave Ship: A Human History, have won numerous awards, including the George Washington Book Prize, and have been translated into seventeen languages worldwide. He has produced a film, Ghosts of Amistad, with director Tony Buba, and written a play, “The Return of Benjamin Lay,” with playwright Naomi Wallace. He is currently writing a book about escaping slavery by sea in antebellum America.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 2 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In this episode Chris Gondek interviews Ed Finn, author of the new book What Algorithms Want. Tune in for an interesting discussion on algorithm disconnect revolving around things humans regularly use, like Siri. And listen in for a definition of the phrase "culture machines".

We depend on--we believe in--algorithms to help us get a ride, choose which book to buy, execute a mathematical proof. It's as if we think of code as a magic spell, an incantation to reveal what we need to know and even what we want. Humans have always believed that certain invocations--the marriage vow, the shaman's curse--do not merely describe the world but make it. Computation casts a cultural shadow that is shaped by this long tradition of magical thinking. In this book, Ed Finn considers how the algorithm--in practical terms, "a method for solving a problem"--has its roots not only in mathematical logic but also in cybernetics, philosophy, and magical thinking.

Finn argues that the algorithm deploys concepts from the idealized space of computation in a messy reality, with unpredictable and sometimes fascinating results. Drawing on sources that range from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash to Diderot's Encyclopédie, from Adam Smith to the Star Trek computer, Finn explores the gap between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. He examines the development of intelligent assistants like Siri, the rise of algorithmic aesthetics at Netflix, Ian Bogost's satiric Facebook game Cow Clicker, and the revolutionary economics of Bitcoin. He describes Google's goal of anticipating our questions, Uber's cartoon maps and black box accounting, and what Facebook tells us about programmable value, among other things.

If we want to understand the gap between abstraction and messy reality, Finn argues, we need to build a model of "algorithmic reading" and scholarship that attends to process, spearheading a new experimental humanities.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nuclear Ghosts: Ryo Morimoto (EF, JP)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 2 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

John and Elizabeth, in this special Centennial episode of Recall this Book, explore spectral radiation with Ryo Morimoto, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His new book Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima's Grey Zone (University of California Press, 2023) is based on several years of fieldwork in coastal Fukushima after the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident. Ryo's book shows how residents of the region live with and through the "nuclear ghost" that resides with them.

The trio discuss ways that residents acclimatize themselves to the presence of radiation, efforts to live their lives in ways not only shaped by catastrophe and irradiation, and the Geiger counter as a critical object.

Ryo relates the astonishing--but when you stop to think unsurprising—fact that "once you have [a Geiger counter] you actually want to see higher scores."

Mentioned in this episode:

Paul Saint-Amour, Tense Future
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky Roadside Picnic
Tarkovksy, Stalker (the film)
Stalker (the video game)
Haruki Murakami 1Q84
Pat Barker The Ghost Road

Read the episode here

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Isabel Huacuja Alonso, "Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders" (Columbia UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 2 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

From news about World War II to the broadcasting of music from popular movies, radio played a crucial role in an increasingly divided South Asia for more than half a century. Radio for the Millions: Hindi-Urdu Broadcasting Across Borders (Columbia University Press, 2023) by Isabel Huacuja Alonso examines the history of Hindi-Urdu radio during the height of its popularity from the 1930s to the 1980s, showing how it created transnational communities of listeners.

Huacuja Alonso argues that despite British, Indian, and Pakistani politicians’ efforts to usurp the medium for state purposes, radio largely escaped their grasp. She demonstrates that the medium enabled listeners and broadcasters to resist the cultural, linguistic, and political agendas of the British colonial administration and the subsequent independent Indian and Pakistani governments. Rather than being merely a tool of nation building in South Asia, radio created affective links that defied state agendas, policies, and borders. It forged an enduring transnational soundscape, even after the 1947 Partition had made a united India a political impossibility.

The book traces how people engaged with radio across news, music, and drama broadcasts, arguing for a more expansive definition of what it means to listen. She develops the concept of “radio resonance” to understand how radio relied on circuits of oral communication such as rumor and gossip and to account for the affective bonds this “talk” created. By analyzing Hindi film-song radio programs, she demonstrates how radio spurred new ways of listening to cinema. Drawing on a rich collection of sources, including newly recovered recordings, listeners’ letters to radio stations, original interviews with broadcasters, and archival documents from across three continents, Radio for the Millions rethinks assumptions about how the medium connects with audiences.

Isabel Huacuja Alonso is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asia, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. She is a historian of sound media and modern South Asia.

Shatrunjay Mall is a PhD candidate at the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He works on transnational Asian history, and his dissertation explores intellectual, political, and cultural intersections and affinities that emerged between Indian anti-colonialism and imperial Japan in the twentieth century.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Celeste Vaughan Curington et al., "The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance" (U California Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 1 Mar 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The Dating Divide: Race and Desire in the Era of Online Romance (U California Press, 2021) is the first comprehensive look at "digital-sexual racism," a distinct form of racism that is mediated and amplified through the impersonal and anonymous context of online dating. Drawing on large-scale behavioral data from a mainstream dating website, extensive archival research, and more than seventy-five in-depth interviews with daters of diverse racial backgrounds and sexual identities, Curington, Lundquist, and Lin illustrate how the seemingly open space of the internet interacts with the loss of social inhibition in cyberspace contexts, fostering openly expressed forms of sexual racism that are rarely exposed in face-to-face encounters. The Dating Divide is a fascinating look at how a contemporary conflux of individualization, consumerism, and the proliferation of digital technologies has given rise to a unique form of gendered racism in the era of swiping right--or left.

The internet is often heralded as an equalizer, a seemingly level playing field, but the digital world also acts as an extension of and platform for the insidious prejudices and divisive impulses that affect social politics in the "real" world. Shedding light on how every click, swipe, or message can be linked to the history of racism and courtship in the United States, this compelling study uses data to show the racial biases at play in digital dating spaces.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt: A Conversation with Andrew Simon

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 27 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Andrew Simon, a historian of media, popular culture, and the Middle East at Dartmouth College, discusses his new book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2022) , with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Media of the Masses is an engaging book that examines the impact of cassettes, cassette players, and their users during a particular period in Egypt's recent past. It provides a brilliant example of how disparate and surprising sources can be used to uncover the extraordinary story of an ordinary technology. Along the way, Simon directs our attention to a significant truth: audiocassettes provided countless people with the opportunity to create and circulate cultural content long before the internet and social media ever entered our daily lives. This book will captivate anyone interested in the history of technology, mass media, or popular culture.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Social Media Influencers and Digital Media Regulation in Vietnam

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In 2021, a famous Vietnamese businesswoman hosted a three-hour long Facebook livestream, in which she named and shamed celebrities for their controversial public behaviours. This formed part of a regular pattern of personal attacks, in which she weaponised livestreaming to denounce media and charity organisations in front of huge online audiences. This case marked a turning point in Vietnam, forcing the government to contend with growing political activity in the online environment, and prompting new digital media regulation.

In this episode, Dr Jonathon Hutchinson joins Dr Natali Pearson to discuss this case and other examples of online socio-political activism in Vietnam, reflecting on the tension between social media influencing and digital media regulation, and highlighting its potential positive and negative effects.

About Jonathon Hutchinson:

Dr Jonathon Hutchinson is a Senior Lecturer in Online Communication and Media at the University of Sydney. He is a Chief Investigator on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project, Online News and Media Pluralism, and is also a Chief Investigator on the eSafety Commission Research project, Emerging online safety issue: co-creating social media education with young people. His research explores cultural production, public service media, cultural intermediation, everyday social media, automated media, and algorithms in media. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Policy & Internet journal and the Treasurer for the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association. Dr Hutchinson is on the Board of Directors for the Wholistic World Innovation Trophy as part of the Diplomatic World Institute and is an active and regular contributor to the media. He is an award-winning author with articles in a number of national and international Scimago Q1 journals, government submissions, and his book, Cultural Intermediaries: Audience Participation and Media Organisations (2017), is published through Palgrave Macmillan.

For more information or to browse additional resources, visit the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre’s website: www.sydney.edu.au/sseac.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Seeing Truth in Photographs

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 23 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Artist Penelope Umbrico talks about her work, images as currency, and how technology and various platforms herd images. And is photography tyrannical? Umbrico has some thoughts.

Learn more about the Seeing Truth exhibition at our website.

Alexis L. Boylan is the director of academic affairs of the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI) and an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Art and Art History Department and the Africana Studies Institute

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jacob Birken, "Video Games: Digital Image Cultures" (Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Let's plays are among the most popular genres on YouTube. The visual worlds of video games shape the worldviews of millions. Gaming is a hobby and a mass spectacle.

For a long time, the history of video games was primarily one of technical progress: from pixelated figures in 2D to increasingly convincing illusions of reality in games like Control. At the same time, independent game worlds emerge, such as in the expressionist dystopia Disco Elysium.

In Video Games: Digital Image Cultures (Videospiele: Digitale Bildkulturen), Jacob Birken vividly analyzes the different types and generations of games, provides insights into the interaction of hardware and software, and shows how newer video games stylistically reference the past of their own medium. But does this also revive the unfulfilled promises of the future of the information society?

Jacob Birken writes and researches on the history, aesthetics, and theory of media technologies. In 2018, he published "The California Institution" on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He currently works at the UAS Düsseldorf and the University of Cologne.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Fabio Duarte and Ricardo Alvarez, "Urban Play: Make-Believe, Technology, and Space" (MIT Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Why technology is most transformative when it is playful, and innovative spatial design happens only when designers are both tinkerers and dreamers.

In Urban Play: Make-Believe, Technology, and Space (MIT Press, 2021), Fábio Duarte and Ricardo Álvarez argue that the merely functional aspects of technology may undermine its transformative power. Technology is powerful not when it becomes optimally functional, but while it is still playful and open to experimentation. It is through play—in the sense of acting for one's own enjoyment rather than to achieve a goal—that we explore new territories, create new devices and languages, and transform ourselves. Only then can innovative spatial design create resonant spaces that go beyond functionalism to evoke an emotional response in those who use them.

The authors show how creativity emerges in moments of instability, when a new technology overthrows an established one, or when internal factors change a technology until it becomes a different technology. Exploring the role of fantasy in design, they examine Disney World and its outsize influence on design and on forms of social interaction beyond the entertainment world. They also consider Las Vegas and Dubai, desert cities that combine technology with fantasies of pleasure and wealth. Video games and interactive media, they show, infuse the design process with interactivity and participatory dynamics, leaving spaces open to variations depending on the users' behavior. Throughout, they pinpoint the critical moments when technology plays a key role in reshaping how we design and experience spaces.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington, 2022). His general area of study is on media representations of people and place at festivals and celebrations. He is currently working on his next book where he conducted research on an annual canoeing and kayaking event that takes place on the Upper Mississippi River. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud, "Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy" (Henry Holt, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy (Henry Holt, 2023) is the inside story of a worldwide investigation, sparked by the leak which revealed that cyber-intrusion and cyber-surveillance are happening with exponentially increasing frequency, across the globe. Pegasus, it turns out, is less a law enforcement tool than a weapon for hire and not only a threat to privacy but also to democracy, as the most notorious human-rights-violating governments and autocrat-wannabes are licensing and utilizing Pegasus spyware in the most vulnerable democracies in the world. Pegasus follows the personal stories of real victims--intrepid individuals who have spoken truth to some of the most corrupt, risible powers around the globe.

Laurent Richard is a Paris-based award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist who was named the 2018 European Journalist of the Year at the Prix Europa in Berlin. He is the founder of Forbidden Stories, a network of investigative journalists devoted continuing the unfinished work of murdered reporters to ensure the work they died for is not buried with them.

Sandrine Rigaud is a French investigative journalist. As editor of Forbidden Stories since 2019, she coordinated the award-winning Pegasus Project and the Cartel Project, an international investigation of assassinated Mexican journalists.

Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alan Meades, "Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The story of the British amusement arcade from the 1800s to the present.

Amusement arcades are an important part of British culture, yet discussions of them tend to be based on American models. Alan Meades, who spent his childhood happily playing in British seaside arcades, presents the history of the arcade from its origins in traveling fairs of the 1800s to the present. Drawing on firsthand accounts of industry members and archival sources, including rare photographs and trade publications, he tells the story of the first arcades, the people who made the machines, the rise of video games, and the legislative and economic challenges spurred by public fears of moral decline.

Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade (MIT Press, 2022) highlights the differences between British and North American arcades, especially in terms of the complex relationship between gambling and amusements. He also underlines Britain’s role in introducing coin-operated technologies into Europe, as well as the industry’s close links to America and, especially, Japan. He shows how the British arcade is a product of centuries of public play, gambling, entrepreneurship, and mechanization. Examining the arcade’s history through technological, social, cultural, biographic, and legislative perspectives, he describes a pendulum shift between control and liberalization, as well as the continued efforts of concerned moralists to limit and regulate public play.

Finally, he recounts the impact on the industry of legislative challenges that included vicious taxation, questions of whether copyright law applied to video-game code, and the peculiar moment when every arcade game in Britain was considered a cinema.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

99* Gael McGill Visualizes Intracellular Data (JP, GT)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

What’s actually going on in a cell–or on the spiky outside of an invading virus? Gael McGill, Director of Molecular Visualization at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics at Harvard Medical School is founder and CEO of Digizyme and has spent his career exploring and developing different modes for visualizing evidence.

For this scientific conversation taped back in 2021, Recall this Book host John is joined once again by Brandeis neuroscientist Gina Turrigiano (think ep 4 Madeline Miller; think ep 2 Addiction!).

You may want to check out Digizyme‘s images of the spike protein attaching the SARS-CoV2 virus to a hapless cell and fusing their membranes. Or click through to watch a gorgeous video Gael and his team have created.

Mentioned in the Episode:

Gael praised Galileo’s revolutionary images (drawings? diagrams?) of Jupiter’s moons:
Leonardo’s stunning anatomical drawings:
The DNA Double-Helix: We all knew that Watson and Crick‘s revelation came with this model: But it’s easy to forget this indispensable antecedent: the enigmatic yet foundational x-ray crystallography of Rosalind Franklin:
“All models are wrong; some are useful.”smiley statistician George Box
“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 115
And what sort of deceptive picture did Wittgenstein have in mind? well, how about the 1904 “Plum-pudding model” of what the atom might look like? Wrong, and productive of all sorts of mistaken hypotheses.
Gina credited the beautiful drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal with inspiring and illuminating generations of neuroscientists.
John credits Science in the Marketplace, an edited collection reminding us that even in crowded lecture-halls, to display science may also mean doing science…..
Gael ended his historical tour by praising David Goodsell, cell-painter extraordinaire:
John also raved (as he is wont to do) about cave paintings as the first animation in the world (e.g. these horses from Peche-Merle).

Listen and Read Here:

47 Glimpsing COVID: Gael McGill on Data Visualization

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Politics of Bicycling

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 16 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Zack Furness, an associate professor of communications at Penn State Greater Allegheny, talks about his 2010 book, One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility (Temple University Press), with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. One Less Car examines the history of how bicycles became a tool and object of advocacy and activism. With roots going back 1960s countercultures and growing through punk subcultures and the Critical Mass movement, bicycle activism has been an important focus of environmentalism and countering what Furness calls the “automobile-industrial complex.” Over a wide-ranging conversation, Furness and Vinsel also discuss Furness’s more recent research project on the history of Israeli punk bands.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily Hund, "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media" (Princeton UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Eric Hintz, a historian and fellowship coordinator with the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, talks about his book, American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The two discuss why independent inventors are often invisible in histories of 20th century invention and innovation, the role that independent inventors played in the two world wars, and the complicated history of gender and race around invention, which was a path of both promise and risk for women and black people.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gun-Detecting AI, Infrastructure, and Bureaucracy

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 12 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Aaron Gordon, Senior Writer at Motherboard, Vice’s science and technology website, talks about his co-authored article, “‘The Least Safe Day’: Rollout of Gun-Detecting AI Scanners Has Been a ‘Cluster,’ Emails Show,” with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. They also discuss Gordon’s career trajectory, going from a sports reporter to a writer focused on infrastructure, maintenance, bureaucracy, and related topics. Additionally, the two chat about systematic bottlenecks around electric vehicles, a promising technology too-often cast as a cure-all.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James Raven, "The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In 14 original essays, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Book (Oxford UP, 2022) reveals the history of books in all their various forms, from the ancient world to the digital present. Leading international scholars offer an original and richly illustrated narrative that is global in scope.

The history of the book is the history of millions of written, printed, and illustrated texts, their manufacture, distribution, and reception. Here are different types of production, from clay tablets to scrolls, from inscribed codices to printed books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers, from written parchment to digital texts. The history of the book is a history of different methods of circulation and dissemination, all dependent on innovations in transport, from coastal and transoceanic shipping to roads, trains, planes and the internet. It is a history of different modes of reading and reception, from learned debate and individual study to public instruction and entertainment. It is a history of manufacture, craftsmanship, dissemination, reading and debate.

Yet the history of books is not simply a question of material form, nor indeed of the history of reading and reception. The larger question is of the effect of textual production, distribution and reception - of how books themselves made history. To this end, each chapter of this volume, succinctly bounded by period and geography, offers incisive and stimulating insights into the relationship between books and the story of their times.

James Raven is Professor of Modern History at the University of Essex and a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Formerly he was Reader in Social and Cultural History, University of Oxford, and Professorial Fellow of Mansfield College. He is the author, editor and co-editor of numerous books in early modern and modern British, European and colonial history, including Judging New Wealth (1992); The Practice and Representation of Reading (1996); The English Novel 1770-1829 (2000); Free Print and Non-Commercial Publishing (2000); London Booksellers and American Customers (2002); Lost Libraries (2004); The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade (2007); Books between Europe and the Americas (2011); Publishing Business (2014) and Bookscape: Geographies of Printing and Publishing in London before 1800 (2014).

Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found at https://fifteenminutefilm.podb... and on Twitter @15MinFilm.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Techlash and Tech Crisis Communication

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Communication researcher Nirit Weiss-Blatt talks about her book, The Techlash and Tech Crisis Communication, as well as some of her recent and forthcoming pieces on the digital technology industry with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Weiss-Blatt’s work examines both the rise of the “techlash”—the development of negative public and expert sentiment about the digital technology industry—and how company public relations efforts responded to this development. Weiss-Blatt and Vinsel also talk about how some claims about the negative impacts of social media do not seem to hold up to empirical scrutiny and what all of this means for regulation of the digital technology industry.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Geopolitics of Microchips: China, the EU, and the US

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

What would happen if microchips suddenly disappeared from our world? From phones to cars, medical equipment to heating units, they are crucial for the safe and smooth functioning of much of society. While they may not actually disappear anytime soon, we have learned from the COVID pandemic about the real and potential consequences of an essential microchips shortage. Listen to Hermann Aubié, senior researcher at the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku in Finland, speak about the current state of the complex global microchips industry and attempts by governments to control its technology and supply-chain. Dr. Aubié focuses in particular on the United States' 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and October Export Rules, largely considered to target China's capacity to produce advanced microchips. Learn about responses by Taiwan, the largest producer of advanced microchips with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company), as well as the position of the European Union, itself dealing with ongoing negotiations to finalize the EU Chips Act. Dr. Aubié speaks to Satoko Naito, also of the Centre for East Asian Studies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How a California Electricity Utility Caused Deadly Wildfires

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 8 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Journalist Katherine Blunt, who writes about renewable energy and utilities for the Wall Street Journal, talks about her new book, California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—and What It Means for America’s Power Grid with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The book tells the fascinating story of how declining performance at an electrical utility eventually led to wildfires and staggering loss of human life. Blunt and Vinsel also talk about what this story means for the future of electricity utilities in the face of global climate change.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeremiah McCall, "Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 7 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Gaming the Past: Using Video Games to Teach Secondary History (Routledge, 2022) is a complete handbook to help pre-service teachers, current teachers, and teacher educators use historical video games in their classes to develop critical thinking skills. It focuses on practical information and specific examples for integrating critical thinking activities and assessments using video games into classes. Chapters cover the core parts of planning, designing, and implementing lessons and units based on historical video games.

Topics include:

Talking to administrators, parents, and students about the educational value of teaching with historical video games.
Selecting games that are aligned to curricular goals by considering the genres of historical games.
Planning and implementing game-based history lessons ranging from whole class exercises, to individual gameplay, to analysis in groups.
Employing instructional strategies to help students learn to play and engage in higher level analysis
Identifying and avoiding common pitfalls when incorporating games into the history class.
Developing activities and assessments that facilitate interpreting and creating established and new media.

Gaming the Past also includes sample unit and lesson plans, worksheets and assessment questions, and a list of historical games currently available, both commercial and freely available Internet games.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Christiaan De Beukelaer, "Trade Winds: A Sailing Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping" (Manchester UP, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 5 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

How can we build greener infrastructure in the face of the global climate emergency? In Trade Winds: A Sailing Voyage to a Sustainable Future for Shipping (Manchester UP, 2023), Christiaan De Beukelaer, a Senior Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management at the University of Melbourne intertwines an depth analysis of modern shipping, with a memoir of being aboard a sailing ship during the 2020 pandemic. The book is a fascinating read, with both an extensive critique of the failures of the global shipping and trade system to be sustainable, as well as offering moving insights into a unique experience of a very different form of 2020’s lockdown. Concluding with both the return to land, and a detailed consideration of how shipping, trade, and the world might adapt to the climate crisis, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in a sustainable future for the planet.

Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Promises and Perils of Hype in Science and Technology

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 5 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Journalist and STS graduate student Gemma Milne talks about her book, Smoke and Mirrors: How Hype Obscures the Future and How to See Past It, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The book examines how hype works and how it plays out in a number of scientific and technical fields, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, brain implants, cancer drugs, fusion energy, and the future of food.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Nuclear Fusion: A Discussion with Sharon Ann Holgate

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 4 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

How useful will nuclear fusion be? In a major breakthrough last year at the National Ignition Facility in California, 192 lasers achieved fusion – and created energy - for the first time. It was clearly an important moment. But might the development of fusion technology come too late? Owen Bennett Jones speaks with Sharon Ann Holgate, author of Nuclear Fusion: The Race to Build a Mini Sun on Earth (Icon Books, 2022).

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Internet, Inequality, and the “Digital Divide”

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 4 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Information scholar Daniel Greene, an assistant professor at University of Maryland, talks about his book, The Promise of Access: Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The Promise of Access examines how the “digital divide” became a policy problem, and draws on fascinating ethnographies of a “tech” startup, a public library, and a charter school to examine how organizations come to chase technological solutions to social problems.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Computers, Information, and Decision-Making

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 3 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Samantha Kleinberg, an associate professor of computer science at Stevens Institute of Technology, talks about a book she’s been writing on how we can (and can’t) use information to make better decisions with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Kleinberg and Vinsel also talk about barriers to artificial intelligence getting dramatically better anytime soon, and why ideas, like “the singularity,” are mere fantasies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Amy S. Bruckman, "Should You Believe Wikipedia?: Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 3 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

As we interact online we are creating new kinds of knowledge and community. How are these communities formed? How do we know whether to trust them as sources of information? In other words, should we believe Wikipedia?

Should You Believe Wikipedia?: Online Communities and the Construction of Knowledge (Cambridge UP, 2022) explores what community is, what knowledge is, how the internet facilitates new kinds of community, and how knowledge is shaped through online collaboration and conversation. Along the way the author tackles issues such as how we represent ourselves online and how this shapes how we interact, why there is so much bad behavior online and what we can do about it. And the most important question of all: What can we as internet users and designers do to help the internet to bring out the best in us all?

Amy Bruckman is Regents’ Professor and Senior Associate Chair in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on social computing, with interests in collaboration, social movements, content moderation, and internet research ethics. She is an ACM Fellow and a member of the ACM CHI Academy. Bruckman received her Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab's Epistemology and Learning group in 1997, and a B.A. in physics from Harvard University in 1987.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nick Seaver, "Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 2 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

The people who make music recommender systems have lofty goals: they want to broaden listeners’ horizons and help obscure musicians find audiences, taking advantage of the enormous catalogs offered by companies like Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora. But for their critics, recommender systems seem to embody all the potential harms of algorithms: they flatten culture into numbers, they normalize ever-broadening data collection, and they profile their users for commercial ends. Drawing on years of ethnographic fieldwork, anthropologist Nick Seaver describes how the makers of music recommendation navigate these tensions: how product managers understand their relationship with the users they want to help and to capture; how scientists conceive of listening itself as a kind of data processing; and how engineers imagine the geography of the world of music as a space they care for and control.

Computing Taste: Algorithms and the Makers of Music Recommendation (U Chicago Press, 2022) rehumanizes the algorithmic systems that shape our world, drawing attention to the people who build and maintain them. In this vividly theorized book, Seaver brings the thinking of programmers into conversation with the discipline of anthropology, opening up the cultural world of computation in a wide-ranging exploration that travels from cosmology to calculation, myth to machine learning, and captivation to care.

Nick Seaver is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the director of the Science, Technology, and Society program at Tufts University.

Mathew Gagné is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Dalhousie University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Inventing American Telecommunications

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 1 Feb 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Historian Richard John, professor of journalism at Columbia University, talks about his book, Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Network Nation is a history of the telegraph and telephone in the United States, and one of its key findings is that, from the very beginning of these technologies, thinking about the state, regulation, and ideas of political economy was at the heart of business strategy. John and Vinsel also talk about the nature of historical research and why it is so important to go back to primary sources.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Public Thinking: Social Media and the New 'Public Intellectual'

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

We have usually relied on public intellectuals to provide facts, ideas, and cultural leadership--though not all have lived up to the ideal of “speaking truth to power.” Today, however, online networks and social media mean we are all public intellectuals, and we have new responsibilities that come with this role.

