New Books in Technology

Neurotechnology in National Security and Defense: Practical Considerations, Neuroethical Concerns (CRC Press, 2014), edited by Dr. James Giordano, is an impressive collection of essays by authors at the cutting edge of an emerging field which links neuroscience and national security. The book dispels myths that this confluence has solely offensive applications by outlining a variety of defensive and medical applications for neurotechnology in military and national security settings. By blending ethical and moral concerns throughout more technical discussions, this volume is likely to appeal to an audience beyond scientific specialists in the field. As neuroscience continues to flourish and develop more rapidly, thoughtful consideration of its possibilities and perils in the sphere of national defense and security is increasingly necessary. Giordano and his colleagues have done a great service to their readers by laying a strong groundwork for future examinations and ethical debates on this burgeoning and complex topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Carolyn L. Kane’s new book traces the modern history of digital color, focusing on the role of electronic color in computer art and media aesthetics since 1960. Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Color, Computer Art, and Aesthetics after Code (University of Chicago Press, 2014) places color at the center of media studies, exploring some amazing works of art and technology to understand the changing history of the relationship between color as embodied in machine code and screen interface. Using a methodology called “media archaeology” that is informed by the work of Foucault, Nietzsche, Kittler, Heidegger, Stiegler, and others, Chromatic Algorithms traces a transformation of color from optics to algorithms.  The chapters trace a history of synthetic color in Western aesthetics and philosophy, the rise of Day-Glo, the aesthetics of color in video art from the 1960s and 1970s, the technology of color TVs, the connection between color and notions of transcendence and utopia, “democratic color” and Salvador Dalí’s urinated-upon pen, the early history of art/engineering at Bell Labs, the technology of digital infrared visualization, the aesthetics of “Photoshop cinema,” bioart and its glow-in-the-dark bunnies, and the work of some amazing artists including Lillian Schwartz, Jeremy Blake, and many many others. It is a gorgeous and fascinating study of color, technology, visualization, the digital, and beyond. As you work through the book, I highly recommend searching the Web for some of the amazing work described in its chapters. I’m based in Canada and so some of the following links may not work for you: in that case, just try searching on your own for the title: The rock opera Battle for Milkquarious! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zDMhwq3pcA Jeremy Blake, Winchester Redux http://vimeo.com/16485005 Zbigniew RybczyÅ„ski, Tango http://vimeo.com/9033947 Paper Rad: http://www.paperrad.org/ This site has some clips from Lillian Schwartz’z Proxima Centauri: http://lillian.com/kinetic/ You can browse video clips from WGBH’s New Television Workshop here: http://main.wgbh.org/wgbh/NTW/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

The media system in the United States could have developed into something very different than what it is today. In fact, there was an era in which significant media reform was considered. This was a time when media consumers were tired of constant advertising, bias, and control by corporate entities, and instead wanted more “public-oriented” content. Sound at all familiar? In his new book, America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Victor Pickard, an assistant professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, examines the debates on media reform and policy from the early 20th century, focusing, in particular, on radio. Pickard revisits the significant media policy conflicts to analyze why the American media is the way it is, and how it could have been. In so doing, he considers what the current American media system means for the Web and other new media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Failure by government agencies to share information has had disastrous results globally. From the inability to prevent terrorist attacks, like the 9-11 attacks in New York City, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania, to the ill-equipped and ill-fated responses to disasters like the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima, and Hurricane Katrina, a common denominator in all of these events, and those similar, was a lack of inter- and intra-government information sharing. In his new book Traversing Digital Babel: Information, E-Government, and Exchange (MIT 2014), Alon Peled, associate professor of political science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, conceptualizes a platform that would incentivize inter-agency information sharing. Called the Public Sector Information Exchange (PSIE), the platform would not only enable the trading of information, but also offers the valuation of information assets. In this way the PSIE creates an inter-government economic system. In detailing of the opportunities and threats to such a system, Peled offers examples of how similar systems have been implemented in governments throughout the world, and uses interdisciplinary training and experience in information technology and political science to describe a system and rationale that could offer assistance to those looking for simplified and efficient government. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

In the early days of the Internet, optimists saw the future as highly connected, where voices from across the globe would mingle and learn from one another as never before. However, as Ethan Zuckerman argues in Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection (Norton, 2013), just because a connection is possible does not mean disparate voices are being heard. Instead, things and not ideas have become more connected; we now live in a world where is easier to get a bottle of water from a tropical island halfway around the world than it is to get (let alone comprehend) news from that island. Zuckerman, a media scholar and activist based at MIT, suggests despite our perceived “connectedness,” the wired world is actually becoming more provincial and narrow, as we shift from professionally curated news and information, to search engines and algorithmically selected information based on previous “likes” and those of our homogeneous social circles. In other words, we are getting more and more of what we already know we want with ever-greater efficiency, but not what we need to be informed participants in a global world. In an expansive analysis that takes on everything from the global response to modern pandemics, to Greek philosophy, to the “Arab Spring,” to musical hybridization across cultures, Zuckerman calls for a world of “digital cosmopolitans,” where those who can bridge between communities are called upon to foster deeper, more nuanced conversations around the globe in ways that fulfill the promise of expanding technological opportunities. At once a thoughtful analysis, an engaging history, and a bold call to arms, Rewire offers readers a deep understanding of how media is evolving to shape and be shaped by global voices. As such, it has vast implications at both personal and geopolitical levels for the future of information, technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

