New Books in Technology

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and guest host, Paula Bialski, Associate Professor of Digital Sociology at University of St. Gallen, talk to Ben Collier, Senior Lecturer in Digital Methods in the Science, Technology, and Innovation Studies department at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, about his book, _Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy_, as well as some of his other work. The book examines one of the most important and misunderstood technologies of the digital age, Tor, the overlay network that allows for anonymous communication, best known as the infrastructure underpinning the so-called Dark Web. Collier takes a community-centered approach and examines the many different reasons and motivations people become involved in using and maintaining the platform. The trio also talk about various other projects and themes, including Collier’s current project on the visual and aesthetic standardization of public security infrastructure, like barriers and bollards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Rachel Forsyth, senior educational developer focused on classroom trust and AI in teaching. Sam Illingworth, professor researching critical AI literacy and pedagogy. They unpack what generative AI can and cannot do. They outline first steps for educators, institutional governance pitfalls and best practices. They debate assessment redesign, why AI detectors fail, and how to keep teachers central while future-proofing pedagogy.

César A. Hidalgo, physicist and director of the Center for Collective Learning, explores how knowledge grows, moves, and decays. He outlines three principles—time, space, and value—and tells vivid stories from failed knowledge cities to postwar recoveries. Discussions span extreme specialization, knowledge recombination, procedural vs factual know-how, and how AI and teams reshape the future of collective learning.

Marianna Dudley, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Humanities and author of Electric Wind, maps Britain’s windy past from Cornish coasts to Orkney tests. She discusses 19th-century wind experiments, meteorology’s role, state projects versus grassroots activism, privatization’s market shifts, offshore complexities, and community ownership debates. Short, vivid stories trace how wind and society shaped each other.

We are glad to talk to Britt Paris about her book Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up (U California Press, 2025).  This book asks: What if we could start over and build the Internet from scratch? For more than eight years, Britt S. Paris investigated alternative Internet infrastructure projects, conducting interviews, site visits, and policy analysis. In this expansive and interdisciplinary study, Paris critically examines  how people and groups imagine,  build, deploy, maintain, and use the Internet as they survive—and even dare to thrive—in challenging political, economic, and environmental contexts. The book is available (to download for free!) here. Your host is Megan Finn, Associate Professor at American University and Affiliate Associate Professor at University of Washington. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Christiane Tristl, an economic geographer studying digital tech and water marketisation, discusses how private-sector innovations reshape water access in Kenya. She recounts following a Pago dispenser to reveal messy on-the-ground realities. Topics include design mismatches, data dashboards that distort local practices, and alternatives like cooperatives and degrowth-oriented applied work.

We're so pleased to welcome Dr. Amelia Acker, author of Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms (MIT Press, 2025) to the New Books Network!  This book describes the struggle between the computing technologies that archive data and the cultures of information that have led to platforms that assert control over its use. Acker examines the origins of data archives and the computing processes of storage, exchange, and transmission. Each chapter introduces data archiving processes that relate to the evolution of data sovereignty we experience today: from magnetic tape and timesharing computer models from the 1950s, to the establishment of data banks and the rise of database processing and managed data silos in the 1970s, to file structures and virtual containers in cloud-based information services over the past 40 years. Your host is Dr. Adam Kriesberg, Associate Professor at the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Miguel Sicart, professor and head of the Center for Digital Play, studies games, play and software. He explores how playing with software shapes human and software agency. He discusses play’s role across games, AI, education and platform capitalism. He warns how play can be weaponized and sketches an ethic of playful, respectful interaction with digital systems.

Neuroscientific evidence increasingly shows that consciousness is a remarkable but explainable function of a machinelike brain. Alan J. McComas' discusses his article for the American Scientist. Alan J. McComas is an emeritus professor of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. Greg is the Executive Director and Founder of the World War II Discussion Forum (wwiidf.org). He also has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book reviews). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

How Taiwan rose to global prominence in high tech manufacturing, from computer maker to the world's leading chip manufacturer. How did Taiwan, a former Japanese colony and the last fortress of the defeated Chinese Nationalists, ascend to such heights in high-tech manufacturing? In Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan's Computing Industry (MIT Press, 2024), Honghong Tinn tells the critical history of how hobbyists and enthusiasts in Taiwan, including engineers, technologists, technocrats, computer users, and engineers-turned-entrepreneurs, helped transform the country with their hands-on engagement with computers. Rather than engaging in wholesale imitation of US sources, she explains, these technologists tinkered with imported computing technology and experimented with manufacturing their own versions, resulting in their own brand of successful innovation. Defying the stereotype of “the West innovates, and the East imitates,” Tinn tells the story of Taiwanese technologists' efforts over the past six decades. Beginning in the 1960s, they grappled with the “black-boxed” computers that were newly available through international technical-aid programs. Shortly after, multinational corporations that outsourced transistor and integrated circuit assembly overseas began employing Taiwanese engineers and factory workers. Island tinkerers developed strategies to adapt, modify, assemble, and work with computers in an inventive manner. It was through this creative and ingenious tinkering with computers that they were able to gain a better understanding of the technology, opening the door to future manufacturing endeavors that now include Acer, Foxconn, Asus, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). Honghong Tinn is Assistant Professor in the Program in the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Li-Ping Chen is a visiting scholar in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts. Li-Ping’s NBN episodes on Taiwan Studies are supported by the Chun and Jane Chiu Family Foundation Taiwan Studies Program at Oregon State University. Relevant Links: Open Access for Island Tinkerers here Island Tinkerers’ Book Talk with Honghong Tinn here Chinese language translation of Island Tinkerers 科技造浪者: 一部奇蹟般的台灣科技產業史，揭開全球都想知道的人脈網絡 here Fly up with Love (1978) here “Labour and (De)Industrialisation in East Asia” in Gateway To Global China Podcast here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology