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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 Technology
Save the Whales: The Addictive Psychology Behind Video Games
We’ll save the Moby Dick puns for the episode itself, but suffice it to say that sinister game developers are on a whale hunt. This episode, originally…
- New Books in Technology
Moral Kombat: How Mortal Kombat Caused Moral Outrage
You can learn much about a media and political culture by examining when it panics, and who it panics about. And we’ve always panicked about video games, from…
- New Books in Technology
Postscript: How the Supreme Court Overturned a Century-Old Gun Law…and Changed American Jurisprudence
Today’s Postscript (a special series that allows scholars to comment on pressing contemporary issues) focuses on the US Supreme Court and the Second Amendment…
- New Books in Technology
Johanna Drucker, "Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Inventing the Alphabet: The Origins of Letters from Antiquity to the Present (University of Chicago Press, 2022) by Dr. Johanna Drucker provides the first…
- New Books in Technology
Eswar S. Prasad, "The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance" (Harvard UP, 2021)
The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021) provides a…
- New Books in Technology
Paris Marx, "Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation" (Verso, 2022)
In Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation (Verso, 2022), Paris Marx identifies two convergent forces in the 20th…
- New Books in Technology
The Future of Net Zero: A Discussion with Eric Lonergan
There is no shortage of words written about climate change and the goal of reaching net zero - but there is a shortage of practical suggestions about to get to…
- New Books in Technology
Made of Corn: How Genetically Modified Corn Changed Science, Academia and Indigenous Rights in Mexico (Part 2 of 2)
This is part 2 of a 2-part series from Cited - the predecessor of Darts and Letters. For the final episode of our “Activism & Academia”-themed week of…
- New Books in Technology
Christian Wolmar, "British Rail: A New History" (Michael Joseph, 2022)
You think you know British Rail. But you don't know the whole story. Now, award-winning writer Christian Wolmar provides a new perspective on national loss in…
- New Books in Technology
Modifying Maize: How Genetically Modified Corn Changed Science, Academia and Indigenous Rights in Mexico (Part 1 of 2)
This is part 1 of a 2-part series from Cited - the predecessor of Darts and Letters. When genetically modified corn was found in the highlands of Mexico…
- New Books in Technology
Minh-Ha T. Pham, "Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Social Media's Influence on Fashion, Ethics, and Property" (Duke UP, 2022)
In 2016, social media users in Thailand called out the Paris-based luxury fashion house Balenciaga for copying the popular Thai “rainbow bag,” using…
- New Books in Technology
Sébastien Philippe and Tomas Statius, "Toxique: Enquête sur les essais nucléaires français en Polynésie" (Companyédition PUF/Disclose, 2021)
What happens when you bring together an important collection of previously secret archival documents dealing with France's nuclear detonations in the Pacific…
- New Books in Technology
American Chernobyl, Part 2: The Most Poisonous Place in the USA
Hanford is the most-polluted place in America. In our last episode, you heard about the nuclear plant's largely-forgotten history--how it poisoned the people…
- New Books in Technology
America's Chernobyl, Part 1: Living in a Poison Town
In this episode of Cited: What it means to live in a place where your home can give you cancer. Richland, Washington is a company town that sprang up almost…
- New Books in Technology
Ellis Jones, "DIY Music and the Politics of Social Media" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Since the 1970s, there has been a rich, global lineage of broadly guitar-based music scenes which have enacted a political critique of the commercial music…
- New Books in Technology
Socialise the Series of Tubes: Toward a Democratic Internet
Recently a major outage took nearly a third of Canada offline. No phone, no internet… even access to 911 got shut down in some places. So why does one company…
- New Books in Technology
Lost Utopias: A History of World’s Fairs
Techno-utopianism is everywhere. It’s driven by a new tech-bro/crypto culture, supported by online hordes of true believers, and couched in philosophies of…
- New Books in Technology
Stuart Ellis-Gorman, "The Medieval Crossbow: A Weapon Fit to Kill a King" (Pen & Sword Military, 2022)
The crossbow is an iconic weapon of the Middle Ages and, alongside the longbow, one of the most effective ranged weapons of the pre-gunpowder era…
- New Books in Technology
James Steinhoff, "Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) argues that Marxist theory is…
- New Books in Technology
Nic Maclellan, "Grappling with the Bomb: Britain’s Pacific H-Bomb Tests" (ANU Press, 2017)
Nic Maclellan's book Grappling with the Bomb: Britain’s Pacific H-Bomb Tests (ANU Press, 2017) is a history of Britain’s 1950s program to test the hydrogen…
- New Books in Technology
Felix Schniz, "Genre and Video Game: Introducing an Impossible Taxonomy" (Springer, 2021)
Felix Schniz's book Genre and Video Game: Introducing an Impossible Taxonomy (Genre und Videospiel: Einführung in eine unmögliche Taxonomie) explains video…