Guests:

Cornel West, professor at Union Theological Seminary and author of, among other works, Black Prophetic Fire.
George Scialabba, author of What Good Are Intellectuals Good For?, and many other works.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Angela Vanhaelen, "The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, Labyrinths" (Penn State UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Angela Vanhaelen's The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam: Automata, Waxworks, Fountains, Labyrinths (Penn State University Press, 2022) opens a window onto a fascinating and understudied aspect of the visual, material, intellectual, and cultural history of seventeenth-century Amsterdam: the role played by its inns and taverns, specifically the doolhoven. Doolhoven were a type of labyrinth unique to early modern Amsterdam. Offering guest lodgings, these licensed public houses also housed remarkable displays of artwork in their gardens and galleries. The main attractions were inventive displays of moving mechanical figures (automata) and a famed set of waxwork portraits of the rulers of Protestant Europe. Publicized as the most innovative artworks on display in Amsterdam, the doolhoven exhibits presented the mercantile city as a global center of artistic and technological advancement. This evocative tour through the doolhoven pub gardens—where drinking, entertainment, and the acquisition of knowledge mingled in encounters with lively displays of animated artifacts—shows that the exhibits had a forceful and transformative impact on visitors, one that moved them toward Protestant reform.

Deeply researched and decidedly original, The Moving Statues of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam uncovers a wealth of information about these nearly forgotten public pleasure parks, situating them within popular culture, religious controversies, global trade relations, and intellectual debates of the seventeenth century. It will appeal in particular to scholars in art history and early modern studies.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Collaborations between Cold War Scientists and Artists

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 29 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Patrick McCray, Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara, talks about his book, Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists Forged a New Creative Culture, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. The book shows how artists eagerly collaborated with engineers and scientists to explore new technologies and create visually and sonically compelling multimedia works after World War II. McCray and Vinsel also discuss how this history connects to more recent developments such as the creation of the MIT Media Lab and so-called “STEAM education.”

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Computer Chips: A Discussion with Julian Kamasa

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 28 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Microchips are both important and in short supply. So how important? And what can be done to make them more plentiful? Also, what are the geopolitical implications of having the production of microchips concentrated in relatively few hands. Owen Bennett Jones talks microchips with Julian Kamasa of the Centre for Security Studies in Zurich.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The History of Electricity in Mexico

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In her detailed cultural history of technological change, Electrifying Mexico, Diana Montaño argues that ordinary Mexicans became electrifying agents who actively negotiated the extent and manner electricity entered their lives and lived spaces in Mexico City. An Assistant Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Montaño's teaching and research interests broadly include the construction of modern Latin American societies with a focus on technology and its relationship to nationalism, everyday life and domesticity.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Archaeology of Innovation

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Catherine Frieman, an associate professor of European Archaeology at the School of Archaeology, talks about her recent book, An Archaeology of Innovation: Approaching Social and Technological Change in Human Society, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Her book offers a long-term perspective on innovation that only archaeology can offer and draws on case studies from across human history, from our earliest hominin ancestors to the present. The book makes several different arguments, but one of them is that our present narrow focus on pushing the adoption of technical innovations—especially so called “disruptive innovations”—ignores the complex social, technological, and environmental systems that undergirds successful societies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Virtually Violent: Are Online Attacks "Violence?"

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable communities have been hit especially hard by disruptive online attacks. But calling these attacks "violent" could jeopardize the future of disruptive protests designed to protest those same communities.

Guests:

Erica Chenoweth, professor of human rights and international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and author of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs To Know.
Dr. Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.
Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ajay Agrawal et al., "Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence" (HBR Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines describe what you can do to prepare. Banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, retail. Artificial intelligence (AI) has made its way into many industries around the world. But the truth is, it has just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better, and faster predictions to drive strategic business decisions--powering and accelerating business. When prediction is taken to the max, industries transform. The disruption that comes with such transformation is yet to be felt--but it is coming. How do businesses prepare?

In Prediction Machines, eminent economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb explained the simple yet game-changing economics of AI. Now, in Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence (HBR Press, 2022), they go further to reveal AI as a prediction technology directly impacting decision-making and to teach businesses how to identify disruptive opportunities and threats resulting from AI. Their exhaustive study of new developments in artificial intelligence and the past history of how technologies have disrupted industries highlights the striking phase we are now in: after witnessing the power of this new technology and before its widespread adoption--what they call "the Between Times." While there continue to be important opportunities for businesses, there are also threats of disruption. As prediction machines improve, old ways of doing things will be upended. Also, the process by which AI filters into the many systems involved in application is very uneven. That process will have winners and losers. How can businesses leverage, or protect, their positions? Filled with illuminating insights, rich examples, and practical advice, Power and Prediction is the must-read guide for any business leader or policy maker on how to make the coming AI disruptions work for you rather than against you.

Interviewee Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab and the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium, a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute and the Schwartz-Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Avi’s research focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the digital economy.

He has published academic articles in marketing, statistics, law, management, medicine, political science, refugee studies, physics, computing, and economics. Avi is a former Senior Editor at Marketing Science. His work on online advertising won the INFORMS Society of Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award. He testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on competition and privacy in digital advertising. His work has been referenced in White House reports, European Commission documents, the New York Times, the Economist, and elsewhere.

Peter Lorentzen is economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He heads USF's Applied Economics Master's program, which focuses on the digital economy. His research is mainly on China's political economy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Deafness “Cures” in History

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 22 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Jaipreet Virdi talks about her book Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book details the long history of attempts to “fix” deaf people, including a great deal of quackery. Towards the end of the conversation, Virdi and Vinsel also talk about what a world beyond solutionist fantasies that disability can be “cured” would look like.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Thought of Ivan Illich

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Author L. M. Sacasas talks about the life, thought, and legacy of the Catholic priest, philosopher, and social critic Ivan Illich with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. Sacasas and Vinsel discuss Illich’s critiques of bureaucracy, technology, scale, and expertise and how these critiques apply to medicine, education, our credential society, and life with media technologies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Spiritual Machines: Transhumanism and Religion

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Ever since early scientists began experimenting with immortality elixirs in the middle ages, religion has been influencing transhumanism. Now, we’re beginning to see transhumanism influencing religion.

Guests

Calvin Mercer, Professor of Religious Studies at East Carolina University
Meghan O’Gieblyn, writer
Blaire Ostler, Director and Former President of the Mormon Transhumanist Association

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

BONUS EPISODE: New Books Network and Future Plans

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

A special bonus episode. Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel talks about the podcast’s recent move to the New Books Network and plans the Peoples & Things team have for the next year or two.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jennifer Forestal, "Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Environments" (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Political Theorist Jennifer Forestal’s new book is a fascinating exploration of contemporary democracy and how it operates in different spaces. Forestal’s avenue into the question of democracy and the space in which it functions comes out of the idea of how spaces are designed and for what reasons. This idea of built environments—be they city centers in urban areas, software architecture, or the existence and width of sidewalks—contribute to how we, as individuals and community members, operate in those spaces. Forestal is paying particular attention to participatory democracy, where community members come together to solve problems collectively.

Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Environments (Oxford UP, 2021)weaves together the concrete, the actual spaces where we can gather together or where we are pushed apart, and the theoretical, the way democracy, as a concept, draws on the will of the people to govern themselves. In examining democratic theory, Forestal integrates work from Aristotle, Alexis de Tocqueville, and John Dewey, all of whom provide frameworks for thinking about and understanding interactions between individuals and the effort to share responsibility to govern in common.

Forestal unpacks the many ways that built environments guide our choices and behavior—from how the layout of a grocery store pushes us towards certain kinds of purchases, to the design of sidewalks or the absence of sidewalks as determining our public engagement or disengagement—and how this is an often overlooked or obscured exertion of power, especially political power. The power of the built environment trains us in a variety of ways, and this is an area where changing the design of the space in which we exist can also change our behavior and can shift our perspectives. Democratic theory is predicated on individuals acting together, and the space in which we do this contributes to the success of these efforts, or their fragmentation. Social media spaces are very much like the physical built environment, and Forestal examines three different social media spaces, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit, exploring how they are and are not hospitable spaces for democracy.

Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Environments is an original analysis of how physical and virtual spaces provide individuals with barriers or openings to engagement, and how these spaces can shift our behavior and our priorities. Ultimately, democracy is an idea that must be translated by real people in real spaces and places, and how we all engage with one another is not just important, it is the basis for the implementation of this concept of self-government.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Automating Finance

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Sociologist Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, a professor at University of California San Diego, talks about his book Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book traces the long, largely anonymous, and in some senses boring history of how experts applied computers to financial systems since the 1970s, creating a digital infrastructure of the trading world. The conversation also touches on Pardo-Guerra’s more recent work on how systems of quantitative metrics have been applied to the management of universities and what might be done about it.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Shoddy: Recycled Textiles in History

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Historian Hanna Rose Shell, a professor at University of Colorado, Boulder, talks about her book Shoddy: From Devil’s Dust to the Renaissance of Rags with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. Along the way, Shell raises a number of important and interesting things, including the long history of reuse and recycling and how forms of technology and work become tied to social status. With shoddy, it was the anxieties of low class, low social status work and poverty. Shell also discusses how individual technologies become mirrors for the worries, fears, hatreds, and other feelings of society – how when we look into the history of any technology we often see ourselves reflected back.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

South Korea, Technology, and Globalization

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Patrick Chung, assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland, talks about his research on the rise of shipping and manufacturing in South Korea with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. Along the way, Chung provides fascinating insights into the role that both the US Department of Defense and local South Korean actors played in globalization.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Infrastructure and Inequality

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Daniel Armanios, associate professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, talks about his work on infrastructure and inequality with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. Armanios’ recent work has focused on coming up with quantitative measures of how infrastructure relates to inequalities around race, gender, and class, both to address historical injustices and to inform future infrastructure construction. Armanios also talks about how he brings these topics into his teaching and his larger project around engineering and social justice.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Christopher Bartel, "Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy: Killing Time" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But should players worry about the morality of their virtual actions? A common argument is that games offer merely the virtual representation of violence. No one is actually harmed by committing a violent act in a game. So, it cannot be morally wrong to perform such acts. While this is an intuitive argument, it does not resolve the issue.

Focusing on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies, Christopher Bartel's book Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy: Killing Time (Bloomsbury, 2020) advances debates about the ethical criticism of art, not only by shining light on the interesting and under-examined case of virtual fantasies, but also by its novel application of a virtue ethical account. Video games are works of fiction that enable players to entertain a fantasy. So, a full understanding of the ethical criticism of video games must focus attention on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies.

Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy engages with debates and critical discussions of games in both the popular media and recent work in philosophy, psychology, media studies, and game studies.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Bridget Whearty, "Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern Labor" (Stanford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Medieval manuscripts are our shared inheritance, and today they are more accessible than ever—thanks to digital copies online. Yet for all that widespread digitization has fundamentally transformed how we connect with the medieval past, we understand very little about what these digital objects really are. We rarely consider how they are made or who makes them. Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern Labor (Stanford UP, 2022) demystifies digitization, revealing what it's like to remake medieval books online and connecting modern digital manuscripts to their much longer media history, from print, to photography, to the rise of the internet.

Examining classic late-1990s projects like Digital Scriptorium 1.0 alongside late-2010s initiatives like Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis, and world-famous projects created by the British Library, Corpus Christi College Cambridge, Stanford University, and the Walters Art Museum against in-house digitizations performed in lesser-studied libraries, Bridget Whearty tells never-before-published narratives about globally important digital manuscript archives. Drawing together medieval literature, manuscript studies, digital humanities, and imaging sciences, Whearty shines a spotlight on the hidden expert labor responsible for today's revolutionary digital access to medieval culture. Ultimately, this book argues that centering the modern labor and laborers at the heart of digital cultural heritage fosters a more just and more rigorous future for medieval, manuscript, and media studies.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology and a volunteer at Interference Archive. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Politics of Digital Technology

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Meredith Whittaker, co-founder and faculty director of the AI Now Institute and Minderoo Research Professor at New York University, talks about the politics of digital technologies with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The conversation examines Whittaker’s fascinating career moving between industry and academia, her role in the Google walkout, and her hopes for the future, including the role of social movements in fomenting political change.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Data journalist Meredith Broussard talks about her book, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book how artificial intelligence systems do and don’t work and why people have come to have such unrealistic understandings of the technologies’ capabilities. One central factor is what Broussard calls technochauvinism, “the belief that technology is always the solution.” Broussard also discusses her early career as a computer scientist, why she became her journalist, and her hopes for a more humane technological future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Harald Koberg, "Free Play: Digital Gaming and the Longing for Effectiveness" (Büchner-Verlag, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 in which they are embedded?

Harald Koberg lets gamers themselves have their say and follows their traces of the described fascinations and passions in his latest book Free Play: Digital Gaming and the Longing for Effectiveness (Freies Spiel: Digitales Spielen und die Sehnsucht nach Wirkmächtigkeit). The answers found aim at experiences of efficacy: digital games and the communication spaces around them offer particular opportunities to experience one's own decisions and actions as relevant and effective. It is not only about narrated stories and interactions with the game, but also about the rules and limits of communication, spaces of unfolding, self-dramatization, and norm-setting.

Using the examples of adolescent search for free spaces, insecure masculinity, and achievement society overload, Harald Koberg shows why critique of the medium of video games must focus on people and how much can be determined about larger social contexts along the way.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way.

