New Books Network
Technology
Anthropology October 20, 2021

Screen Shots

State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine

Rebecca L. Stein

Hosted by Mathew Gagné
In the last two decades, amid the global spread of smartphones, state killings of civilians have increasingly been captured on the cameras of both bystanders and police. Screen Shots: State …

Technology

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Interviews with technologists and scholars of technology about their new books.

Australian and New Zealand Studies October 19, 2021

Upheaval

The Great Digital Disruption in Journalism and Its Aftermath

Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson

Hosted by Bede Haines
Matthew Ricketson joins to discuss how newsrooms, the engine rooms of reporting, have shrunk. A generation of journalists has borne witness to seismic changes in the media and this book …
Science October 19, 2021

Unmanning

How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare

Katherine Chandler

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Katherine Chandler's Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare (Rutgers UP, 2020) studies the conditions that create unmanned platforms in the United States through a genealogy of experimental, pilotless …
Critical Theory October 18, 2021

Digital Black Feminism

Catherine Knight Steele

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
How have Black women lead a digital revolution? In Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press, 2021), Catherine Knight Steele, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Maryland, places digital Black …
Film October 13, 2021

Engineering Hollywood

Technology, Technicians, and the Science of Building the Studio System

Luci Marzola

Hosted by Joel Tscherne
Luci Marzola's book Engineering Hollywood: Technology, Technicians, and the Science of Building Studio System (Oxford University Press, 2021) tells the story of the formation of the Hollywood studio system not as the …
LGBTQ+ Studies October 8, 2021

Information Activism

A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies

Cait McKinney

Hosted by Sohini Chatterjee
For decades, lesbian feminists across the United States and Canada have created information to build movements and survive in a world that doesn't want them. In Information Activism: A Queer …
Digital Humanities October 7, 2021

Along Came Google

A History of Library Digitization

Deanna Marcum and Roger C. Schonfeld

Hosted by Sarah Kearns
When Google announced that it planned to digitize books to make the world's knowledge accessible to all, questions were raised about the roles and responsibilities of libraries, the rights of …
Science October 6, 2021

Bots and Beasts

What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?

Paul Thagard

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
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 …
Economics October 6, 2021

Discovering Prices

Auction Design in Markets with Complex Constraints

Paul Milgrom

Hosted by Peter Lorentzen
Neoclassical economic theory shows that under the right conditions, prices alone can guide markets to efficient outcomes. But what if it it’s hard to find the right price? In many …
Science October 5, 2021

Privacy Is Hard and Seven Other Myths

Achieving Privacy Through Careful Design

Jaap-Henk Hoepman

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
We are tethered to our devices all day, every day, leaving data trails of our searches, posts, clicks, and communications. Meanwhile, governments and businesses collect our data and use it …
Nordic Asia Podcast October 1, 2021

The Web of Meaning

The Internet in a Changing Chinese Society

Elaine Yuan

Hosted by Joanne Kuai
What is the impact of Internet technology communication in China? How do Chinese people view "privacy" differently from the western perspective? How is the newly passed China's Personal Information Protection …
History of Science September 28, 2021

American Independent Inventors in an Era of Corporate R&D

Eric. S. Hintz

Hosted by Nathan Moore
Wonder how America's individual inventors persisted alongside corporate R&D labs as an important source of inventions beginning at the turn of the early twentieth century? American Independent Inventors in an Era …
Mathematics September 27, 2021

Poems That Solve Puzzles

The History and Science of Algorithms

Chris Bleakley

Hosted by Cory Brunson
As algorithms become ever more significant to and embedded in our everyday lives, ever more accessible introductions to them are needed. While several excellent technical and critical treatments have emerged …
Science September 21, 2021

Living with Robots

What Every Anxious Human Needs to Know

Ruth Aylett and Patricia A. Vargas

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
There's a lot of hype about robots; some of it is scary and some of it utopian. In this accessible book, two robotics experts reveal the truth about what robots …
Political Science September 20, 2021

Life after Privacy

Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society

Firmin DeBrabander

Hosted by Susan Liebell
As governments and corporations mine our “entrenched culture of sharing” to invade privacy (down to Target creating an algorithm to figure out which shoppers are in the 2nd trimester of …
Journalism September 10, 2021

All the News That’s Fit to Click

How Metrics Are Transforming the Work of Journalists

Caitlin Petre

Hosted by Jenna Spinelle
Over the past 15 years, journalism has experienced a rapid proliferation of data about online reader behavior in the form of web metrics. These newsroom metrics influence which stories are …
Science September 9, 2021

Giving Bodies Back to Data

Image Makers, Bricolage, and Reinvention in Magnetic Resonance Technology

Silvia Casini

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Our bodies are scanned, probed, imaged, sampled, and transformed into data by clinicians and technologists. In Giving Bodies Back to Data: Image Makers, Bricolage, and Reinvention in Magnetic Resonance Technology …
General History September 7, 2021

Teaching Machines

The History of Personalized Learning

Audrey Watters

Hosted by Mark Klobas
Contrary to the claims of many of today’s advocates of computerized instruction and online learning, efforts to use technology to improve the education process are hardly new. In Teaching Machines: The …
Dan Hill's EQ Spotlight September 6, 2021

She Made It

The Toolkit for Female Founders in the Digital Age

Angelica Malin

Hosted by Dan Hill
Today I talked to Angelica Malin about her new book She Made It: The Toolkit for Female Founders in the Digital Age (Kogan Page, 2021). Female entrepreneurs don’t tend to receive …
Critical Theory August 26, 2021

Algorithmic Desire

Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media

Matthew Flisfeder

Hosted by Stephen Dozeman
One of the most fundamental aspects of modern life is that much of it is lived on and through social media. We create profiles, post pictures, update stories, and even …