New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
2,135 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago - ★★★★ - 29 ratingsInterviews with Scholars of Science, Technology, and Society about their New Books
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Episodes
The Future of Images of Human Evolution
January 20, 2024 09:00 - 35 minutesWe are all familiar with the “march of progress” image - the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form. It’s a powerful image. In his book Monkey to Man: The Evolution of the March of Progress Image (Yale UP, 2024), Professor Gowan Dawson examines its origins and its influence on the public understanding of evolution. Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. O...
Cross-Cultural Research on Gaming and “Gaming Disorder”
January 19, 2024 09:00 - 26 minutesIn 1998 the phrase “internet addiction” was first used to describe problematic prolonged internet use, and encompassed a wide range of online activities including reading news, connecting in chat rooms, viewing pornography, and gambling. Since then, particular focus has been placed on internet gaming, and in 2022 the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (11th edition) classified Gaming Disorder as a "mental disorder due to addictive behaviors." But as Dr. Veli-...
Hartmut Koenitz, "Understanding Interactive Digital Narrative: Immersive Expressions for a Complex Time" (Routledge, 2023)
January 19, 2024 09:00 - 22 minutesThis 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, Har...
What Decision Means
January 19, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourListen 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 mac...
Ajantha Subramanian on "The Caste of Merit" ((EF,JP))
January 18, 2024 09:00 - 51 minutesBefore she became the host and star of Violent Majorities, the RTB series on Israeli and Indian ethnonationalism, Ajantha Subramanian sat down with Elizabeth and John to discuss The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (Harvard UP, 2019). It is much more than simply an historical and ethnographic study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology. Ajantha talked to JP and EF about the language of “merit” and the ways in which it can conceal the continuing relevance of caste (and cla...
Paul Gowder, "The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
January 17, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourGovernments 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 und...
Free to Investigate: Dr. Scott Atlas on the Freedom in the Sciences
January 16, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourCan we have science without freedom of speech? Dr. Scott Atlas's professional work and personal experiences bring to light an important and often under-discussed element of speech: freedom of speech in the hard sciences. The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a host of new questions and concerns surrounding our medical system and government health agencies: as Special Advisor to the President and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force from July to December 2020, Dr. Atlas was at the for...
Christopher Corker, "The Business and Technology of the Sheffield Armaments Industry, 1900-1930" (U of York, 2016)
January 16, 2024 09:00 - 42 minutesChristopher Corker's The Business and Technology of the Sheffield Armaments Industry, 1900-1930 (U of York, 2016) focuses on four in-depth case studies of John Brown, Cammell-Laird, Thomas Firth and Hadfields to examine the business and technology of the industry. It builds on the work of Tweedale and Trebilcock on Sheffield and armaments, and advances the argument that during the period of study from 1900 to 1930, the city was one of the most important centres for armaments research and prod...
David B. Nieborg and Maxwell Foxman, "Mainstreaming and Game Journalism" (MIT Press, 2023)
January 15, 2024 09:00 - 34 minutesWhy games are still niche and not mainstream, and how journalism can help them gain cultural credibility. Mainstreaming and Game Journalism (MIT Press, 2023) addresses both the history and current practice of game journalism, along with the roles writers and industry play in conveying that the medium is a “mainstream” form of entertainment. Through interviews with reporters, David B. Nieborg and Maxwell Foxman retrace how the game industry and journalists started a subcultural spiral in the 1...
Alexandra Filindra, "Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
January 15, 2024 09:00 - 53 minutesThe United States has more guns than people and more gun violence than any Western democracy. Scholars in diverse fields interrogate why 21st century Americans support gun ownership and valorize vigilantism even as they fear gun violence. Many question how the NRA – National Rifle Association – has successfully lobbied for radical gun laws that most Americans don’t support. In Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture (U Chicago Press, 2023), Dr. Alexandra...
James W. Cortada, "Inside IBM: Lessons of a Corporate Culture in Action" (Columbia Business School, 2023)
January 14, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIBM was the world's leading provider of information technologies for much of the twentieth century. What made it so successful for such a long time, and what lessons can this iconic corporation teach present-day enterprises? James W. Cortada--a business historian who worked at IBM for many years--pinpoints the crucial role of IBM's corporate culture. He provides an inside look at how this culture emerged and evolved over the course of nearly a century, bringing together the perspectives of em...
Can A.I. Mean?
January 13, 2024 09:00 - 53 minutesListen 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 assem...
