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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
John Tresch, “The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon” (U Chicago Press, 2014)
After the Second World War, the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs described National Socialism as a triumph of irrationalism and a “destruction of reason.” It has…
- New Books in Technology
Don Lincoln, “The Large Hadron Collider” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014)
Don Lincoln‘s new book, The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Stuff That Will Blow Your Mind (Johns Hopkins UP…
- New Books in Technology
Hugh F. Cline, “Information Communication Technology and Social Transformation” (Routledge, 2014)
There is no doubt that innovations in technology have had, and are having, a significant impact on society, changing the way we live, work, and play. But the…
- New Books in Technology
Jeremy Lipschultz, “Social Media Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law, and Ethics” (Routledge, 2014)
Social media is a phenomenon that continues to grow and attract much attention in the form of consternation, commentary, criticism and scholarly research. Any…
- New Books in Technology
John Tresch, “The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
John Tresch‘s beautiful new book charts a series of transformations that collectively ushered in a new cosmology in the Paris of the early-mid nineteenth…
- New Books in Technology
Tim Anderson, “Popular Music in a Digital Music Economy” (Routledge, 2014)
Since the 1990s, the music industry has been going through a massive transformation. After World War II, the primary way audiences participated in the music…
- New Books in Technology
Daryn Lehoux, “What Did the Romans Know?: An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking” (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
Daryn Lehoux‘s new book will forever change the way you think about garlic and magnets. What Did the Romans Know?: An Inquiry into Science and Worldmaking…
- New Books in Technology
Josh Lerner, “Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics” (MIT Press, 2014)
Josh Lerner is the author of Making Democracy Fun: How Game Design Can Empower Citizens and Transform Politics (MIT Press, 2014). Lerner earned his Ph.D. in…
- New Books in Technology
Ronen Shamir, “Current Flow: The Electrification of Palestine” (Stanford UP, 2013)
Ronen Shamir‘s new book is a timely and thoughtful study of the electrification of Palestine in the early twentieth century. Current Flow: The Electrification…
- New Books in Technology
Judith Donath, “The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online” (MIT Press, 2014)
The conversation about the Web and social media skews toward a discussion of the potential for connections, and how both individuals and organizations are…
- New Books in Technology
Amit Prasad, “Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India” (MIT Press, 2014)
In his new book, Imperial Technoscience: Transnational Histories of MRI in the United States, Britain, and India (MIT Press, 2014), Amit Prasad, an associate…
- New Books in Technology
Lisa Gitelman, “Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents” (Duke UP, 2014)
“One doesn’t so much read a death certificate, it would seem, as perform calisthenics on one…” From the first, prefatory page of Lisa Gitelman‘s new book, the…
- New Books in Technology
Payal Arora, “The Leisure Commons: A Spatial History of Web 2.0” (Routledge, 2014)
Scholars and commentators have used metaphor in an attempt to describe the Web since public access began. Think of ideas like the information highway…
- New Books in Technology
Vili Lehdonvirta and Edward Castronova, “Virtual Economies: Design and Analysis” (MIT, 2014)
The continued growth of online gaming and virtual worlds has effects not only in the analog world, with games and social media organizations taking stock…
- New Books in Technology
Lori Emerson, “Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound” (University of Minnesota, 2014)
How much do we really think about the technology that we spend so much time using? More specifically, have you really ever considered the possible effects that…
- New Books in Technology
David Nemer, “Favela Digital: The Other Side of Technology” (GSA Editora e Grafica, 2013)
Inherently problematic in most mainstream discussions of the impact of technology is the dominant western or global northern perspective. In this way, the…
- New Books in Technology
Vincent Mosco, “To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World” (Paradigm Publishers, 2014)
The “cloud” and “cloud computing” have been buzzwords over the past few years, with businesses and even governments praising the ability to save information…
- New Books in Technology
Lawrence Goldstone, “Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies” (Ballentine, 2014)
In Birdmen: The Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and the Battle to Control the Skies (Ballentine Books, 2014), Lawrence Goldstone recounts the discovery and…
- New Books in Technology
danah boyd, “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens” (Yale UP, 2014)
Social media is ubiquitous, and teens are ubiquitous on social media. And this youth attachment to social media is a cause for concern among parents…
- New Books in Technology
Michael Saler, “As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality” (Oxford UP, 2012)
In As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (Oxford, 2012), historian Michael Saler explores the precursors of the current…
- New Books in Technology
Jennifer Stromer-Galley, “Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age” (Oxford UP, 2014)