The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India’s ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar’s Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) points out, India’s nuclear program was in fact the product of Cold War tensions and international networks–including some foreign sources of nuclear knowledge and material. (An open-access version of Jay’s book can be found here)

Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and the Founding Director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She can be followed on Twitter at @DrJSarkar, and her Linktree can be found here.

In this interview, Jay and I talk about India’s nuclear program, from its very beginnings through to when India was brought back into the world’s—or, at least, the U.S.’s–nuclear good graces in 2008.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ploughshares and Swords. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Understanding Technology Bubbles

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Brent Goldfarb and David Kirsch, professors of entrepreneurship and strategy at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, talk about their book, Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation, with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. Bubbles and Crashes puts forward a parsimonious model of how and when economic bubbles develop around new technologies. In the conversation, Goldfarb and Kirsch reflect on a variety of topics, including why it matters that Elon Musk is such a good story teller, whether we are currently in a technology bubble, and what we can do to prevent bubbles in the future.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The History of Household Technology from Open Hearth to the Microwave

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 9 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 Americans industrialized their homes over the past two hundred years and how supposedly labor-saving technologies led women to do increased housework. Cowan also reflects on what it was like to work as a professor as a woman and mother in the 1970s and how families have changed their relationship to technology and housework in the nearly forty years since the book was published.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mirror Image: New Technologies and the Self

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 7 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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.

Guests

Ian Mortimer, historian and author of Millennium: From Religion to Revolution: How Civilization Has Changed Over a Thousand Years
Ilan Stavans, professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College and author of I Love My Selfie

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Albert Glinsky, "Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 7 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

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 Einstein hair and pocket protectors. He walked into history in 1964 when his homemade contraption unexpectedly became a sensation---suddenly everyone wanted a Moog. The Beatles, The Doors, The Byrds, and Stevie Wonder discovered his synthesizer, and it came to be featured in seminal film scores including Apocalypse Now and A Clockwork Orange. The Moog's game-changing sounds saturated 60's counterculture and burst into the disco party in the 70's to set off the electronic dance music movement. Bob had singlehandedly founded the synth industry and become a star in the process.

But he was also going broke. Imitators copied his technology, the musicians' union accused him of replacing live players, and Japanese competitors started overtaking his work. He struggled to hang on to his inventions, his business, and his very name. Bob's story upends our notions of success and wealth, showing that the two don't always go together.

In Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution (Oxford UP, 2022), author Albert Glinsky draws on exclusive access to Bob Moog's personal archives and his probing interviews with Bob's family and a multitude of associates, for this first complete biography of the man and his work. Switched On takes the reader on a roller coaster ride at turns triumphant, heart-breaking, and frequently laugh out loud absurd---a nuanced trip through the public and private worlds of this legendary inventor who altered the course of music.”

Nathan Smith is a PhD Student in Music Theory at Yale University. He can be reached at nathan.smith@yale.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robert M. Geraci, "Futures of Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives from India and the U.S." (Oxford UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 5 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Twenty-first century life is increasingly governed by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as machine learning, big data analysis, facial recognition, and robotics. For decades, an ideology of apocalyptic progress and cosmic transformation has accompanied the advancement of AI in the United States; that vision is intimately connected to transhumanism, the idea that humanity can transcend its limits, even mortality, using technology. By describing the arrival and reconfiguration of transhumanist ideas in India, Robert M. Geraci's book Futures of Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives from India and the U.S. (Oxford UP, 2021) reveals how the nexus of religion and technology contributes to public life and our modern self-understanding while suggesting that the apocalyptic approach to AI should be tempered by other visions.

Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Samantha Muka, "Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 4 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

In Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Samantha Muka, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Stevens Institute of Technology, dives into the unexpected world of tank crafting. Throughout the book, Muka tells the stories behind the development of various kinds of aquariums, such as photography tanks and reef tanks. She explains how the knowledge and ingenuity of a variety of actors have been contributing to furthering our knowledge of oceanic environments. The myriad of technical and technological challenges that arise when attempting to maintain aquatic species in artificial environments has been the source of at least as many experiments in tank tinkering.

Focusing on aquariums as complex, situated, and constantly evolving technological devices, Muka shows how the production of knowledge about the ocean depends on interactions between communities holding different knowledge, expertise, and interests: public aquarists, academic researchers, and hobbyists. Analyzing the “craft circulation” between these three groups, the author provides us with a dynamic picture that challenges a series of assumptions on how scientific knowledge is and can be produced.

More than a history and sociology of tank craft, Oceans under Glass offers a meditation on the necessity of aquariums and their artificiality not only to learn about the ocean, but also to preserve some of their biodiversity. “Imagined worlds”, as Muka puts it, aquariums should also be understood as critical places where our future relationship to the oceans, for better and for worst, is being shaped.

Victor Monnin, Ph.D. is an historian of science specialized in the history of Earth sciences. He is teaching the Humanities and French language to undergraduates.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou, "The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power" (NYU Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 2 Jan 2023 09:00:00 +0000

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.

In this episode, our host Juan Llamas-Rodriguez discusses the book The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power (2022) by Dr. Lilie Chouliaraki and Dr. Myria Georgiou.

You’ll hear about:

What The Digital Border is about, its importance, and its implication;
How the authors’ previous works helped build the foundation for writing this book collaboratively;
Why and how the authors chose to focus on specific forms of media such as social media and journalism;
A discussion of humanitarian securitization vis a vis entrepreneurial securitization;
How to understand the theoretical shift from the “crisis of migration” to the “crisis of responsibility”;
How do we contend the different temporalities of resistance as various actors produce or respond to border technologies and infrastructures;
As the displacement of people are intensifying, what frameworks and toolkits can be useful for us to rethink global migration against the “crisis of imaginary” (imaginary as a representational framework that people normatively think about certain issues);
What are the futures of globalization and its counter movements in Global North from the perspectives of migration and bordering;
What are the areas the authors wish to further explore in the future.

About the book

What is the role of digital technologies is shaping migration today? How do digital infrastructures, platforms, and institutions control the flow of people at the border? And how do they also control the public narratives of migration as a “crisis”? Finally, how do migrants themselves use these same platforms to speak back and make themselves heard in the face of hardship and hostility? Taking their case studies from the biggest migration event of the twenty-first century in the West, the 2015 European migration “crisis” and its aftermath up to 2020, Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou offer a holistic account of the digital border as an expansive assemblage of technological infrastructures (from surveillance cameras to smartphones) and media imaginaries (stories, images, social media posts) to tell the story of migration as it unfolds in Europe’s outer islands as much as its most vibrant cities. You can find this book on the NYU Press website.

Authors:

Lilie Chouliaraki is Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, where she also serves as the department’s Doctoral Program Director.

Myria Georgiou is Professor of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics, where she also serves as Research Director.

Host: Juan Llamas-Rodriguez is an assistant professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, where he researches and teaches global media cultures, digital technologies, border studies, infrastructure studies, and Latin American media.

Editor & Producer: Jing Wang is Senior Research Manager at CARGC at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ethical AI

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 tackles topics in science, technology, engineering, and medicine from a highly theoretical perspective. In this episode, Alex helps us think about the complicated recipes we call “artificial intelligence” and what we mean when we ask our technologies to be ethical.

In the episode Alex references an article by Emily Tucker, called “Artifice and Intelligence,” (Tech Policy Press, 17 March 2022) which suggests we should stop using terms like “artificial intelligence” and an opinion piece in the Washington Post, on a similar theme, by Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, “We warned Google that people might believe AI was sentient. Now it’s happening” (17 June 2022). She also mentions a claim by Blake Lemoine that Google’s LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) is sentient. We’ll leave that one to your googling, if not your judgment.

Dr. Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). A sociologist by training, her work centers on the data used in new computational technologies, and the ways in which these data exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality. You can read her recent article, “AI Ethics Are in Danger. Funding Independent Research Could Help,” co-authored with Dylan Baker in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and learn more about her work on her website.

This week’s image was produced by DALL-E 2 responding to the prompt: "generate the image of an artificial intelligence entity, deciding to protect shareholder interests over public good, in the style of Van Gogh."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Luke Munn, "Automation Is a Myth" (Stanford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 27 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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, automation, argues Munn, is ultimately a fable that rests on a set of triple fictions. There is the myth of full autonomy, claiming that machines will take over production and supplant humans. But far from being self-acting, technical solutions are piecemeal; their support and maintenance reveals the immense human labor behind "autonomous" processes. There is the myth of universal automation, with technologies framed as a desituated force sweeping the globe. But this fiction ignores the social, cultural, and geographical forces that shape technologies at a local level. And, there is the myth of automating everyone, the generic figure of "the human" at the heart of automation claims. But labor is socially stratified and so automation's fallout will be highly uneven, falling heavier on some (immigrants, people of color, women) than others.

In Automation Is a Myth (Stanford UP, 2022), Munn moves from machine minders in China to warehouse pickers in the United States to explore the ways that new technologies do (and don't) reconfigure labor. Combining this rich array of human stories with insights from media and cultural studies, Munn points to a more nuanced, localized, and racialized understanding of the "future of work."

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Mariëlle Wijermars et al., "The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

How has digitalisation changed Russian politics? How has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed Russia studies? What is special about Russia’s approach to algorithmic governance and internet control? Assistant Professor in Cyber-Security and Politics from Maastricht University, Mariëlle Wijermars, talks about her ongoing research on Russian politics, internet policy and platform governance.

In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, Mariëlle Wijermars also talks about The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies. This open-access handbook was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2020 and was edited by Mariëlle together with Daria Gritsenko and Mikhail Kopotev.

This handbook presents a multidisciplinary and multifaceted perspective on how the ‘digital’ is simultaneously changing Russia and the research methods scholars use to study Russia. It provides a critical update on how Russian society, politics, economy, and culture are reconfigured in the context of ubiquitous connectivity and accounts for the political and societal responses to digitalization.

Dr. Mariëlle Wijermars is an Assistant Professor in Cyber-Security and Politics at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. She is currently a CORE Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, where she researches internet freedom and the human rights’ implications of internet policy and platform governance, in particular in authoritarian states.

You can connect with Mariëlle Wijermars on Twitter @Marielle_W_ and on Mastodon @Marielle_W@mastodon.social.

Joanne Kuai is a PhD Candidate at Karlstad University, Sweden, with a research project on Artificial Intelligence in Chinese Newsrooms. Her research interests centre around data and AI for media, computational journalism, and the social implications of automation and algorithms. Find her on LinkedIn or on Twitter @JoanneKuai.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Geert Lovink, "Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism" (Pluto Press, 2019)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 driven by the same irrational exuberance that moves money?

Sadness is now a design problem. The highs and lows of melancholy are coded into social media platforms. After all the clicking, browsing, swiping and liking, all we are left with is the flat and empty aftermath of time lost to the app.

Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism (Pluto Press, 2019) by Geert Lovink offers a critical analysis of the controversies which drive our online media behaviours. Lovink calls for us to embrace the engineered intimacy of social media, messenger apps and selfies because boredom is the first stage of overcoming ‘platform nihilism’.

Geert Lovink speaks to Pierre d'Alancaisez about the frustrations of studying the internet as it evolves from networks to platforms, the politically-contingent notions of online 'communities', and cycles of ideological production and capture.

Geert Lovink is a media theorist and internet critic who has chronicled the development of internet and network cultures as they came of age alongside him. He is the author of Zero Comments, Networks Without a Cause, Social Media Abyss, and most recently Struck on the Platform. He is the founder of the Institute of Network Cultures.

Pierre d’Alancaisez is a contemporary art curator, cultural strategist, researcher. Sometime scientist, financial services professional.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

John D. Wong, "Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s-1998" (Harvard UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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, international flights flew over the roofs of Kowloon apartments, before landing on Kai Tak’s runway, extending out into the harbor.

Kai Tak–frankly, a terrible place for one of the world’s busiest international airports–is a good symbol of the story of Hong Kong’s aviation, as told in Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s–1998 (Harvard University Press, 2022) by John D. Wong and published by Harvard University Press.

Hong Kong’s growth as a hub for commercial aviation was often unplanned, often the result of compromise–and yet wildly successful. The city was able to carve a niche for itself, in both the declining British empire and the wider world, while also having to deal with colonial bureaucracy, geopolitics, fierce competition and an entirely new Communist government across the border.

In this interview, John and I talk about Hong Kong’s history with aviation, from its very start with flying boats and puddlejumpers right through to the jumbo jet era.

John D. Wong is Associate Professor at the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, The University of Hong Kong. He is also the author of Global Trade in the Nineteenth Century: The House of Houqua and the Canton System (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Hong Kong Takes Flight. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Heather Ford, "Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

A close reading of Wikipedia's article on the Egyptian Revolution reveals the complexity inherent in establishing the facts of events as they occur and are relayed to audiences near and far.

Wikipedia bills itself as an encyclopedia built on neutrality, authority, and crowd-sourced consensus. Platforms like Google and digital assistants like Siri distribute Wikipedia's facts widely, further burnishing its veneer of impartiality. But as Heather Ford demonstrates in Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2022), the facts that appear on Wikipedia are often the result of protracted power struggles over how data are created and used, how history is written and by whom, and the very definition of facts in a digital age.