Thomas DeGloma, "Anonymous: The Performance of Hidden Identities" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
January 11, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn recent years, anonymity has rocked the political and social landscape. There are countless examples: An anonymous whistleblower was at the heart of President Trump’s first impeachment, an anonymous group of hackers compromised more than 77 million Sony accounts, and best-selling author Elena Ferrante resolutely continued to hide her real name and identity. In his book Anonymous: The Performance of Hidden Identities (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Thomas DeGloma investigates contempora...
Mark Monmonier, "Connections and Content: Reflections on Networks and the History of Cartography" (ESRI Press, 2019)
January 10, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn Connections and Content: Reflections on Networks and the History of Cartography (ESRI Press, 2019), cartographic cogitator Mark Monmonier shares his insights about the relationships between networks and maps through a collection of essays. Using historical maps, he explores: triangulation networks used to establish the baselines of a map’s scale; astronomical observations, ellipsoids, geodetic arcs, telegraph networks, and GPS constellations that establish latitude and longitude at control...
Jennifer Thomson, "The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health" (UNC Press, 2019)
January 10, 2024 09:00 - 47 minutesThe first wealth is health, according to Emerson. Among health’s riches is its political potential. Few know this better than environmentalists. In her debut book, The Wild and the Toxic: American Environmentalism and the Politics of Health (UNC Press, 2019), historian Jennifer Thomson revisits canonical figures and events from the environmental movement in the United States and finds everywhere talk of health. At its best, viewing the environment through the lens of health encouraged decentr...
Roland Allen, "The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper" (Profile Books, 2023)
January 06, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourWe 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 ...
Chinmay Tumbe, "The Age Of Pandemics (1817-1920): How They Shaped India and the World" (Harper Collins, 2020)
January 03, 2024 09:00 - 49 minutesOn this episode of the Economic and Business History channel I spoke with Dr. Chinmay Tumbe, Assistant Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management. He was Alfred D Chandler Jr. International Visiting Scholar in Business History, Harvard Business School in 2018. Dr, Tumbe has published academic articles in Management and Organizational History and in the Journal of Management History. He has written two books, one in 2018 India Moving: A History of Migration, which talks about...
Robert R. Janes, "Museums and Societal Collapse: The Museum as Lifeboat" (Routledge, 2023)
January 02, 2024 09:00 - 57 minutesWho do you turn to at the brink of the apocalypse? What might help us to mitigate the financial, commercial, political, social, and cultural collapse for which we may be heading? Museums and Societal Collapse: The Museum as Lifeboat (Routledge, 2023) proposes an unlikely hero in this narrative. Robert Janes’ text explores the implications of societal collapse from a multidisciplinary perspective and considers the potential museums have to contribute to the reimagining and transitioning of a n...
Lee McIntyre, "The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience" (MIT Press, 2019)
January 02, 2024 09:00 - 30 minutesWhat can explain the success of science as an endeavor for getting closer to truth? Does science simply represent a successful methodology, or is it something more? In The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience (MIT Press, 2019), Lee McIntyre addresses recent attacks on science in areas such as climate change, vaccination, and even belief that the world is flat by explaining why science is a culture built around a “scientific attitude” that embraces evide...
Lenny A. Ureña Valerio, "Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920" (Ohio UP, 2019
January 02, 2024 09:00 - 53 minutesIn Colonial Fantasies, Imperial Realities: Race Science and the Making of Polishness on the Fringes of the German Empire, 1840-1920 (Ohio University Press, 2019), Lenny Ureña Valerio offers a transnational approach to Polish-German relations and nineteenth-century colonial subjectivities. She investigates key cultural dynamics in the history of medicine, colonialism, and migration that bring Germany and Prussian Poland closer to the colonial and postcolonial worlds in Africa and Latin America...
Benjamin R. Siegel, “Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
January 01, 2024 09:00 - 44 minutesIn his first book Hungry Nation: Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India (Cambridge University Press 2018), historian Benjamin Robert Siegel explores independent India's attempts to feed itself between the 1940s and 1970s. Following the devastating Bengal famine of 1943, hunger and malnutrition remained key issues for India's politicians, planners and citizens as a new nation sought to become self-sufficient in food production. Siegel's book follows debates on land reform, technology and...
Carolyn Birdsall, "Radiophilia" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
December 31, 2023 09:00 - 46 minutesA 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 as...