- New Books in Technology
Jason Resnikoff, "Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work" (U Illinois Press, 2021)
Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work (U Illinois Press, 2021) traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its…
- New Books in Technology
Lisa Jean Moore, "Our Transgenic Future: Spider Goats, Genetic Modification, and the Will to Change Nature" (NYU Press, 2022)
The process of manipulating the genetic material of one animal to include the DNA of another creates a new transgenic organism. Several animals, notably goats…
- New Books in Technology
Rachael Pells, "Genomics: How Genome Sequencing Will Change Healthcare" (Random House, 2022)
Genome sequencing is one of the most exciting scientific breakthroughs of the past thirty years. But what precisely does it involve and how is it developing?…
- New Books in Technology
Elena Conis, "How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT" (Bold Type Books, 2022)
The story of DDT as you’ve never heard it before: a fresh look at the much-maligned chemical compound as a cautionary tale of how powerful corporations have…
- New Books in Technology
Nicole Erin Morse, "Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Selfie Aesthetics: Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art (Duke University Press, 2022) Nicole Erin Morse examines how trans feminine…
- New Books in Technology
Jamie Susskind, "The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century" (Pegasus Books, 2022)
From one of the leading intellectuals of the digital age, The Digital Republic: On Freedom and Democracy in the 21st Century (Pegasus Books, 2022) is the…
- New Books in Technology
Jayita Sarkar, "Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Ploughshares and Swords: India’s Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) by Jayita Sarkar challenges this received wisdom by…
- New Books in Technology
Trevor Boffone, "TikTok Cultures in the United States" (Routledge, 2022)
Trevor Boffone's book TikTok Cultures in the United States (Routledge, 2022) examines the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying close attention to the…
- New Books in Technology
Jody Rosen, "Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle" (Crown, 2022)
The bicycle is a vestige of the Victorian era, seemingly at odds with our age of smartphones and ride-sharing apps and driverless cars. Yet we live on a…
- New Books in Technology
Samuel Ulbricht, "Ethics of Computer Gaming: A Groundwork" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
Today I talked to Samuel Ulbricht about his book Ethics of Computer Gaming: A Groundwork (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022). Despite the increasing number of gamers…
- New Books in Technology
Roberto J. González, "War Virtually: The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future" (U California Press, 2022)
A critical look at how the US military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare—and why we must resist. War Virtually: The Quest to Automate…
- New Books in Technology
Mark Andrejevic, "Automated Media" (Routledge, 2019)
In this era of pervasive automation, Mark Andrejevic provides an original framework for tracing the logical trajectory of automated media and their social…
New Books in TechnologyDrone Life
Amy Gaeta uses the relationship between humans and technology, non-military use of drones being a prime example, to rethink concepts of passivity and how it…
- New Books in Technology
Jonathan Crary, "Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World" (Verso, 2022)
In this uncompromising essay, Jonathan Crary presents the obvious but unsayable reality: our ‘digital age’ is synonymous with the disastrous terminal stage of…
- New Books in Technology
Artificial Intelligence with Chinese Characteristics
What is artificial intelligence (AI) with Chinese characteristics? Why is the Chinese Government labelling AI as a matter of security? How has AI been…
- New Books in Technology
David L. Sloss, "Tyrants on Twitter: Protecting Democracies from Information Warfare" (Stanford UP, 2022)
When Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram were first introduced to the public, their mission was simple: they were designed to help people become more…
- New Books in Technology
Andrew Simon, "Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt" (Stanford UP, 2022)
Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford UP, 2022) investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a…
- New Books in Technology
Albert Folch, "Hidden in Plain Sight: The History, Science, and Engineering of Microfluidic Technology" (MIT Press, 2022)
Hidden from view, microfluidics underlies a variety of devices that are essential to our lives, from inkjet printers to glucometers for the monitoring of…
- New Books in Technology
John Wills, "Gamer Nation: Video Games and American Culture" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2019)
In 1975, design engineer Dave Nutting completed work on a new arcade machine. A version of Taito's Western Gun, a recent Japanese arcade machine, Nutting's Gun…
- New Books in Technology
Gian Maria Campedelli, "Machine Learning for Criminology and Crime Research: At the Crossroads" (Routledge, 2022)