The Oxford University Press series on digital politics has produced several new books that we have featured on the podcast. Interviews with Dave Karpf, Dan…
- New Books in Technology
Jennifer Stromer-Galley, “Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age” (Oxford UP, 2014)
Digital Communications Technologies, or DCTs, like the Internet offer the infrastructure and means of forming a networked society. These technologies, now, are…
- New Books in Technology
Paul-Brian McInerney, “From Social Movement to Moral Market: How the Circuit Riders Sparked an IT Revolution and Created a Technology Market” (Stanford UP, 2014)
Paul-Brian McInerney is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He is the author of From Social Movement to Moral Market: How…
- New Books in Technology
Nick Yee, “The Proteus Paradox: How Online Games and Virtual Worlds Change Us-and How They Don’t” (Yale UP, 2014)
The image of online gaming in popular culture is that of an addictive pastime, mired in escapism. And the denizens of virtual worlds are thought to be mostly…
- New Books in Technology
Adam Thierer, “Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom” (Mercatus Center, 2014)
Much of the progress in technology today has come about as a result of innovators who did not seek prior approval from regulatory bodies and such. Yet, even…
- New Books in Technology
Andrew L. Russell, “Open Standards in the Digital Age” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
We tend to take for granted that much of the innovation in the technology that we use today, in particular the communication technology, is made possible…
- New Books in Technology
Robert Neer, “Napalm: An American Biography” (Harvard UP, 2013)
Just as there is no one way to write a biography, nor should there be, so there is no rule dictating that biography must be about the life of a person. In…
- New Books in Technology
Thomas Bey William Bailey, “Unofficial Release: Self-Released and Handmade Audio in Post-Industrial Society” (Belsona Books, 2012)
Thomas Bey William Bailey is the author of Unofficial Release: Self-Released and Handmade Audio in Post-Industrial Society (Belsona Books, 2012). He is a…
- New Books in Technology
Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell, “How to Watch Television” (NYU Press, 2013)
What if there was an instruction manual for television? Not just for the casual consumer, but for college students interested in learning about the culture of…
- New Books in Technology
William J. Clancey, “Working on Mars: Voyages of Scientific Discovery with the Mars Exploration Rovers” (MIT Press, 2012)
How does conducting fieldwork on another planet, using a robot as a mobile laboratory, change what it means to be a scientist? In Working on Mars: Voyages of…
- New Books in Technology
Aaron S. Moore, “Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s Wartime Era, 1931-1945” (Stanford UP, 2013)
We tend to understand the modernization of Japan as a story of its rise as a techno-superpower. In East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in Japan’s…
- New Books in Technology
Jonathan Sterne, “MP3: The Meaning of a Format” (Duke UP, 2012)
MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke University Press, 2012) is a fascinating study of the MP3 as a historical, cultural, conceptual, and social phenomenon. In…
- New Books in Technology
Ian Samson, “Paper: An Elegy” (Harper Collins, 2012)
In our digital world, it does seem like paper is dying by inches. Bookstores are going out of business, and more and more people get their news from the…
- New Books in Technology
David Munns, “A Single Sky: How an International Community Forged the Science of Radio Astronomy” (MIT Press, 2012)
How do you measure a star? In the middle of the 20thcentury, an interdisciplinary and international community of scientists began using radio waves to measure…
- New Books in Technology
John O. McGinnis, “Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Governance Through Technology” (Princeton UP, 2013)
The advent of very powerful computers and the Internet have not “changed everything,” but it has created a new communications context within which almost…
- New Books in Technology
Nicco Mele, “The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath” (St. Martin’s Press, 2013)
Nicco Mele is the author of The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath (St. Martin’s Press, 2013). He is Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at…
- New Books in Technology
Clive Hamilton, “Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering” (Yale UP, 2013)
It’s getting warmer, there ain’t no doubt about it. What are we going to do? Most folks say we should cut back on bad things like carbon emissions. That would…
- New Books in Technology
Dominic Pettman, “Human Error” (UMinnesota, 2011)/”Look at the Bunny” (Zero Books, 2013)
“The humans are dead.” Whether or not you recognize the epigram from Flight of the Conchords (and if not, there are worse ways to spend a few minutes than by…
- New Books in Technology
Douglas Rushkoff, “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now” (Current, 2013)
Humans understand the world through stories, some short and some long. But what happens when the stories become so short that they, well, aren’t stories at…
- New Books in Technology
Joseph November, “Biomedical Computing: Digitizing Life in the United States” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012)
There are pigeons, cats, and Martians here. There are CT scanners, dentures, computers large enough to fill rooms, war games, and neural networks. In…
- New Books in Technology
Paul Barrett, “Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun” (Broadway, 2013)