In Writing the Revolution, Ford looks critically at how the Wikipedia article about the 2011 Egyptian Revolution evolved over the course of a decade, both shaping and being shaped by the Revolution as it happened. When data are published in real time, they are subject to an intense battle over their meaning across multiple fronts. Ford answers key questions about how Wikipedia's so-called consensus is arrived at; who has the power to write dominant histories and which knowledges are actively rejected; how these battles play out across the chains of circulation in which data travel; and whether history is now written by algorithms.

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology and a volunteer at Interference Archive. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jenny L. Davis, "How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things" (MIT Press, 2020)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

A conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective.

Technological affordances mediate between the features of a technology and the outcomes of engagement with that technology. The concept of affordances, which migrated from psychology to design with Donald Norman's influential 1988 book, How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things (MIT Press, 2020), offers a useful analytical tool in technology studies—but, Jenny L. Davis argues in How Artifacts Afford, it is in need of a conceptual update. Davis provides just such an update, introducing the mechanisms and conditions framework, which offers both a vocabulary and necessary critical perspective for affordance analyses.

The mechanisms and conditions framework shifts the question from what objects afford to how objects afford, for whom, and under what circumstances. Davis shows that through this framework, analyses can account for the power and politics of technological artifacts. She situates the framework within a critical approach that views technology as materialized action. She explains how request, demand, encourage, discourage, refuse, and allow are mechanisms of affordance, and shows how these mechanisms take shape through variable conditions—perception, dexterity, and cultural and institutional legitimacy.

Putting the framework into action, Davis identifies existing methodological approaches that complement it, including critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA), app feature analysis, and adversarial design. In today's rapidly changing sociotechnical landscape, the stakes of affordance analyses are high. Davis's mechanisms and conditions framework offers a timely theoretical reboot, providing tools for the crucial tasks of both analysis and design.

Jenny L. Davis is Associate Professor of Sociology at Australian National University.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington, 2022). His general area of study is on media representations of people and place at festivals and celebrations. He is currently working on his next book where he conducted research on an annual canoeing and kayaking event that takes place on the Upper Mississippi River. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Renee M. P. Teate, "SQL for Data Scientists: A Beginner's Guide for Building Datasets for Analysis" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 the top and a list of observations or datapoints down the right hand side. Data also naturally falls into this format when it comes from surveys we run. But the vast amounts of data generated by businesses and by all our online activities are usually organized in different ways. In corporate settings that first step of getting the right data and putting it into a table where it can be analyzed can be as important and challenging as the subsequent analyses. SQL (Structured Query Language) has been the standard language for accessing information in databases since the 1980s.

In this episode I interview Renee Teate, also known as “Data Science Renee” on Twitter, about her new book, SQL for Data Scientists: A Beginner’s Guide for Building Datasets for Analysis (Wiley, 2022). I learned about Renee from her popular blog and podcast, “Becoming a Data Scientist,” in which she talked about the paths she and others took to becoming a data scientist. While she was coming from more of an engineering background, many economists have been becoming data scientists from the other direction. They are building up their skills with databases and programming to complement their statistical and social science training, either because of new jobs in the tech sector or because of the new academic research possibilities this opens up. SQL is a crucial part of this toolkit, and this book is a great way to get started learning it.

In our conversation, we also discuss her current role as a lead data scientist at higher education analytics company Heliocampus, and some of her tips for aspiring data scientists as they apply for and interview for their first jobs.

Host Peter Lorentzen is the Chair of the Economics Department at the University of San Francisco, where he created a new Master’s degree in Applied Economics designed specifically to train students in a combination of economics and data science skills that equips them to succeed in the new digital economy.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Pamela H. Smith, "From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 19 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

How and why early modern European artisans began to record their knowledge. In From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World (U Chicago Press, 2022), Pamela H. Smith considers how and why, beginning in 1400 CE, European craftspeople began to write down their making practices. Rather than simply passing along knowledge in the workshop, these literate artisans chose to publish handbooks, guides, treatises, tip sheets, graphs, and recipe books, sparking early technical writing and laying the groundwork for how we think about scientific knowledge today. Focusing on metalworking from 1400-1800 CE, Smith looks at the nature of craft knowledge and skill, studying present-day and historical practices, objects, recipes, and artisanal manuals. From these sources, she considers how we can reconstruct centuries of largely lost knowledge. In doing so, she aims not only to unearth the techniques, material processes, and embodied experience of the past but also to gain insight into the lifeworld of artisans and their understandings of matter. Please visit MS FR 640 at The Making and Knowing Project.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Kelly I. Aliano, "The Performance of Video Games: Enacting Identity, History and Culture Through Play" (McFarland, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 game's story in real time. This book presents video gaming as a virtual medium for performance, scrutinizing the ways in which a player's interaction with the narrative informs personal, historical, social and cultural understanding.

Centering the author's own experiences as both video game player and performance scholar, The Performance of Video Games: Enacting Identity, History and Culture Through Play (McFarland, 2022) thoroughly applies concepts from theatre and performance studies. Chapters argue that the posthuman player position now challenges what can be contextualized as a lived experience, and how video games can change players' relationships with historical events and contemporary concerns, ultimately impacting how they develop a sense of self.

Using the author's own gaming experiences as a framework, the book focuses on the intersection between player and narrative, exploring what engagement with a storyline reveals about identity and society.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of the Arms Industry: A Discussion with Pieter D. Wezeman

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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, retail outlets, football clubs and the like. There tend to be far fewer stories about the arms industry - unless it’s about some scandal – generally bribes or sales to governments with poor human rights records. So today we are discussing the future of the arms industry with Pieter D. Wezeman who researches these matters at the leading institute in this area, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute or SIPRI.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Danielle Keats Citron, "The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age" (Norton, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 array of technology that enables constant access and surveillance of the most private aspects of our lives. From non-consensual pornography, to online extortion, to the sale of our data for profit, we are vulnerable to abuse. As Citron reveals, wherever we live, laws have failed miserably to keep up with corporate or individual violators, letting our privacy wash out with the technological tide. And the erosion of intimate privacy in particular, Citron argues, holds immense toxic power to transform our lives and our societies for the worse (and already has).

With vivid examples drawn from interviews with victims, activists and lawmakers from around the world, The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age (Norton, 2022) reveals the threat we face and argues urgently and forcefully for a reassessment of privacy as a human right. And, as a legal scholar and expert, Danielle Citron is the perfect person to show us the way to a happier, better protected future.

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Previously, Jake has done some research in mixed reality, human-robot interaction, and AI ethics.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Hall et al., "Digital Gender-Sexual Violations: Violence, Technologies, Motivations" (Routledge, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

This groundbreaking book argues that the fundamental issues around how victim-survivors of digital gender-sexual violations (DGSVs) are abused can be understood in terms of gender and sexual dynamics, constructions, positioning and logics. Digital Gender-Sexual Violations: Violence, Technologies, Motivations (Routledge, 2022) builds upon Hall and Hearn's previous work, Revenge Pornography, but has been substantially reworked to examine other forms of DGSV such as upskirting and sexual deepfakes, as well as the latest research and debates in the field.

Facilitated by developments in internet and mobile technologies, the non-consensual posting of real or fake sexually explicit images of others for revenge, entertainment, homosocial status or political leverage has become a global phenomenon. Using discourse and thematic analytical approaches, this text examines digital, survey and interview data on gendered sexual violences, abuses, and violations. The words of both the perpetrators and victim-survivors are presented, showing the impact on victim-survivors and the complex ways in which phallocentric power relations and existing hegemonic masculinities are reinforced and invoked by perpetrators to position girls and women as gendered and sexualised commodities to be traded, admired, violated or abused for the needs of individual men or groups of men.

Hall, Hearn, and Lewis explore their research in a broader social and political context, evaluating and suggesting changes to existing legislative frameworks, education, victim support, and practical and policy interventions against DGSV, along with wider political considerations. This is a unique resource for students, academics and researchers as well as professionals dealing with issues around digital gender-sexual violations.

Iqra Shagufta Cheema writes and teaches in the areas of digital cultures, postcolonial literatures, transnational digital feminisms, gender and sexuality studies, and global south film studies. Check out their latest book: The Other #MeToos. Follow them on Twitter.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karen Levy, "Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance" (Princeton UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 15 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have long valued the day-to-day independence of their work, sharing a strong occupational identity rooted in a tradition of autonomy. Yet these workers increasingly find themselves under many watchful eyes. Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance (Princeton UP, 2022) examines how digital surveillance is upending life and work on the open road, and raises crucial questions about the role of data collection in broader systems of social control.

Karen Levy takes readers inside a world few ever see, painting a bracing portrait of one of the last great American frontiers. Federal regulations now require truckers to buy and install digital monitors that capture data about their locations and behaviors. Intended to address the pervasive problem of trucker fatigue by regulating the number of hours driven each day, these devices support additional surveillance by trucking firms and other companies. Traveling from industry trade shows to law offices and truck-stop bars, Levy reveals how these invasive technologies are reconfiguring industry relationships and providing new tools for managerial and legal control--and how truckers are challenging and resisting them.

Data Driven contributes to an emerging conversation about how technology affects our work, institutions, and personal lives, and helps to guide our thinking about how to protect public interests and safeguard human dignity in the digital age.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Yasmine Ali, "Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America" (Citadel Press, 2023)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

The first book to examine the rarely-acknowledged Waverly Train Disaster of 1978 - the catastrophic accident that changed America forever and led to the formation of FEMA.

Coinciding with the 45th anniversary of the event, Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America (Citadel Press, 2023) is a tribute to the first responders, as well as an examination of the strengths and vulnerabilities in rural America. On the night of February 22, 1978, a devastating freight train derailment drastically altered Waverly, Tennessee, and its place in history. This was one of the worst train explosions of the twentieth century, killing 16 people, injuring hundreds more, and causing millions of dollars in damage. What could have been dismissed as a single community's terrible misfortune instead became the catalyst for radical change, including the formation of FEMA, much-needed reforms in emergency response training, and the creation and enforcement of national and state safety regulations. Response to the disaster reshaped American infrastructure and laid the groundwork for the future of emergency management and disaster relief . . . and yet most Americans have never heard of Waverly.

Dr. Yasmine S. Ali, an award-winning medical writer and Waverly native, sets out to change this in Walk Through Fire, drawing from over a decade of meticulous research and interviews with survivors, first responders, and other firsthand accounts, including those of her own parents, first-generation Americans who were on call at the local hospital that treated the victims. Ali weaves a compelling narrative of small-town tragedy set against the broader backdrop of U.S. railroad history, rural healthcare, and other elements of American infrastructure that played a part in the creation--and the aftermath--of the Disaster. A tribute to resiliency and a call to action, Walk Through Fire tells the harrowing story of the Waverly Train Disaster from the perspectives of those who survived it, and those who still feel its impact today, illuminating how much a nation still has to learn from one small town in Tennessee.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Scott Moore, "China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 stands China. China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future (Oxford UP, 2022) re-envisions China’s role in the world in terms of sustainability and technology. The danger is that China’s next act will drive divergence on the rules and standards the world desperately needs in the decades ahead. This book helps foreign countries, companies, and other organizations prepare for a future shaped by sustainability, technology—and a dramatic new chapter for China and our world.

Sample takeaways:

China-linked political + economic risk isn’t going away and will get worse. No-regrets supply chain diversification will only make more sense over time.
Environmental sustainability will become a bigger and bigger priority in the China market because of growing regulatory + consumer pressure. This is both in direct operations & larger supply chains.
Data privacy, security, and surveillance will pose growing dilemmas for multi-national companies. Data governance is becoming more fragmented, and compliance and cross-border transfer more difficult. Firms need to prepare for “data de-globalization.”
China is becoming a more isolated, but still large & important, innovation ecosystem. How to access & leverage this ecosystem, and the talent within it, will become a bigger challenge as China-global research collaborations, student flows, etc. shrink.
China’s frothy biotech sector is cooling, but will still be a major growth driver in the years ahead. And developments in biotech will disrupt and reshape many sectors and industries via biometrics, biomaterials, etc.

Dr. Scott Moore is an acclaimed authority on China, sustainability, and technology whose career has spanned the U.S. government, multi-lateral institutions, and academia. He currently teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also Director of China Programs and Strategic Initiatives. Before returning to academia, Dr. Moore worked extensively on the Paris Agreement on climate change at the U.S. Department of State and at the World Bank. He graduated from Princeton University and received his doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Dong Wang is collection editor of Asian Studies books at Lived Places Publishing (New York & the UK), H-Diplo review editor, director of the Wellington Koo Institute for Modern China in World History (Germany & USA), research associate at Harvard Fairbank Center (since 2002), distinguished professor of history at Shanghai University (since 2016), a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sat, 10 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 at Northwestern University. Our conversation focused on his recent article “The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars,” in Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations: New Histories, edited by David Milne and Christopher Nichols (Columbia University Press, 2022). In the piece her uses the film and the figure of George Lucas to explore various aspects of the United States in the Cold War. Were Ewoks the Viet Cong? Was the Death Star a B-52? Was Alderaan Hanoi? Listen and find out.

