New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Habitual drug use in the United States is at least as old as the nation itself. Elizabeth Kelly Gray's book Habit Forming: Drug Addiction in America, 1776-1914 (Oxford UP, 2023) traces the history of unregulated drug use and dependency before 1914, when the Harrison Narcotic Tax Act limited sales of opiates and cocaine under US law. Many Americans used opiates and other drugs medically and became addicted. Some tried ‘Hasheesh Candy’, injected morphine, or visited opium dens, but neither use nor addiction was linked to crime, due to the dearth of restrictive laws. After the Civil War, American presses published extensively about domestic addiction. Later in the nineteenth century, many people used cocaine and heroin as medicine.As addiction became a major public health issue, commentators typically sympathized with white, middle-class drug users, while criticizing such use by poor or working-class people and people of color. When habituation was associated with middle-class morphine users, few advocated for restricted drug access. By the 1910s, as use was increasingly associated with poor young men, support for regulations increased. In outlawing users' access to habit-forming drugs at the national level, a public health problem became a larger legal and social problem, one with an enduring influence on American drug laws and their enforcement.Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England. She was chair of the doctoral program in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at Pacific College of Health and Science in San Diego before moving to the UK. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

In her detailed cultural history of technological change, Electrifying Mexico, Diana Montaño argues that ordinary Mexicans became electrifying agents who actively negotiated the extent and manner electricity entered their lives and lived spaces in Mexico City. An Assistant Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis, Dr. Montaño's teaching and research interests broadly include the construction of modern Latin American societies with a focus on technology and its relationship to nationalism, everyday life and domesticity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Catherine Frieman, an associate professor of European Archaeology at the School of Archaeology, talks about her recent book, An Archaeology of Innovation: Approaching Social and Technological Change in Human Society, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. Her book offers a long-term perspective on innovation that only archaeology can offer and draws on case studies from across human history, from our earliest hominin ancestors to the present. The book makes several different arguments, but one of them is that our present narrow focus on pushing the adoption of technical innovations—especially so called “disruptive innovations”—ignores the complex social, technological, and environmental systems that undergirds successful societies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