Machine Learning for Criminology and Crime Research: At the Crossroads (Routledge, 2022) reviews the roots of the intersection between machine learning…
- New Books in Technology
David B. Goldstein, "The End of Genetics: Designing Humanity's DNA" (Yale UP, 2022)
Since 2010 it has been possible to determine a person's genetic makeup in a matter of days at an accessible cost for many millions of people. Along with this…
- New Books in Technology
Thomas J. Misa, "Leonardo to the Internet: Technology and Culture from the Renaissance to the Present" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
“My underlying goal,” writes my guest Tom Misa, “has been to display the variety of technologies, to describe how they changed across time, and to understand…
- New Books in Technology
Shara Rambarran, "Virtual Music: Sound, Music, and Image in the Digital Era" (Bloomsbury, 2021)
Virtuality has entered our lives making anything we desire possible. We are, as Gorillaz once sang, in an exciting age where 'the digital won't let [us] go…'…
- New Books in Technology
Jessamyn Abel, "Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train" (Stanford UP, 2022)
Jessamyn Abel’s Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World’s First Bullet Train (Stanford UP, 2022) is a history of Japan’s famous super-express…
- New Books in Technology
Margie Meacham, "AI in Talent Development: Capitalize on the AI Revolution to Transform the Way You Work, Learn, and Live" (ASTD, 2020)
In AI in Talent Development: Capitalize on the AI Revolution to Transform the Way You Work, Learn, and Live (ASTD, 2020), Margie Meacham describes the…
- New Books in Technology
Adam M. Romero, "Economic Poisoning: Industrial Waste and the Chemicalization of American Agriculture" (U California Press, 2021)
The toxicity of pesticides to the environment and humans is often framed as an unfortunate effect of their benefits to agricultural production. In Economic…
- New Books in Technology
Aniket Aga, "Genetically Modified Democracy: Transgenic Crops in Contemporary India" (Yale UP, 2022)
How the debate over genetically modified crops in India is transforming science and politics Genetically modified or transgenic crops are controversial across…
- New Books in Technology
Should Scholars Trust Machine Translation of their Articles?
Should academic scholars trust machine translation for the publication of their academic articles? In this episode, Avi Staiman and Ana Guerberof Arenas…
- New Books in Technology
Alice Dailey, "How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Alice Dailey’s How to Do Things with Dead People: History, Technology, and Temporality from Shakespeare to Warhol (Cornell University Press, 2022) is an…
- New Books in Technology
Elena Esposito, "Artificial Communication: How Algorithms Produce Social Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2022)
Algorithms that work with deep learning and big data are getting so much better at doing so many things that it makes us uncomfortable. How can a device know…
- New Books in Technology
Pandemic Perspectives 11: The Covid Pandemic and Learning about Learning
In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to renowned cognitive psychologist Stephen Kosslyn about how the…
- New Books in Technology
Gijs Mom, "Globalizing Automobilism: Exuberance and the Emergence of Layered Mobility, 1900–1980" (Berghahn Books, 2020)
Why has "car society" proven so durable, even in the face of mounting environmental and economic crises? In Globalizing Automobilism: Exuberance and the…
- New Books in Technology
Simon Peter Rowberry, "Four Shades of Gray: The Amazon Kindle Platform" (MIT Press, 2022)
Four Shades of Gray: The Amazon Kindle Platform (MIT Press, 2022) is the first book-length analysis of Amazon's Kindle explores the platform's technological…
- New Books in Technology
Sangeet Kumar, "The Digital Frontier: Infrastructures of Control on the Global Web" (Indiana UP, 2021)
In The Digital Frontier: Infrastructures of Control on the Global Web (Indiana University Press, 2021), Sangeet Kumar interrogates the world wide web and the…
- New Books in Technology
Computational Creativity
Saronik talks to Tuhin Chakrabarty about the creative processes of Artificial Intelligence, what we can expect from it, and how to keep the results fair…
- New Books in Technology
John Zerilli, "A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2022)
Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, has generated a staggering amount of hype in the past several years. Is it the game-changer it's been cracked up to…
- New Books in Technology
Daniel J. Solove and Woodrow Hartzog, "Breached!: Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Digital connections permeate our lives-and so do data breaches. Given that we must be online for basic communication, finance, healthcare, and more, it is…
- New Books in Technology
Amanda D. Lotz, "Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars" (MIT Press, 2021)
Has the internet really been the main culprit behind the upheaval of the contemporary media industries? In Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and…
- New Books in Technology
Delinda Collier, "Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa" (Duke UP, 2020)
In Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa (Duke University Press, 2020) Delinda Collier provides a sweeping new understanding of technological media in…