Daniel Immerwahr earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley in 2011 after undergraduate studies at both Columbia and Cambridge. His previous work includes Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (Harvard, 2015) and the award winning and best-selling How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), which has been translated into German, Dutch, Italian, Korean, and Chinese so far. Dr. Immerwahr's writings have appeared in the New York Times, The Guardian, the Washington Post, The New Republic, The Nation, Dissent, Jacobin, Slate, and elsewhere.

Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of AI in Work: A Discussion with Daniel Susskind

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 9 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 rests on fine human judgment – but in fact many of tasks it involves can be performed by AI and if that is true for law then presumably it is also true for many other areas too. Daniel Susskind of Oxford University discusses his book The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the World of Human Experts (Oxford UP, 2022),

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Julia Ticona, "Left to Our Own Devices: Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 9 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.

In this episode, our host Florence Madenga discusses the book Left to Our Own Devices

Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age (2022) by Dr. Julia Ticona.

You’ll hear about:

Dr. Ticona’s intellectual trajectory and how her first monograph has been transformed from a dissertation project into a book
What audience the book is intended for and what critical scholarship means for the author
The design of the research project and the processes and ethics of conducting research about the gig economy
How the ongoing pandemic has changed or altered the way Dr. Ticona thinks about this book
The core arguments and take-away points from the book around keywords such as “digital inequality,” “precarity,” “platform economy,” and “digital hustle”
The global implications of a study on low-wage gig economy workers in the American labor market
The question of agency in workers’ everyday life and how people survive in the global platform economy
The gendered nature of labor in the gig economy and what Dr. Ticona calls “tethered care work”
How we can better understand the complexity of our mediated worlds and precarious work beyond the tech companies and digital platforms

About the book

Over the past three decades, digital technologies like smartphones and laptops have transformed the way we work in the US. At the same time, workers at both ends of the income ladder have experienced rising levels of job insecurity and anxiety about their economic futures. In Left to Our Own Devices, Julia Ticona explores the ways that workers use their digital technologies to navigate insecure and flexible labor markets. Through 100 interviews with high and low-wage precarious workers across the US, she explores the surprisingly similar "digital hustles" they use to find work and maintain a sense of dignity and identity. Ticona then reveals how the digital hustle ultimately reproduces inequalities between workers at either end of polarized labor markets. A moving and accessible look at the intimate consequences of contemporary capitalism, Left to Our Own Devices will be of interest to sociologists, communication and media studies scholars, as well as a general audience of readers interested in digital technologies, inequality, and the future of work in the US.

You can find this book on the Oxford University Press website.

Author: Julia Ticona is an assistant professor at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Host: Florence Madenga is a doctoral fellow at CARGC at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Editor & Producer: Jing Wang is Senior Research Manager at CARGC at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.

Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

James A. Geraghty, "Inside the Orphan Drug Revolution: The Promise of Patient-Centered Biotechnology" (Cold Springs Harbor Lab Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 6 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Advances in medicine have made possible better treatments for widespread, familiar human illnesses like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Yet there are thousands of much less common diseases, most of genetic origin, each classed as rare because it afflicts only a small number of people. These patient groups were long ignored by a pharmaceutical industry that judged them too small to provide a return on the investment needed to develop an effective remedy. Yet these orphaned diseases collectively caused misery and expense, often far greater than did more common ailments, for tens of millions of individuals and their families.

Forty years ago, a revolution that transformed the prospects of patients with rare diseases was lit by three sparks. The passage of the 1983 U.S. Orphan Drug Act resulted from public pressure brought by rare disease patients, their families, and advocates. The AIDS epidemic triggered additional activism, compounded when patients with the rare disease hemophilia became HIV-positive after infusion of tainted blood products. And the third spark was the emergence in the early 1980s of biotechnology companies like Genentech, Amgen, and Biogen employing then-new genetic engineering instead of conventional approaches to pharmaceutical development. Soon after, Genzyme became the first company to develop a treatment for a rare genetic disorder, Gaucher disease, which would come to transform the industry.

Jim Geraghty has been a passionate participant in the orphan drug revolution since its inception--a leader in the field as a strategy consultant, biotechnology executive, and venture entrepreneur. Inside the Orphan Drug Revolution: The Promise of Patient-Centered Biotechnology (Cold Springs Harbor Lab Press, 2022) is in part a history, with eyewitness accounts of advances as they occurred and portraits of the pioneering scientists and physicians, tireless activists, and visionary business leaders who made the revolution happen. And it tells deeply personal stories of patients and parents willing to risk new, untried therapies. But Geraghty also uses his exceptional experience and vantage point to look forward to the immense promise of the newest technologies like gene therapy and gene editing for the treatment of patients today and tomorrow. He concludes with thoughtful consideration of important questions. Why do drugs to treat orphan diseases cost so much? How can we ensure they are affordable? How can their effectiveness be responsibly assessed? And how can access to them be expanded internationally? This book graphically and poignantly illustrates how far an important healthcare revolution has come and reminds us that if not nurtured, it could end before its immense promise has been fulfilled.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Melissa Kagen, "Wandering Games" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Sun, 4 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In Wandering Games (MIT Press, 2022), Melissa Kagen analyzes wandering within different game worlds, viewed through the lenses of work, colonialism, gender, and death. Wandering in games can be a theme, a formal mode, an aesthetic metaphor, or a player action. It can mean walking, escaping, traversing, meandering, or returning. Kagen introduces the concept of “wandering games,” exploring the uses of wandering in a variety of game worlds. She shows how the much-derided Walking Simulator—a term that began as an insult, a denigration of games that are less violent, less task-oriented, or less difficult to complete—semi-accidentally tapped into something brilliant: the vast heritage and intellectual history of the concept of walking in fiction, philosophy, pilgrimage, performance, and protest. Kagen examines wandering in a series of games that vary widely in terms of genre, mechanics, themes, player base, studio size, and funding, giving close readings to Return of the Obra Dinn, Eastshade, Ritual of the Moon, 80 Days, Heaven’s Vault, Death Stranding, and The Last of Us Part II. Exploring the connotations of wandering within these different game worlds, she considers how ideologies of work, gender, colonialism, and death inflect the ways we wander through digital spaces. Overlapping and intersecting, each provides a multifaceted lens through which to understand what wandering does, lacks, implies, and offers. Kagen’s account will attune game designers, players, and scholars to the myriad possibilities of the wandering ludic body.

Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically through zines and music.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

94 Elizabeth Kolbert on the Nature of the Future (GT, JP, NS, HY)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 1 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

How should humans respond to our ongoing human-made climate catastrophe? To answer that question, Recall this Book turned to prize-winning climate reporter Elizabeth Kolbert, who visited Brandeis this Fall. The topic was Under a White Sky, her recent book that documents the responses to the climate crisis ranging from a form of climate engineering that shoots reflective particles into the air to cool the atmosphere, to negative emission technologies that capture and inject carbon dioxide underground.

"You'd have to be pretty hard-hearted not to feel called to some kind of action when you see what we humans have done." But Elizabeth wonders what the best alternatives are. Should we set aside half the earth for biodiversity? Why is it that genetic engineering has become the cultural flashpoint for fear of unintended consequences? There are no easy answers at this point. Elizabeth thinks that if you're not frightened by what's going right now, including American politics around vaccination refusal, you're not paying attention.

Because this episode is associated with the annual Brandeis New Student Book Forum, first-year students Hedy Yang and Srinidhi Sriraman (who also goes by Nidhi) jump in with some thoughts.

Noticing repeated mentions of Henry David Thoreau in the book, Nidhi inquires about his role in inspiring Elizabeth's writing. Hedy's question about environmental justice and the comparative agency of rich and poor countries moves Elizabeth to talk about the staggering inequities in consumption and the goal of convergence in carbon emissions. What is the mechanism by which this happens, though? Do humans have the right to implement these technologies? Is the solution to issues created by human control really more control?

Mentioned in the Episode

E.O. Wilson, Half Earth
"Gene editing could revive a nearly lost tree"; the chestnut gene splicing debate in a recent Washington Post article. (Elizabeth has reported on Bill Powell's work)
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Cormac McCarthy, The Road (2006)
Cli-fi: climate fiction in all its bleakness. For example, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.
Kim Stanley Robinson, Ministry for the Future
Rob Nixon, Slow Violence: how to see things happening at different time scales.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)
Henry David Thoreau, "the touchstone" of American nature writing. e.g Walden (1854); dated yes, but "in most ways ahead of his time"
Des Poissons dans le Desert: Elizabeth's book title in French!

Listen to the episode here.

Read the transcript here.

Special credit and thanks for this episode goes to Hedy Yang and Srinidhi Sriraman, who took part in the audio editing and the preparation of the show notes, respectively.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jonathan R. Hunt, "The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam" (Stanford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 1 Dec 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 developing states embraced global governance in hopes of a bright and peaceful tomorrow. While fears of nuclear war were ever-present, it was the perceived threat to their preeminence that drove Washington, Moscow, and London to throw their weight behind the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) banishing nuclear testing underground, the 1967 Treaty of Tlatelolco banning atomic armaments from Latin America, and the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) forbidding more countries from joining the most exclusive club on Earth.

International society, the Cold War, and the imperial U.S. presidency were reformed from 1945 to 1970, when a global nuclear order was inaugurated, averting conflict in the industrial North and yielding what George Orwell styled a "peace that is no peace" everywhere else. Today the nuclear order legitimizes foreign intervention worldwide, empowering the nuclear club and, above all, the United States, to push sanctions and even preventive war against atomic outlaws, all in humanity's name.

Grant Golub is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a PhD candidate in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research focuses on the politics of American grand strategy during World War II.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz, "The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but also the very nature of people's everyday lives. It is of vital importance that we understand the economic principles governing how these platforms operate. Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz's book The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy (Cambridge UP, 2021) explains the driving forces behind any platform business with a focus on network effects. The authors use short case studies and real-world applications to explain key concepts such as how platforms manage network effects and which price and non-price strategies they choose. This self-contained text is the first to offer a systematic and formalized account of what platforms are and how they operate, concisely incorporating path-breaking insights in economics over the last twenty years.

Martin Peitz is professor of economics at the University of Mannheim (since 2007), a director of the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation – MaCCI (since 2009). He has been member of the economic advisory group on competition policy (EAGCP) at the European Commission (2013–2016), an academic director of the Centre on Regulation in Europe, CERRE (2012–2016) and head of the Department of Economics (2010–2013). Martin has widely published in leading economics journals. He also frequently trains and advises government agencies in Europe and abroad on competition and regulation issues.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sofya Glazunova, "Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 30 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) examines various forms of Russian online anti-establishment resistance, focusing in particular on the period between 2016 and 2019. Grounded in qualitative content analysis of the YouTube videos and social media activities of opposition activist Alexey Navalny and his associates, the book covers the history of digital resistance associated with this cohort, its style and strategies, and the impact that this form of political communication has had on the Russian public sphere.

Sofya Glazunova is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Glazunova specialises in political communication, digital resistance, Russian media, disinformation, fake news, and digital propaganda. In addition to Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders (2022), she is the co-author of the Global Disinformation Index report entitled Disinformation Risk Assessment: The Online News Market in Australia (2021).

Iva Glisic is a historian and art historian specialising in modern Russia and the Balkans.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Sarah Abel, "Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome" (UNC Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about their identity by looking to the genome. At a time of intensified interest in issues of race and racism, the burgeoning influence of corporations like AncestryDNA and 23andMe has sparked debates about the commodification of identity, the antiracist potential of genetic science, and the promises and pitfalls of using DNA as a source of "objective" knowledge about the past.

Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) engages these debates by looking at the ways genomic ancestry testing has been used in Brazil and the United States to address the histories and legacies of slavery, from personal genealogical projects to collective racial politics. Reckoning with the struggles of science versus capitalism, "race-blind" versus "race-positive" public policies, and identity fluidity versus embodied experiences of racism, Permanent Markers seeks to explain why those of us in societies that have broadly embraced the social construction of race continue to search for, and find, evidence that our bodies are marked permanently by the past.

Sarah Abel is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge's Centre of Latin American Studies.

Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at University of Southern California.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tim Walker and Lucian Morris, "The Handbook of Banking Technology" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In The Handbook of Banking Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2021), Walker and Morris provide a first comprehensive view of the systems that support a bank. During the interview, they bring out the interactions of these components and how the themes they touch on in the book come together. Years of first-hand experience combined with detailed research come together to explain the intricacies of the technological architecture of modern banking. Quite often the authors provide a long-term perspective of how these applications develop in order to provide a better understanding of how we got to where we are.

The other podcast mentioned in this interview is James Bessen "The New Goliaths".

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where sellers have excessive power over buyers) or monopsonies (where buyers hold the whip hand over sellers)—or both.

In Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back (Beacon, 2022), scholar Dr. Rebecca Giblin and writer and activist Cory Doctorow argue we’re in a new era of “chokepoint capitalism,” with exploitative businesses creating insurmountable barriers to competition that enable them to capture value that should rightfully go to others. All workers are weakened by this, but the problem is especially well-illustrated by the plight of creative workers. From Amazon’s use of digital rights management and bundling to radically change the economics of book publishing, to Google and Facebook’s siphoning away of ad revenues from news media, and the Big Three record labels’ use of inordinately long contracts to up their own margins at the cost of artists, chokepoints are everywhere.