For almost a year now, we have been absorbing news and information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There are a variety of different, or competing, narratives to explain and define what we understand about the origins of this conflict and the ongoing military successes and failures on the ground in Ukraine and in Russia. I had the chance to interview Jordan Miller for PostScript (a special series that allows scholars to comment on pressing contemporary issues) about his work on narrative and attempts to influence the activities within the field of battle in Ukraine. Miller is finishing his dissertation on this topic at the War Studies Program at the Royal Military College of Canada. Miller’s research specifically focusses on these narrative dynamics, which are influential to battlefield success and potentially the outcome of this war. In our discussion, we examine the various points of information that were being put forward by Russia and by the United States before Russia moved into Ukraine in February of 2022. The intention of this approach is to “inoculate” the public by highlighting the misleading or false narratives that will be forthcoming to try to shape global understandings of the war. As the war progressed, Ukraine also actively tried to shape perception of its own capacity, heroics, and commitment to success against Russian aggressions. We also saw a shift in approaches in the fall and winter since there was concern about the impact of energy scarcity in western Europe and in Ukraine.Miller’s work builds on basic concepts like propaganda – and what ultimately makes this effective within situations like Ukraine, or other global military contests. As we discuss on the podcast, the images and ideas that have come out of Ukraine—of humanized citizens and soldiers, of the citizen army there that has come forward to push against the Russian war machine, of soldiers adopting cats and dogs as they continue to fight—all contribute to an overall concept of the Ukrainian people and their capacity to potentially defeat the Russian Army. Ukrainian efforts in this regard also speak to particular audiences, like NATO member countries and their citizens, the United Nations General Assembly, as well as to Russian citizens and soldiers. This kind of effort—to communicate ideas and images to key audiences is an important component of the useful implementation of narrative within the field of battle, even if it is not on the battlefield itself.Join us for this conversation about the capacity to manage narrative within global political situations – and how this applies, in particular, the current war in Ukraine.Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Email her comments at lgoren@carrollu.edu or tweet to @gorenlj. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vulnerable communities have been hit especially hard by disruptive online attacks. But calling these attacks "violent" could jeopardize the future of disruptive protests designed to protest those same communities.Guests:  Erica Chenoweth, professor of human rights and international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and author of Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs To Know. Dr. Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Donna Riley, professor and head of the school of engineering education at Purdue University, talks about her path, her work, and her 2008 book, Engineering and Social Justice, with Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel. If technologies and infrastructures embody moral and political values, what should engineering students be taught about their roles in society? Riley and Vinsel also talk about how universities have changed since Riley’s book came out and Riley’s hopes for social justice in engineering education going forward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines describe what you can do to prepare. Banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, retail. Artificial intelligence (AI) has made its way into many industries around the world. But the truth is, it has just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better, and faster predictions to drive strategic business decisions--powering and accelerating business. When prediction is taken to the max, industries transform. The disruption that comes with such transformation is yet to be felt--but it is coming. How do businesses prepare? In Prediction Machines, eminent economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb explained the simple yet game-changing economics of AI. Now, in Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence (HBR Press, 2022), they go further to reveal AI as a prediction technology directly impacting decision-making and to teach businesses how to identify disruptive opportunities and threats resulting from AI. Their exhaustive study of new developments in artificial intelligence and the past history of how technologies have disrupted industries highlights the striking phase we are now in: after witnessing the power of this new technology and before its widespread adoption--what they call "the Between Times." While there continue to be important opportunities for businesses, there are also threats of disruption. As prediction machines improve, old ways of doing things will be upended. Also, the process by which AI filters into the many systems involved in application is very uneven. That process will have winners and losers. How can businesses leverage, or protect, their positions? Filled with illuminating insights, rich examples, and practical advice, Power and Prediction is the must-read guide for any business leader or policy maker on how to make the coming AI disruptions work for you rather than against you.Interviewee Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and a professor of marketing at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Avi is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab and the CDL Rapid Screening Consortium, a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute and the Schwartz-Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Avi’s research focuses on the opportunities and challenges of the digital economy.He has published academic articles in marketing, statistics, law, management, medicine, political science, refugee studies, physics, computing, and economics. Avi is a former Senior Editor at Marketing Science. His work on online advertising won the INFORMS Society of Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award. He testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on competition and privacy in digital advertising. His work has been referenced in White House reports, European Commission documents, the New York Times, the Economist, and elsewhere.Peter Lorentzen is economics professor at the University of San Francisco. He heads USF's Applied Economics Master's program, which focuses on the digital economy. His research is mainly on China's political economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Human-caused climate change is real and growing in impact. Yet many Americans see climate change as a belief that they can opt out of. Two belief structures are to blame: American Protestantism and postmodernism.Guests: Tanya Luhrmann, professor of anthropology and psychology at Stanford University and author of When God Talks Back. Gary Aylesworth, professor emeritus of philosophy at Eastern Illinois University. Lee McIntyre, Research Fellow at the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University and author of Post-Truth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Jaipreet Virdi talks about her book Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History with Peoples & Things host Lee Vinsel. The book details the long history of attempts to “fix” deaf people, including a great deal of quackery. Towards the end of the conversation, Virdi and Vinsel also talk about what a world beyond solutionist fantasies that disability can be “cured” would look like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

The US military didn't just conquer its way across the US West and the Pacific - it also collected and categorized across these spaces too. In Taking the Field: Soldiers, Nature, and Empire on American Frontiers (U Nebraska Press, 2023), Colorado College's Amy Kohout examines the role of soldiers in the construction of imperial knowledge. By examining how soldiers interpreted the people and places they encountered in the West and in the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century, Kohout explains how science and the military worked hand in hand to define ideas like wilderness and nature in places newly acquired and explored by the growing American empire. The book addresses a range of topics, from birds to the Black Hills to World's Fairs, and shows how following one's sources can lead a historian to some very interesting, as well as messy, places and conclusions. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society