Nicole Seymour, "Glitter" (Bloombury, 2022)
December 28, 2023 09:00 - 30 minutesGlitter (Bloomsbury, 2022) by Dr. Nicole Seymour reveals the complexity of an object often dismissed as frivolous. Dr. Seymour describes how glitter's consumption and status have shifted across centuries-from ancient cosmetic to queer activist tool, environmental pollutant to biodegradable accessory-along with its composition, which has variously included insects, glass, rocks, salt, sugar, plastic, and cellulose. Through a variety of examples, from glitterbombing to glitter beer, Seymour sho...
Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)
December 27, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourJeffrey Whyte's book The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War (Oxford UP, 2023) explores the history, politics, and geography of United States psychological warfare in the 20th century against the backdrop of the contemporary 'post-truth era'. From its origins in the Second World War, to the United States' counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam, Whyte traces how the theory and practice of psychological warfare transformed the re...
Ben Jacobsen and David Beer, "Social Media and the Automatic Production of Memory: Classification, Ranking and the Sorting of the Past" (Bristol UP, 2023)
December 24, 2023 09:00 - 46 minutesSocial 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 behi...
Howie Singer and Bill Rosenblatt, "Key Changes: The Ten Times Technology Transformed the Music Industry" (Oxford UP, 2023)
December 23, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourKey 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: th...
André Jansson, "Rethinking Communication Geographies: Geomedia, Digital Logistics and the Human Condition" (Edward Elgar, 2022)
December 23, 2023 09:00 - 28 minutesHow 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 ...
Joanna Zylinska, "The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and AI" (MIT Press, 2023)
December 22, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourA 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) inve...
Vineeta Sinha. "Temple Tracks: Labour, Piety and Railway Construction in Asia" (Berghahn Books, 2023)
December 20, 2023 09:00 - 46 minutesThe notions of labour, mobility and piety have a complex and intertwined relationship. Using ethnographic methods and a historical perspective, Vineeta Sinha's Temple Tracks: Labour, Piety and Railway Construction in Asia (Berghahn Books, 2023) critically outlines the interlink of railway construction in colonial and post-colonial Asia, as well as the anthropology of infrastructure and transnational mobilities with religion. In Malaysia and Singapore, evidence of religion-making and railway-b...
Vincent Ialenti, "Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now" (MIT Press, 2020)
December 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourBased on twelve years of anthropological exploration, Vincent Ialenti'sDeep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now (MIT Press, 2020) is an engaging guide on deep time learning to reorient our understanding of time and space. As each chapter begins with creative vignettes to capture the reader's imagination and empathy and concludes with five to six reflective "reckonings," the book focuses on Finland's nuclear waste experts whose daily lives revolve around considerations of th...
Skylar Bayer and Gabriela Serrato Marks, "Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias" (Columbia UP, 2023)
December 18, 2023 09:00 - 38 minutesPeople with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM fields, and all too often, they face isolation and ableism in academia. Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias (Columbia UP, 2023) is a collection of powerful first-person stories by current and former scientists with disabilities or chronic conditions who have faced changes in their careers, including both successes and challenges, because of their health. It gives voice to common experience...
Laila Shereen Sakr, "Arabic Glitch: Technoculture, Data Bodies, and Archives" (Stanford UP, 2023)
December 18, 2023 09:00 - 33 minutesLaila 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 ...
Toward Equity in Science: A Discussion with Cassidy Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière
December 16, 2023 09:00 - 37 minutesListen to this interview of Cassidy Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière, co-authors of Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement (Harvard UP, 2023). Cassidy is Professor and Tom and Marie Patton School Chair in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also President of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. Vincent is Professor of Information Science at Université de Montréal, where he also serves as Associat...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 7: A Genealogy of Gun Violence
December 13, 2023 11:00 - 51 minutesThe problem of gun violence is as old as guns themselves. According to historian Priya Satia, America’s present epidemic of gun violence has its roots in the industrial revolution. Satia tells the story of British gun-maker Samuel Galton, Jr., who was called to task by his Quaker community for manufacturing rifles. As a professed pacifist, Galton had to wrestle with the large-scale uses to which his weapons were put. So where do we look for answers about how to regulate guns? Some claim the a...
Nettrice R. Gaskins, "Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation: Culturally Relevant Making Inside and Outside of the Classroom" (MIT Press, 2021)
December 13, 2023 09:00 - 22 minutesToday I talked to Nettrice R. Gaskins about Techno-Vernacular Creativity and Innovation: Culturally Relevant Making Inside and Outside of the Classroom (MIT Press, 2021). The growing maker movement in education has become an integral part of both STEM and STEAM learning, tapping into the natural DIY inclinations of creative people as well as the educational power of inventing or making things. And yet African American, Latino/a American, and Indigenous people are underrepresented in maker cul...
Jesse Dart, "Feeding the Hustle: Free Food & Care Inside the Tech Industry" (Lexington Books, 2022)
December 11, 2023 09:00 - 53 minutesFood is increasingly a subject of interest in social sciences: how we cook, consume, and share food is relevant to our social lives. In Feeding the Hustle: Free Food & Care Inside the Tech Industry (Lexington Books, 2022), Jesse Dart draws on ethnographic fieldwork to consider the ways in which free food has become ubiquitous and even compulsory within the tech industry. Packed lunches have nearly disappeared as more companies provide free food with the stated objectives of attracting and ret...
Mark Munsterhjelm, "Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
December 10, 2023 09:00 - 33 minutesForensic 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...
The Future of Predictions: A Discussion with Christopher E. Mason
December 09, 2023 09:00 - 32 minutesPredictive 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 w...
This is the Best Statement of the Simulation Hypothesis We've Seen
December 08, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourIt’s the UConn PopCast, and in this episode we discuss Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1973 movie World on a Wire, shown on West German television over two nights, and then lost for decades. When it was restored and re-released nearly 40 years later, the movie quickly gained acclaim as a lost masterwork of science fiction cinema. We discuss the movie’s sophisticated and pioneering presentation of the simulation hypothesis, and its deep engagement with Jean Baudrillard’s concepts of simulacra and s...
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 3: What Is Genealogy
December 07, 2023 11:00 - 45 minutesGenealogy, in Charles Darwin’s terms, is the study of “descent with modification.” Taken as an analogy for the study of history, genealogy can guard against the potential dangers of claiming modernity. Against the effort to erase the past, genealogy asserts that our ancestry will always be with us. Against the effort to master the past, genealogy reminds us that our descendants have the freedom to create new futures. Sociologist Alondra Nelson tells the story of how African Americans have use...
Using History For User Research (UX): A Discussion with Larry McGrath
December 07, 2023 09:00 - 45 minutesIn 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 discov...
Linda Eckert, "Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
December 05, 2023 09:00 - 24 minutesCervical cancer kills almost 350,000 women each year. What's more horrifying, is that millions have died of this disease that's nearly 100% preventable. It's no secret that healthcare is full of inequities, with a severe lack of accessible screening programs. But women's health care is also impeded by cultural, gender, and political barriers, issues that have combined to create devastating consequences. In Enough: Because We Can Stop Cervical Cancer (Cambridge UP, 2024), Dr Linda Eckert take...
Monica Huerta, "The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2023)
December 04, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe 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, me...
Andrew C. McKevitt, "Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America" (UNC Press, 2023)
December 04, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe 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. ...
Too Much Communication?
December 02, 2023 09:00 - 52 minutesListen to Episode No.2 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. We talk about TMC — Too Much Communication. In the 2000s, people complained about the demand to know more stuff. Not today. It's amazing if you stop to think — if you can find the peace to stop for anything — but such a short time ago, media we...
Jeff Jarvis, "The Gutenberg Parenthesis: The Age of Print and Its Lessons for the Age of the Internet" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
December 01, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThe 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...
Daniel Jütte, "Transparency: The Material History of an Idea" (Yale UP, 2023)
December 01, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourTransparency 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 Jütt...
Andrea L. Guzman et al., "The SAGE Handbook of Human–Machine Communication" (SAGE, 2023)
November 28, 2023 09:00 - 29 minutesThe 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 ro...
G. H. Bennett, "The War for England's Shores: S-Boats and the Fight Against British Coastal Convoys" (US Naval Institute Press, 2023)
November 27, 2023 09:00 - 59 minutesThe War for England's Shores: S-Boats and the Fight Against British Coastal Convoys (US Naval Institute Press, 2023) by Dr. G. H. Bennett examines the Kriegsmarine's S-Boat offensive along the English Channel and the North Sea from 1940 to 1945, together with British and, later, Allied responses to nullify that threat. Very fast, and armed with torpedoes and mines, S-Boats posed a serious threat to the convoys that were forced to run close along the British coast on a daily basis. Despite the...
Ran Zwigenberg, "Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
November 27, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourRan Zwigenberg’s Nuclear Minds: Cold War Psychological Science and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (U Chicago Press, 2023) explores early efforts by the American military, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social scientists to understand the effects of the atomic bombings on the minds of those who had survived. In positioning the book as “a prehistory of PTSD,” Zwigenberg draws attention to the historicity of the idea of psychological “trauma” before the concept was institutionalized i...