By analyzing book publishing and news, live music and music streaming, screenwriting, radio and more, Giblin and Doctorow deftly show how powerful corporations construct “anti-competitive flywheels” designed to lock in users and suppliers, make their markets hostile to new entrants, and then force workers and suppliers to accept unfairly low prices.

In the book’s second half, Giblin and Doctorow then explain how to batter through those chokepoints, with tools ranging from transparency rights to collective action and ownership, radical interoperability, contract terminations, job guarantees, and minimum wages for creative work.

Chokepoint Capitalism is a call to workers of all sectors to unite to help smash these chokepoints and take back the power and profit that’s being heisted away—before it’s too late.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Aynne Kokas, "Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 company to American investors or shut it down. Legions of TikTokers were devastated at the possible loss of their beloved platform, and for what: a political grudge with China? American suitors like Walmart and Oracle tried to make a deal with Bytedance to keep the platform operating in the US. But then something curious happened. The Chinese government refused to let Bytedance sell TikTok on national security grounds. As it turns out, the pandemic era platform for dance challenges is a Chinese government asset.

As digital technologies and social media have evolved into organizing forces for the way in which we conduct our work and social lives, the business logic that undergirds these digital platforms has become clear: we are their product. We give these businesses information about everything--from where we live and work to what we like to do for entertainment, what we consume, where we travel, what we think politically, and with whom we are friends and acquaintances. We do this willingly, but often without a full understanding of how this information is stored or used, or what happens to it when it crosses international boundaries. As Aynne Kokas argues, both corporations and governments traffic much of this data without our consent--and sometimes illegally--for political and financial gain.

In Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford UP, 2022), Aynne Kokas looks at how technology firms in the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, have exploited government policy (and the lack thereof) to gather information on citizens, putting US national security at risk. Kokas argues that US government leadership failures, Silicon Valley's disruption fetish, and Wall Street's addiction to growth have fuelled China's technological goldrush. In turn, American complacency yields an unprecedented opportunity for Chinese firms to gather data in the United States and quietly send it back to China, and by extension, to the Chinese government. Drawing on years of fieldwork in the US and China and a large trove of corporate and policy documents, Trafficking Data explains how China is fast becoming the global leader in internet governance and policy, and thus of the data that defines our public and private lives.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Anna Pendergrast and Kelly Pendergrast, "More Zeros and Ones: Digital Technology, Maintenance and Equity in Aotearoa New Zealand" (Bridget Williams Books, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Many of today’s digital technologies inadvertently amplify the power structures and prejudices of wider society. By examining the way digital tools and platforms are designed, built, and maintained, this BWB Text aims to identify how we can do better for everyone in Aotearoa.

Following on from the success of Shouting Zeros and Ones (BWB Texts), More Zeros and Ones: Digital Technology, Maintenance and Equity in Aotearoa New Zealand (Bridget Williams Books, 2022) includes writers with speciﬁc expertise in applying topics such as environmental science, law, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi to recent developments in technology. More Zeros and Ones continues the exploration of emerging issues for digital technology and society in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Contributors

Dr Nessa Lynch, Amber Craig, Hīria Te Rangi, Dr Sarah Bickerton, Sarah Pritchett, Hannah Blumhardt, Dr Paul Smith, Professor Graeme Austin, Siobhan McCarthy, Dr Karaitiana Taiuru, Dr Andrew Chen, Dr Karly Burch, Dr Moana Nepia, Nicholas Jones, Dr Marama Muru-Lanning, Dr Henry Williams, Mira O’Connor, and Professor Anna Brown.

Key Point About the Book:

Highlights the opportunities created when using inclusive approaches in the development of new technology
Discusses ‘systemic oppression’ in the creation of technology for the general consumer
Brings to light the dangers of creating new technologies without input from the people most affected by them

Ed Amon has a Master of Indigenous Studies from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is a columnist at his local paper: Hibiscus Matters, and a Stand-up Comedian. His main interests are indigenous studies, politics, history, and cricket. Follow him on twitter @edamoned or email him at edamonnz@gmail.com

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Robert P. Crease with Peter D. Bond, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 18 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a world-class, Nobel Prize-winning lab, and its reactor was the cornerstone of US materials science and one of the world's finest research facilities. The leak, harmless to health, came from a storage pool rather than the reactor. But its discovery triggered a media and political firestorm that resulted in the reactor's shutdown, and even attempts to close the entire laboratory.

A quarter century later, the episode reveals the dynamics of today's controversies in which fears and the dismissal of science disrupt serious discussion and research of vital issues such as vaccines, climate change, and toxic chemicals. This story has all the elements of a thriller, with vivid characters and dramatic twists and turns. Key players include congressmen and scientists; journalists and university presidents; actors, supermodels, and anti-nuclear activists, all interacting and teaming up in surprising ways. The authors, each with insider knowledge of and access to confidential documents and the key players, reveal how a fact of no health significance could be portrayed as a Chernobyl-like disaster. The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory (MIT Press, 2022) reveals the gaps between scientists, politicians, media, and the public that have only gotten more dangerous since 1997.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matthew Crain, "Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

The contemporary internet's de facto business model is one of surveillance. Browser cookies follow us around the web, Amazon targets us with eerily prescient ads, Facebook and Google read our messages and analyze our patterns, and apps record our every move. In Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Matthew Crain gives internet surveillance a much-needed origin story by chronicling the development of its most important historical catalyst: web advertising.

The first institutional and political history of internet advertising, Profit over Privacy uses the 1990s as its backdrop to show how the massive data-collection infrastructure that undergirds the internet today is the result of twenty-five years of technical and political economic engineering. Crain considers the social causes and consequences of the internet's rapid embrace of consumer monitoring, detailing how advertisers and marketers adapted to the existential threat of the internet and marshaled venture capital to develop the now-ubiquitous business model called "surveillance advertising." He draws on a range of primary resources from government, industry, and the press and highlights the political roots of internet advertising to underscore the necessity of political solutions to reign in unaccountable commercial surveillance.

The dominant business model on the internet, surveillance advertising is the result of political choices--not the inevitable march of technology. Unlike many other countries, the United States has no internet privacy law. A fascinating prehistory of internet advertising giants like Google and Facebook, Profit over Privacy argues that the internet did not have to turn out this way and that it can be remade into something better.

Peter C. Kunze is a visiting assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Future of Data Control: A Discussion with Sarah Lamdan

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 this and what do we need to do about it? Professor Sarah Lamdan gives answers to those questions in her book Data Cartels: The Companies that Control and Monopolise our Information (Stanford UP, 2022). Listen to her conversations with Owen Bennett Jones.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto, "(Im)mobile Homes: Family Life at a Distance in the Age of Mobile Media" (Oxford UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

How do transnational Filipino families remain connected through mobile media technologies?

In (Im)mobile Homes: Family Life at a Distance in the Age of Mobile Media (Oxford UP, 2022), Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto explains the different ways in which smartphones, messaging apps, and social media facilitate transnational connectivity. He explains how relationships of care, intimacy, and connection to the homeland are established through digital routines shaped by power relations and familial expectations. Aside from providing an overview of the book’s key themes, the podcast goes deep into the methodological complexities of documenting intimate lives through mobile phone technologies as well as the ethical challenges of writing intimate portraits of Filipinos’ everyday lives.Earvin Charles B. Cabalquinto is a lecturer at Deakin University in Australia.

Like this interview? You may also be interested in:

Elizaveta Friesem, Media is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving Beyond Flame (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)
Zoetanya Sujon, The Social Media Age (SAGE, 2021).

Nicole Curato is a Professor of Sociology in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. She co-hosts the New Books in Southeast Asia Studies channel.

This episode was created in collaboration with Erron C. Medina of the Development Studies Program of Ateneo De Manila University.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Ernest M. Valea, "Artificial Intelligence, Reincarnation, and Resurrection: An Inquiry Into the Ultimate Fulfillment of Human Nature" (Resource Publications, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Ernest M. Valea's Artificial Intelligence, Reincarnation, and Resurrection: An Inquiry Into the Ultimate Fulfillment of Human Nature (Resource Publications, 2021) explores old and new hopes that have emerged in the human quest to defeat death. On the one hand, it answers questions such as: Are we just physical machines of great complexity, with the brain as the hardware on which consciousness operates as its software? If so, can we speculate on ways in which the mind could be uploaded to a machine and no longer suffer the frailty of this biological body? And could an android robot or a mindfile in a computer simulation be conscious? On the other hand, the book examines the hope of survival through reincarnation according to the teachings of Eastern religions and New Age thought. All these topics are discussed from the perspectives of Christian theology and the philosophy of mind. This dual investigation will help Christians formulate a coherent response to old and new challenges to their faith.

Ernest M. Valea is the author of The Buddha and the Christ: Reciprocal Views (2008), Buddhist-Christian Dialogue as Theological Exchange (2015), and The Spiritual Dimension of Alternative Medicine (2020).

Adrian Guiu holds a PhD in History of Christianity from the University of Chicago and teaches at Wright College in Chicago.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Karen Bakker, "The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants" (Princeton UP, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to uncover these astonishing sounds, revealing vibrant communication among our fellow creatures across the Tree of Life.

At once meditative and scientific, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants (Princeton UP, 2022)shares fascinating and surprising stories of nonhuman sound, interweaving insights from technological innovation and traditional knowledge. We meet scientists using sound to protect and regenerate endangered species from the Great Barrier Reef to the Arctic and the Amazon. We discover the shocking impacts of noise pollution on both animals and plants. We learn how artificial intelligence can decode nonhuman sounds, and meet the researchers building dictionaries in East African Elephant and Sperm Whalish. At the frontiers of innovation, we explore digitally mediated dialogues with bats and honeybees. Technology often distracts us from nature, but what if it could reconnect us instead?

The Sounds of Life offers hope for environmental conservation and affirms humanity's relationship with nature in the digital age. After learning about the unsuspected wonders of nature's sounds, we will never see walks outdoors in the same way again.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Adam Crowley, "Representations of Poverty in Videogames" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

Adam Crowley's book Representations of Poverty in Videogames (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) argues that digital games address contemporary, middle-class anxieties about poverty in the United States. The early chapters consider gaming as a modern form of slumming and explore the ways in which titles like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and World of Warcraft thematize poverty.

The argument turns to the field of literary studies to identify analytical frameworks for addressing and understanding these themes. Throughout, the book considers how the academic area of inquiry known as game studies has developed over time, and makes use of such scholarship to present, frame, and value its major claims and findings.

In its conclusion, the book models how poverty themes might be identified and associated for the purpose of gaining greater insights into how games can shape, and also be shaped by, the player’s economic expectations.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Emily J. H. Contois and Zenia Kish, "Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation" (U Illinois Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

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 Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation (published by the University of Illinois Press in 2022) explore the massively popular social media platform as a space for self-identification, influence, transformation, and resistance. Artists and journalists join a wide range of scholars to look at food’s connection to Instagram from vantage points as diverse as Hong Kong’s camera-centric foodie culture, the platform’s long history with feminist eateries, and the photography of Australia’s livestock producers. What emerges is a portrait of an arena where people do more than build identities and influence. Users negotiate cultural, social, and economic practices in a place that, for all its democratic potential, reinforces entrenched dynamics of power.

Interdisciplinary in approach and transnational in scope, Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation offers general readers and experts alike new perspectives on an important social media space and its impact on a fundamental area of our lives.

Rituparna Patgiri, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. She has a PhD in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Her research interests lie in the areas of food, media, gender and public. She is also one of the co-founders of Doing Sociology. Patgiri can be reached at @Rituparna37 on Twitter.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Veronica Kirin, "Stories of Elders: What the Greatest Generation Knows about Technology that You Don't" (2018)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Wed, 9 Nov 2022 09:00:00 +0000

America’s Greatest Generation (born before 1945) witnessed incredible changes in technology and social progress. From simple improvements in entertainment to life-changing medical advances, technology changed the way they live, work, and identify. Sadly, with each passing year, fewer members of the Greatest Generation remain alive to share their wisdom as the last Americans to grow up before the digital revolution.

In 2015, Millennial author and cultural anthropologist Veronica Kirin drove 12,000 miles across more than 40 states to interview the last living members of the Greatest Generation. Stories of Elders is the result of her years of work to capture and share their perspective for generations to come.

Stories of Elders: What the Greatest Generation Knows about Technology that You Don't (2018) preserves the wisdom, thoughts, humor, knowledge, and advice of the people who make up one of America’s finest generations, including the Silent Generation. Their stories include the devastation that came from major events in U.S. history like World War I, the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and World War II.

The Greatest Generation (many of whom are now centenarians) saw the routine use of airplanes, cars, microwave ovens, telephones, radios, electricity, and the Internet come to fruition in their lifetimes. Their childhoods were simple, relying on outdoor games and imagination for fun. How they went to school, pursued their careers, and raised their kids was radically different than the way we live today.

By chronicling more than 8,000 years of life lived during the most transitional time in American history, Stories of Elders offers old-fashioned wisdom and insight for America’s future generations.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Timothy W. Burns, "Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education" (SUNY Press, 2021)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 3 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

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 agree about what scholarly discipline he practiced. Political theory or philosophy? Was he a proto-neoconservative or a middle-of-the-road Cold War defender of liberal democracy? He is often depicted as a major intellectual influence on sections of the national security state right, especially during the presidency of George W. Bush when he was portrayed as a puppeteer pulling from the grave the strings of such notable hawks as Paul Wolfowitz.

But the writings of Strauss often go unexamined. That is partly because they lean towards the abstruse. Strauss was not a general-audience-friendly public intellectual in his day and much of the homage to and attacks on him at this point are to be found in the pages of academic journals and in the halls of think tanks.

We are fortunate, therefore, that we can turn to the 2021 book, Leo Strauss on Democracy, Technology, and Liberal Education by Timothy W. Burns for elucidation of Strauss's thinking about how we can preserve liberal democracy in the face of apathy from moderates, classical liberals and traditional conservatives flummoxed by the rise of an aggressive left that questions whether the United States is a democracy at all and an alienated alt-right that regards liberal democracy as now practiced as a character-sapping anachronism leading to civilizational decline.

We learn from Burns of Strauss's admiration for Winston Churchill and touting of him as an exemplar of greatness within democracy. In one of the most absorbing sections of the book we learn of a 1941 lecture by Strauss entitled, “German Nihilism” in which he examined the arguments of such groups as rightist German students in the 1920s that liberal democracy fostered moral mediocrity.

Burns contrasts in detail the ideas of Strauss and Martin Heidegger and shows that Strauss foresaw that the other man’s emphasis on resoluteness would metastasize into Heidegger’s support for Nazism. Burns tells us that Strauss can speak to us today via his call to defend democratic constitutionalism and its spiritual and religious traditions.

That call can lead to charges of elitism against Strauss because it entailed his championing of the idea of an “aristocracy within democracy,” a cadre of cultivated, well-educated leaders who would help maintain the intellectual and cultural moorings of democracies.

Let’s hear now from Professor Burns about who Leo Strauss was and what he actually wrote and thought.

Hope J. Leman is a grants researcher.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gerd Gigerenzer, "How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Thu, 3 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Doomsday prophets of technology predict that robots will take over the world, leaving humans behind in the dust. Tech industry boosters think replacing people with software might make the world a better place--while tech industry critics warn darkly about surveillance capitalism. Despite their differing views of the future, they all agree: machines will soon do everything better than humans. In How to Stay Smart in a Smart World: Why Human Intelligence Still Beats Algorithms (MIT Press, 2022), Gerd Gigerenzer shows why that's not true, and tells us how we can stay in charge in a world populated by algorithms.

Machines powered by artificial intelligence are good at some things (playing chess), but not others (life-and-death decisions, or anything involving uncertainty). Gigerenzer explains why algorithms often fail at finding us romantic partners (love is not chess), why self-driving cars fall prey to the Russian Tank Fallacy, and how judges and police rely increasingly on nontransparent "black box" algorithms to predict whether a criminal defendant will reoffend or show up in court. He invokes Black Mirror, considers the privacy paradox (people want privacy, but give their data away), and explains that social media get us hooked by programming intermittent reinforcement in the form of the "like" button. We shouldn't trust smart technology unconditionally, Gigerenzer tells us, but we shouldn't fear it unthinkingly, either.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chris Salter, "Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape Our Everyday Life" (MIT Press, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 1 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

Sensing machines are everywhere in our world. As we move through the day, electronic sensors and computers adjust our thermostats, guide our Roombas, count our steps, change the orientation of an image when we rotate our phones. There are more of these electronic devices in the world than there are people--in 2020, thirty to fifty billion of them (versus 7.8 billion people), with more than a trillion expected in the next decade. In Sensing Machines: How Sensors Shape Our Everyday Life (MIT Press, 2022), Chris Salter examines how we are tracked, surveilled, tantalized, and seduced by machines ranging from smart watches and mood trackers to massive immersive art installations.

Salter, an artist/scholar who has worked with sensors and computers for more than twenty years, explains that the quantification of bodies, senses, and experience did not begin with the surveillance capitalism practiced by Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google but can be traced back to mathematical and statistical techniques of the nineteenth century. He describes the emergence of the "sensed self," investigating how sensor technology has been deployed in music and gaming, programmable and immersive art environments, driving, and even eating, with e-tongues and e-noses that can taste and smell for us. Sensing technology turns our experience into data; but Salter's story isn't just about what these machines want from us, but what we want from them--new sensations, the thrill of the uncanny, and magic that will transport us from our daily grind.

Galina Limorenko is a doctoral candidate in Neuroscience with a focus on biochemistry and molecular biology of neurodegenerative diseases at EPFL in Switzerland.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Brian A. Wong, "The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That Is Changing the World" (PublicAffairs, 2022)

marshallpoe@newbooksnetwork.com (New Books Network) — Tue, 1 Nov 2022 08:00:00 +0000

This podcast features Brian A. Wong, discussing his new book, The Tao of Alibaba: Inside the Chinese Digital Giant That is Changing the World (Public Affairs, 2022). Brian joined Alibaba early, as its 52nd employee and first American employee, and worked for them for nearly twenty years. His book provides both insider insights and an analytical perspective on how Alibaba grew to become one of the most important companies in the global digital economy. This well-written and engaging book explains Alibaba’s unique organizational culture and how the Alibaba platform has helped spread economic opportunity beyond the elites in China’s big cities to the broader world of small and medium businesses throughout the country.

Brian Wong’s Radii China is an independent media platform founded in 2017 dedicated to bridging the East and West by highlighting topics and issues that connect the world’s young, globally-minded citizens. Listeners interested in the development of the US-China relationship are encouraged to participate in the NCUSCR’s CHINA Town Hall, on November 17th, featuring a national webcast by former Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. Local partner events around the US, including one at the University of San Francisco, provide opportunities to discuss the topic further in person with other community members and local experts on China. In the interview, we also discuss Benjamin Ho’s book Why Trust Matters, featured on this show last year.

Peter Lorentzen is the Chair of the Economics Department at the University of San Francisco, where he leads a new Master's program in Applied Economics focused on the digital economy. His research focus is the political economy of governance in China and he is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations (NCUSCR) and USF’s new Center on Business Studies and Innovation in the Asia-Pacific.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

New Books in Technology

Violaine Roussel, "Data-Driven Hollywood: The New Data Professionals in the Age of Streaming" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Marnie Hughes-Warrington, "Artificial Historians" (Routledge, 2025)

Xiaochang Li, "Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Special Episode: Accounting for Computing, or Why We So Badly Need a New Social and Economic History of Everyday Digital Technology Use

Seth C. Lewis, Rodrigo Zamith, and Tomás Dodds, "Journalism in the Age of AI: From Acceleration to Reimagination" (Polity, 2027)

Jeff Jarvis, "Hot Type: The Magnificent Machine that Gave Birth to Mass Media and Drove Mark Twain Mad" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Jehnie Burns on Mixtape Culture

Aarthi Vadde, "We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature (Columbia UP, 2026)

Beyond Free Speech: Why AI Governance Demands Freedom of Thought

Leopoldina Fortunati, "The Arcana of Reproduction: Housewives, Prostitutes, Workers and Capital" (Verso, 2025)

James W. Cortada, "Beyond the Facts: Tacit Knowledge and the Hidden Infrastructure of Our Informed Times" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Devin Kennedy, "Coding Capitalism: Computers and the Remaking of the Postwar US Economy" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Re-Evaluating CX in the AI Era

The Long Reach of the Strong Arm: Evolving Forms of Transnational Authoritarianism in Asia and Beyond

Paul Langley and Andrew Leyshon, "Fintech Capital: The Digital Transformation of Everyday Money and Finance" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Building A Freedom Infrastructure in the Age of Networked Control

David I. Waddington, "The Hidden Curriculum of Video Games" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2026)

Daniel L. Gardner, "Thresholds of Digital Gameplay" (MIT Press, 2025)

Stefan Höltgen et al., "Commodore 64: Past, Present, and Future of a Home Computer" (Projekt Verlag, 2026)

Fenwick McKelvey, "SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers" (MIT Press, 2026)

Soraya Murray, "Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination" (MIT Press, 2026)

The Emerging Anocracy: AI, Tech Oligarchs, and the Future of Democracy with Alexis Cruz

Ali Fard, "Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Campaigning, Parties and the Digital in Contemporary Politics

Chinese EVs: From Nordic Streets to Central Asian Hubs

Christian Martinez, "NYC Open Data Student Gallery" (Brooklyn College CUNY, 2026)

The Tin Man Model of Running a Company Is Rusty

Thomas S. Mullaney, "How We Disappear: A Personal History of Information" (W. W. Norton, 2026)

Jonathon W. Penney, "Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Emily Doucet, "Inventing Nadar: A History of Photographic Firsts" (Duke UP, 2026)

Margaret O’Mara on the Clintons, Tech, and Memory

Ralph Jones, "Microphone" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Turning IBM's Culture Massively Around

Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)

Pedro Domingos, "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World" ﻿(Basic Books, 2018)

Learning Languages on Social Media

Gerald F. Davis, "Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

Aymar Jèan Escoffery, "Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture" (MIT Press, 2025)

Angela I. Fritz, "AI and Digital Leadership: Transforming Libraries, Archives, and Museums for the Future" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Counter-Revolutionary Puzzles with Guillermo Badia

Angus Burgin on the Rise of the Internet

Olivier Sylvain, "Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control-And How We Can Take It Back" (Columbia Global Reports, 2026)

Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney eds., "Media Rurality" (Duke UP, 2026)

A Shakeup Is Coming for the Nation-State: A Conversation with Stephen Sims

Roland Betancourt, "Disneyland and the Rise of Automation: How Technology Created the Happiest Place on Earth" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Sarah Murray, "Powered by Smart: A Prehistory of Everyday AI" (NYU Press, 2026)

Adrian Woolfson, "On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2026)

Michał Mycka, "Games User Research Cookbook: Tools and Techniques for Better Player Experience" (CRC Press, 2026)

Security and Risk: Challenges for Economy and Business in the Global 20th Century: A Conversation with Marie Huber, Nina Kleinöder, and Christian Kleinschmidt

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

David Kirsch on the Dot Com Bubble and Bust

Alberto Galasso, "The Management of Innovation: Managing and Creating Technology Capital" (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2024)

David Arditi, "Music Technology Panic Narratives Beyond Piracy: From Taping to Napster to TikTok" (Anthem Press, 2026)

Douglas H. Erwin, "The Origins of the New: Novelty and Innovation in the History of Life, Culture, and Technology" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Wout Saelens, "Fossil Consumerism: Energy, Ecology and Everyday Life in the Early Modern Low Countries" (Leuven UP, 2026)

Ben Collier on Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy

Sam Illingworth and Rachel Forsyth, "GenAI in Higher Education: Redefining Teaching and Learning" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

César A. Hidalgo, "The Infinite Alphabet: And the Laws of Knowledge" (Allen Lane, 2026)

Marianna Dudley, "Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain by Marianna Dudley" (Manchester UP, 2025)

Britt Paris, "Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up" (﻿U California Press, 2025)

Christiane Tristl, "Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent" (Bristol UP, 2025)

Amelia Acker, "Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms" (MIT Press, 2025)

Miguel Sicart, "Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture" (MIT Press, 2023)

Alan J. McComas, "Consciousness: The Road to Reductionism" (American Scientist, 2025)

Honghong Tinn, "Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry" (MIT Press, 2024)

Fred Turner on Countercultures, Cybercultures, and Californian and Texan Ideologies

Subodhana Wijeyeratne, "The Islands and the Stars: A History of Japan's Space Programs" (Stanford UP, 2026)

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

Joe Williams, "Inequality in the Digital Economy: The Case for a Universal Basic Income" ﻿(﻿Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

Raiford Guins, "King PONG: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions" (MIT Press, 2026)

David King Dunaway, "A Four-Eyed World: How Glasses Changed the Way We See" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

W. Patrick McCray, "README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines" (MIT Press, 2025)

Ted Striphas, "Algorithmic Culture Before the Internet" (Columbia UP, 2023)

Yi-Ling Liu, "The Wall Dancers: Searching for Freedom and Connection on the Chinese Internet" (Knopf, 2026)

Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley et al. eds., "Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media" (Routledge, 2025)

Tom Bolton, "Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain’s Nuclear Power Stations" (Strange Attractor, 2025)

Daniela Stockmann and Ting Luo, "Governing Digital China" (Cambridge ﻿UP, 2025)

Jon R. Lindsay "Age of Deception: Cybersecurity as Secret Statecraft" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Tom Griffiths, "The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind" (Henry Holt and Co., 2026)

Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)

Pedro Domingos, "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World" (Basic Books, 2018)

Britt Paris, "Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up" (U California Press, 2025)

Joe Williams, "Inequality in the Digital Economy: The Case for a Universal Basic Income" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

Daniela Stockmann and Ting Luo, "Governing Digital China" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Brian Potter, "The Origins of Efficiency" (Stripe Press, 2025)

Daniel K. Sodickson, "The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Thomas Christian Bächle and Jascha Bareis eds., "The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025)