After the Second World War, the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs described National Socialism as a triumph of irrationalism and a “destruction of reason.” It has since become commonplace to interpret modern European intellectual history as a prolonged struggle between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The Enlightenment is generally valorized as identical with rationality, mechanism, cosmopolitanism, liberalism, progress, optimism, and secularism, while Romanticism is often connected to holism, irrationality, conservatism, nationalism, myth, pessimism and, eventually, fascism. John Tresch (University of Pennsylvania) questions these dichotomies in his new book The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon (University of Chicago Press, 2012). In our interview we discuss what made steam engines Romantic, which technical illusions awaited early nineteenth-century Parisian theatergoers and how Saint-Simonians could envisage future society as a Romantic machine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Don Lincoln‘s new book, The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Stuff That Will Blow Your Mind (Johns Hopkins UP, 2014), presents an insider’s view of the largest physics experiment of our time and the discoveries that have come out of it over the past few years. A senior scientist at Fermilab and collaborator on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Lincoln provides a thorough and personal account of its assembly and early years of operation, including a disastrous malfunction just days after turning on, the unfolding saga of the Higgs boson, and the emergence of exciting new questions that can now be asked. Throughout the chapters, he weaves in relevant scientific details to explain the operation of the accelerator, its massive detectors, and everything they can tell us about the universe. Packed with rich analogies and approachable personal anecdotes, this book will be of interest to anyone curious about modern particle physics and the enormous international collaboration that is currently underway to further our understanding of this exciting field. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

There is no doubt that innovations in technology have had, and are having, a significant impact on society, changing the way we live, work, and play. But the changes that we are seeing are far from novel. In fact, most are a continuation of changes to society and societal structure with roots in the past. So argues Hugh F. Cline, adjunct professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, in his new book, Information Communication Technology and Social Transformation: A Social and Historical Perspective (Routledge, 2014). According to Cline, the technopanics, or strong objections to new technology have happened since the days of Aristotle. In spite of the objections, technological innovations can positively advance societal interests. Mixing history, sociology, anthropology, and technological studies, Cline provides context for the examination of how ICTs are impacting society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Social media is a phenomenon that continues to grow and attract much attention in the form of consternation, commentary, criticism and scholarly research. Any attempt at truly understanding social media communication practices and tools requires interdisciplinary analysis, the examination of the technology from the varying perspectives of the groups of users, developers and experts with respect to the issues surrounding it.  It also should include a look at the changes social media has and continues to bring to various fields, particularly with respect to professional communication. Jeremy Lipschultz, Isaacson Professor in the School of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, discusses the impact of social media on various mass communications professions in his new book Social Media Communication: Concepts, Practices, Data, Law, and Ethics (Routledge 2014). In his book, Lipschultz examines the various theories and practices connected to social media communication, and how this emerging form of communication differs from the traditional. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

John Tresch‘s beautiful new book charts a series of transformations that collectively ushered in a new cosmology in the Paris of the early-mid nineteenth century. The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon (University of Chicago Press, 2012) narrates the emergence of a new image of the machine, a new concept of nature, a new theory of knowledge, and a new political orientation through a series of chapters that each use the work of a single figure to open up a world of romantic machines. Part 1 of the book looks at the work of physical scientists whose model of precision experiment and math was transformed by an encounter with romantic philosophy and aesthetics, and introduces the electro-magnetic work of physicist AndreMarie Ampre, the instrumental practices of Prussian geophysical researcher Alexander von Humboldt, and the labor theory of knowledge in relation to the instruments of astronomer and politician Francois Arago. Part 2 looks at the impact of technology on theories of the self and the human, focusing on the fantastic arts and public spectacles featuring new discoveries in optics, mechanics, and natural history. (Readers will find lively discussions of dioramas, hallucinatory opera, symphonies, museums, magic shows, and expositions, here.) Part 3 treats the utopian thinkers and engineer-scientists of the late Restoration and the July Monarchy, looking at religiously-inflected social technologies of conversion, communication, and temporal coordination in the work and thought of Saint-Simon and his followers, printer and literary critic Pierre Leroux’s work and theories, and Auguste Comte’s instruments of thought and paper. It is a rich, elegantly argued work that offers not just a history of science and technology, but also a tracing of the roots of some contemporary continental philosophy, as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology