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New Books in Technology
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
New Books in TechnologyPublic Thinking: Social Media and the New 'Public Intellectual'
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…
New Books in TechnologyCollaborations between Cold War Scientists and Artists
Patrick McCray, Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara, talks about his book, Making Art Work: How Cold War Engineers and Artists…
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The Future of Computer Chips: A Discussion with Julian Kamasa
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…
New Books in TechnologyThe History of Electricity in Mexico
In her detailed cultural history of technological change, Electrifying Mexico, Diana Montaño argues that ordinary Mexicans became electrifying agents who…
New Books in TechnologyThe Archaeology of Innovation
Catherine Frieman, an associate professor of European Archaeology at the School of Archaeology, talks about her recent book, An Archaeology of Innovation…
New Books in TechnologyVirtually Violent: Are Online Attacks "Violence?"
During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable communities have been hit especially hard by disruptive online attacks. But calling these attacks "violent"…
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Ajay Agrawal et al., "Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence" (HBR Press, 2022)
Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines describe what you can do to prepare. Banking…
New Books in TechnologyDeafness “Cures” in History
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…
New Books in TechnologyThe Thought of Ivan Illich
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…
New Books in TechnologyAutomating Finance
Sociologist Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, a professor at University of California San Diego, talks about his book Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers…
New Books in TechnologyBONUS EPISODE: New Books Network and Future Plans
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…
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Jennifer Forestal, "Designing for Democracy: How to Build Community in Digital Environments" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Political Theorist Jennifer Forestal’s new book is a fascinating exploration of contemporary democracy and how it operates in different spaces. Forestal’s…
New Books in TechnologySpiritual Machines: Transhumanism and Religion
Ever since early scientists began experimenting with immortality elixirs in the middle ages, religion has been influencing transhumanism. Now, we’re beginning…
New Books in TechnologyShoddy: Recycled Textiles in History
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…
New Books in TechnologySouth Korea, Technology, and Globalization
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…
New Books in TechnologyInfrastructure and Inequality
Daniel Armanios, associate professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, talks about his work on infrastructure and inequality with…
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Bridget Whearty, "Digital Codicology: Medieval Books and Modern Labor" (Stanford UP, 2022)
Medieval manuscripts are our shared inheritance, and today they are more accessible than ever—thanks to digital copies online. Yet for all that widespread…
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Christopher Bartel, "Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy: Killing Time" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
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…
New Books in TechnologyThe Politics of Digital Technology
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…
New Books in TechnologyArtificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World
Data journalist Meredith Broussard talks about her book, Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World, with Peoples & Things host Lee…
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Harald Koberg, "Free Play: Digital Gaming and the Longing for Effectiveness" (Büchner-Verlag, 2021)
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…
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Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear…
New Books in TechnologyUnderstanding Technology Bubbles
Brent Goldfarb and David Kirsch, professors of entrepreneurship and strategy at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, talk about…
New Books in TechnologyThe History of Household Technology from Open Hearth to the Microwave
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…
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Albert Glinsky, "Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution" (Oxford UP, 2022)
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…
New Books in TechnologyMirror Image: New Technologies and the Self
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…
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Robert M. Geraci, "Futures of Artificial Intelligence: Perspectives from India and the U.S." (Oxford UP, 2021)
Twenty-first century life is increasingly governed by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as machine learning, big data analysis, facial…
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Samantha Muka, "Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
In Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea (University of Chicago Press, 2022), Samantha Muka, Assistant Professor of Science, Technology…
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Lilie Chouliaraki and Myria Georgiou, "The Digital Border: Migration, Technology, Power" (NYU Press, 2022)
Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.In this episode, our host Juan Llamas-Rodriguez discusses the book The Digital Border…
New Books in TechnologyEthical AI
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…
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Luke Munn, "Automation Is a Myth" (Stanford UP, 2022)
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…
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Mariëlle Wijermars et al., "The Palgrave Handbook of Digital Russia Studies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020)
How has digitalisation changed Russian politics? How has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed Russia studies? What is special about Russia’s approach to…
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Geert Lovink, "Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism" (Pluto Press, 2019)
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…
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John D. Wong, "Hong Kong Takes Flight: Commercial Aviation and the Making of a Global Hub, 1930s-1998" (Harvard UP, 2022)
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…
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Heather Ford, "Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age" (MIT Press, 2022)
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…
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Jenny L. Davis, "How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things" (MIT Press, 2020)
A conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective.Technological…
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Pamela H. Smith, "From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
How and why early modern European artisans began to record their knowledge. In From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in…
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Renee M. P. Teate, "SQL for Data Scientists: A Beginner's Guide for Building Datasets for Analysis" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)
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…
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Danielle Keats Citron, "The Fight for Privacy: Protecting Dignity, Identity, and Love in the Digital Age" (Norton, 2022)
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…
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Kelly I. Aliano, "The Performance of Video Games: Enacting Identity, History and Culture Through Play" (McFarland, 2022)
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…
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The Future of the Arms Industry: A Discussion with Pieter D. Wezeman
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…
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Matthew Hall et al., "Digital Gender-Sexual Violations: Violence, Technologies, Motivations" (Routledge, 2022)
This groundbreaking book argues that the fundamental issues around how victim-survivors of digital gender-sexual violations (DGSVs) are abused can be…
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Karen Levy, "Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Long-haul truckers are the backbone of the American economy, transporting goods under grueling conditions and immense economic pressure. Truckers have long…
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Yasmine Ali, "Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America" (Citadel Press, 2023)
The first book to examine the rarely-acknowledged Waverly Train Disaster of 1978 - the catastrophic accident that changed America forever and led to the…
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Scott Moore, "China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology Are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future" (Oxford UP, 2022)
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…
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Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)
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…
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Julia Ticona, "Left to Our Own Devices: Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series.In this episode, our host Florence Madenga discusses the book Left to Our Own…
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The Future of AI in Work: A Discussion with Daniel Susskind
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…
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James A. Geraghty, "Inside the Orphan Drug Revolution: The Promise of Patient-Centered Biotechnology" (Cold Springs Harbor Lab Press, 2022)
Advances in medicine have made possible better treatments for widespread, familiar human illnesses like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. Yet there are…
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Melissa Kagen, "Wandering Games" (MIT Press, 2022)
In Wandering Games (MIT Press, 2022), Melissa Kagen analyzes wandering within different game worlds, viewed through the lenses of work, colonialism, gender…
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94 Elizabeth Kolbert on the Nature of the Future (GT, JP, NS, HY)
How should humans respond to our ongoing human-made climate catastrophe? To answer that question, Recall this Book turned to prize-winning climate reporter…
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Jonathan R. Hunt, "The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam" (Stanford UP, 2022)
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…
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Paul Belleflamme and Martin Peitz, "The Economics of Platforms: Concepts and Strategy" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but also the…
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Sofya Glazunova, "Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
Digital Activism in Russia: The Communication Tactics of Political Outsiders (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) examines various forms of Russian online…
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Sarah Abel, "Permanent Markers: Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome" (UNC Press, 2021)
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…
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Tim Walker and Lucian Morris, "The Handbook of Banking Technology" (John Wiley & Sons, 2021)
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…
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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)
Corporate concentration has breached the stratosphere, as have corporate profits. An ever-expanding constellation of industries are now monopolies (where…
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Aynne Kokas, "Trafficking Data: How China Is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty" (Oxford UP, 2022)
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…
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Anna Pendergrast and Kelly Pendergrast, "More Zeros and Ones: Digital Technology, Maintenance and Equity in Aotearoa New Zealand" (Bridget Williams Books, 2022)
Many of today’s digital technologies inadvertently amplify the power structures and prejudices of wider society. By examining the way digital tools and…
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Robert P. Crease with Peter D. Bond, "The Leak: Politics, Activists, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory" (MIT Press, 2022)
In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was--and is--a…