Episodes

  • Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert, "The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert, "The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in the Age of Algorithmic Surveillance" (MIT Press, 2024)
    Jul 10 2024
    What is data, and why does it matter for us to care about the data traces we leave behind? What are the implications for our lives of how this data is used by other people in other times and places? In a conversation with Joanne Kuai, authors Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert introduce their new book and talk about how we can rethink our relationship with data and stay informed to make better decisions in the face of technological uncertainty. In their latest book, The Secret Life of Data: Navigating Hype and Uncertainty in The Age of Algorithmic Surveillance (MIT Press, 2024), Aram Sinnreich and Jesse Gilbert explore the many unpredictable and often surprising ways in which data surveillance, AI, and the constant presence of algorithms impact our culture and society in the age of global networks. The book focuses primarily on the long-term consequences of humanity's recent rush toward digitizing, storing, and analyzing every piece of data about ourselves and the world we live in. The authors advocate for “slow fixes” regarding our relationship to data, such as creating new laws and regulations, ethics and aesthetics, and models of production for our datafied society. Aram Sinnreich is an author, professor, and musician. He is Chair of Communication Studies at American University. His books include Mashed Up, The Piracy Crusade, The Essential Guide to Intellectual Property, and A Second Chance for Yesterday (published as R. A. Sinn). Jesse Gilbert is an interdisciplinary artist exploring the intersection of visual art, sound, and software design at his firm Dark Matter Media. He was the founding Chair of the Media Technology department at Woodbury University, and he has taught interactive software design at both CalArts and UC San Diego.
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    39 mins
  • Donna Drucker, "Contraception: A Concise History" (The MIT Press, 2020)

    Donna Drucker, "Contraception: A Concise History" (The MIT Press, 2020)
    Jul 8 2024
    The beginning of the modern contraceptive era began in 1882, when Dr. Aletta Jacobs opened the first birth control clinic in Amsterdam. The founding of this facility, and the clinical provision of contraception that it enabled, marked the moment when physicians started to take the prevention of pregnancy seriously as a medical concern. In Contraception: A Concise History (The MIT Press, 2020), Donna Drucker traces the history of modern contraception, outlining the development, manufacturing, and use of contraceptive methods from the opening of Dr. Jacobs's clinic to the present. Drucker approaches the subject from the perspective of reproductive justice: the right to have a child, the right not to have a child, and the right to parent children safely and healthily. Drucker describes contraceptive methods available before the pill, including the diaphragm (dispensed at the Jacobs clinic) and condom, spermicidal jellies, and periodic abstinences. She looks at the development and dissemination of the pill and its chemical descendants; describes technological developments in such non-hormonal contraceptives as the cervical cap and timing methods (including the “rhythm method” favored by the Roman Catholic church); and explains the concept of reproductive justice. Finally, Drucker considers the future of contraception—the adaptations of existing methods, new forms of distribution, and ongoing efforts needed to support contraceptive access Dr. Donna Drucker leads the English as the Language for Instruction Project, which helps faculty, administrative staff, scientific staff, and students at the Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany) improve their English abilities for teaching and learning. Chris Babits is an Andrew W. Mellon Engaged Scholar Initiative Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. He researches the intersecting histories of medicine, religion, and gender and sexuality and is currently working on his book about the history of conversion therapy in the United States.
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    24 mins
  • Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard, "Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard, "Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools" (MIT Press, 2024)
    Jun 24 2024
    A probing examination of the dynamic history of predictive methods and values in science and engineering that helps us better understand today's cultures of prediction. The ability to make reliable predictions based on robust and replicable methods is a defining feature of the scientific endeavor, allowing engineers to determine whether a building will stand up or where a cannonball will strike. Cultures of Prediction: How Engineering and Science Evolve with Mathematical Tools (MIT Press, 2024), which bridges history and philosophy, uncovers the dynamic history of prediction in science and engineering over four centuries. Ann Johnson and Johannes Lenhard identify four different cultures, or modes, of prediction in the history of science and engineering: rational, empirical, iterative-numerical, and exploratory-iterative. They show how all four develop together and interact with one another while emphasizing that mathematization is not a single unitary process but one that has taken many forms. The story is not one of the triumph of abstract mathematics or technology but of how different modes of prediction, complementary concepts of mathematization, and technology coevolved, building what the authors call “cultures of prediction.” The first part of the book examines prediction from early modernity up to the computer age. The second part probes computer-related cultures of prediction, which focus on making things and testing their performance, often in computer simulations. This new orientation challenges basic tenets of the philosophy of science, in which scientific theories and models are predominantly seen as explanatory rather than predictive. It also influences the types of research projects that scientists and engineers undertake, as well as which ones receive support from funding agencies. Nikki Stevens, PhD is a critical technology researcher and software engineer. Find more of their work here.
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    1 hr and 2 mins
  • Anna Abraham, "The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Anna Abraham, "The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths" (MIT Press, 2024)
    Jun 24 2024
    A nuanced, science-based understanding of the creative mind that dispels the pervasive myths we hold about the human brain—but also uncovers the truth at their cores. What is the relationship between creativity and madness? Creativity and intelligence? Do psychedelics truly enhance creativity? How should we understand the left and right hemispheres of the brain? Is the left brain, in fact, the seat of reasoning and the right brain the seat of creativity? These are just some of the questions Anna Abraham, a renowned expert of human creativity and the imagination, explores in The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths (MIT Press, 2024), a fascinating deep dive into the origins of the seven most common beliefs about the human brain. Rather than endorse or debunk these myths, Abraham traces them back to their origins to explain just how they started and why they spread—and what at their core is the truth. Drawing on theoretical and empirical work in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, Abraham offers an examination of human creativity that reveals the true complexity underlying our conventional beliefs about the brain. The chapters in the book explore the myth of the right brain as the hemisphere responsible for creativity; the relationship between madness and creativity, psychedelics and creativity, atypical brains and creativity, and intelligence and creativity; the various functions of dopamine; and lastly, the default mode revolution, which theorized that the brain regions most likely to be involved in the creative process are those areas of the brain that are most active during rest or mind-wandering. An accessible and engaging read, The Creative Brain gets to the heart of how our creative minds work and why some people are more creative than others, offering illuminating insights into what on its surface seems to be an endlessly magical phenomenon. Jeff Adler is an ex-linguist and occasional contributor to New Books Network!
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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech

    More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech
    Jun 13 2024
    Today’s book is: More Than A Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech (MIT Press, 2024), by Meredith Broussard. When technology reinforces inequality, it's not just a glitch—it's a signal that we need to redesign our systems to create a more equitable world. The word “glitch” implies an incidental error, as easy to patch up as it is to identify. But what if racism, sexism, and ableism aren't just bugs in mostly functional machinery? What if they're coded into the system itself? Meredith Broussard demonstrates in More Than a Glitch how neutrality in tech is a myth and why algorithms need to be held accountable. Broussard, a data scientist and one of the few Black female researchers in artificial intelligence, masterfully synthesizes concepts from computer science and sociology. She explores a range of examples: from facial recognition technology trained only to recognize lighter skin tones, to mortgage-approval algorithms that encourage discriminatory lending, to the dangerous feedback loops that arise when medical diagnostic algorithms are trained on insufficiently diverse data. Even when such technologies are designed with good intentions, Broussard shows, fallible humans develop programs that can result in devastating consequences. Broussard argues that the solution isn't to make omnipresent tech more inclusive, but to root out the algorithms that target certain demographics as “other” to begin with. With sweeping implications for fields ranging from jurisprudence to medicine, the ground-breaking insights of More Than a Glitch are essential reading for anyone invested in building a more equitable future. Our guest is: Meredith Broussard, who is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University, research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology, and the author of several books, including More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech, and Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World. Her academic research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting and ethical AI, with a particular interest in using data analysis for social good. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. You can help support the show by downloading, sharing, posting about, or assigning any of our 200+ episodes.
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    47 mins
  • Elena Kochetkova, "The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Elena Kochetkova, "The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology" (MIT Press, 2024)
    Jun 5 2024
    In The Green Power of Socialism: Wood, Forest, and the Making of Soviet Industrially Embedded Ecology (MIT Press, 2024), Elena Kochetkova examines the relationship between nature and humans under state socialism by looking at the industrial role of Soviet forests. The book explores evolving Soviet policies of wood consumption, discussing how professionals working in the forestry industry of the Soviet state viewed the present and future of forests by considering them both a natural resource and a trove of industrial material. The book also discusses how post-Soviet industry has abandoned these socialist practices and the idea of nature as a complicated ecosystem that provides a crucial service to society. Within the context of the current environmental crisis, the book invites readers to reevaluate state socialism as a complex phenomenon with sophisticated interactions between nature and industry. In so doing, it contributes a fresh perspective on the activities of socialist experts and their view of nature, shedding light on Soviet state industrial and environmental policy and its continuing legacy in the present day. Elena Kochetkova is Associate Professor in Modern European Economic History at the Department of Archeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen. She served as a Secretary of the European Society of Environmental History from 2019 to 2021. Ailin Zhou is a PhD student in Film & Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include transnational Chinese cinema, Asian diasporic visual culture, contemporary art, and feminist and queer theories.
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • Iris Moon, "Melancholy Wedgwood" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Iris Moon, "Melancholy Wedgwood" (MIT Press, 2024)
    May 26 2024
    Melancholy Wedgwood (MIT Press, 2024) is an experimental biography of the ceramics entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood that reveals the tenuous relationship of eighteenth-century England to late-capitalist modernity. It traces the multiple strands in the life of the ceramic entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood (1730–1795) to propose an alternative view of eighteenth-century England's tenuous relationship to our own lives and times, amid the ruins of late-capitalist modernity. Through intimate vignettes and essays, and in writing at turns funny, sharp, and pensive, Iris Moon chips away at the mythic image of Wedgwood as singular genius, business titan, and benevolent abolitionist, revealing an amorphous, fragile, and perhaps even shattered life. In the process the book goes so far as to dismantle certain entrenched social and economic assumptions, not least that the foundational myths of capitalism might not be quite so rosy after all, and instead induce a feeling that could only be characterized as blue. Iris Moon is Associate Curator in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is the author of Luxury after the Terror and coeditor with Richard Taws of Time, Media, and Visuality in Post-Revolutionary France. She teaches at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Rachel Pafe is a writer and researcher interested in modern Jewish thought, critical theories of mourning, and the boundaries of biographical writing.
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Catherine D'Ignazio, "Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action" (MIT Press, 2024)

    Catherine D'Ignazio, "Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action" (MIT Press, 2024)
    May 17 2024
    What isn't counted doesn't count. And mainstream institutions systematically fail to account for feminicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, including cisgender and transgender women. Against this failure, Counting Feminicide: Data Feminism in Action (MIT Press, 2024) brings to the fore the work of data activists across the Americas who are documenting such murders—and challenging the reigning logic of data science by centering care, memory, and justice in their work. Drawing on Data Against Feminicide, a large-scale collaborative research project, Catherine D'Ignazio describes the creative, intellectual, and emotional labor of feminicide data activists who are at the forefront of a data ethics that rigorously and consistently takes power and people into account. This book is also a forceful intervention that challenges hegemonic data science by exploring the possibilities and limitations of counting and quantification and drawing lessons for a restorative and transformative data science. This book is available open access here.
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    54 mins