History is in many respects the story of humanity’s quest for transcendence: to control life and death, time and space, loss and memory. When inventors or…
- New Books in Technology
David Hochfelder, “The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920” (Johns Hopkins UP, 2012)
In The Telegraph in America, 1832-1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), David Hochfelder provides a taut and consistently intelligent history of the…
- New Books in Technology
Robert W. McChesney, “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism is Turning the Internet Against Democracy” (The New Press, 2013)
Robert W. McChesney, the celebrated political economist of communication, takes the Internet, industry and government head-on in his latest book, Digital…
- New Books in Technology
C.W. Anderson, “Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age” (Temple UP, 2013)
Somewhere along the line, C.W. Anderson became fascinated with digital journalism and the culture that surrounds it: engaged publics, social networks, and the…
- New Books in Technology
Alec Foege, “The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great” (Basic Books, 2013)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member!…
- New Books in Technology
Alec Foege, "The Tinkerers: The Amateurs, DIYers, and Inventors Who Make America Great" (Basic Books, 2013)
From its earliest years, the United States was a nation of tinkerers: men and women who looked at the world around them and were able to create something…
- New Books in Technology
Ines Mergel, “Social Media in the Public Sector: A Guide to Participation, Collaboration and Transparency in the Networked World” (Jossey-Bass 2012)
Ines Mergel, assistant professor of public administration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the School of Information Studies…
- New Books in Technology
David Wolman, “The End Of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers, and the Coming Cashless Society” (Da Capo Press, 2012)
Many of us in the western world don’t rely on bills and coins as much as we used to, yet the idea of cash money is still an ever-present constant in our minds…
- New Books in Technology
Barry Kernfeld, “Pop Song Piracy: Disobedient Music Distribution Since 1929” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
Have you ever illegally downloaded a song from the internet? How about illicitly burned copies of a CD? Made a “party tape?” Bought a bootleg album? You may…
- New Books in Technology
Allen Buchanan, “Better than Human: The Promise and Perils of Enhancing Ourselves” (Oxford UP, 2011)
Popular culture is replete with warnings about the dangers of technology. One finds in recent films, literature, and music cautions about the myriad ways in…
- New Books in Technology
Peter-Paul Verbeek, “Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
“Guns don’t kill people; people do.” That’s a common refrain from the National Rifle Association, but it expresses a certain view of our relations to the…
- New Books in Technology
Daqing Yang, “Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883-1945” (Harvard University Asia Center, 2010)
Daqing Yang‘s Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion in Asia, 1883-1945 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2011) is a gift to both…
- New Books in Technology
Kimbrew McLeod and Peter DiCola, “Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling” (Duke University Press, 2011)
One hallmark of important art, in any medium, is a thoughtful relation with artistic precursors. Every artist reckons with heroes and rivals, influences and…
- New Books in Technology
Siva Vaidhyanathan, “The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry)” (U. California Press, 2011)
In his new book The Googlization of Everything (And Why We Should Worry) (University of California Press, 2011), Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies…
- New Books in Technology
Louis Siegelbaum, “Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile” (Cornell UP, 2008)
A recent editorial in the Moscow Times declared that in Moscow “the car is king.” Indeed, one word Muscovites constantly mutter is probka (traffic jam). The…
- New Books in Technology
Mark Stephen Meadows, “We Robot: Skywalker’s Hand, Blade Runners, Iron Man, Slutbots, and How Fiction Became Fact” (Lyons Press, 2011)
If technology is the site of digital culture, then robots are the future platforms of our social projections and interactions. In fact, that future is already…
- New Books in Technology
Scott Cleland with Ira Brodsky, “Search and Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google” (Telescope Books, 2011)
In their new book Search and Destroy: Why You Can’t Trust Google (Telescope Books, 2011), Scott Cleland, President of Precursor LLC, and Ira Brodsky, founder…
- New Books in Technology
Dagmar Schaefer, “The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China” (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
In her elegant work of historical puppet theater The Crafting of the 10,000 Things: Knowledge and Technology in Seventeenth-Century China (University of…
- New Books in Technology
Brian Christian, “The Most Human Human: A Defense of Humanity in the Age of the Computer” (Penguin, 2011)
Can computers think? That was the question which provoked English mathematician Alan Turing to come up with what we call the Turing Test, in which a computer…
- New Books in Technology
Robert Goldberg, “Tabloid Medicine: How the Internet is Being Used to Hijack Medical Science for Fear and Profit” (Simon & Schuster, 2010)
This week New Books in Public Policy interviews Bob Goldberg about his new book Tabloid Medicine: How the Internet Is Being Used to Hijack Medical Science for…