Platypus in 2024
Welcome to Platypus in 2024! We look forward to continuing to publish content on science and technology from anthropological and social science perspectives. We remain grateful to all our readers,…
Tag: General
2023 in Review
Image from https://stock.adobe.com/. Welcome to CASTAC 2023 in review! In this post you will read about the wonderful work that our CASTAC team and community has put together.…
Antti Lindfors Interviews Nicole Starosielski on Media Hot and Cold
This is a conversational interview between Professor Nicole Starosielski (UC Berkeley) and me, Dr. Antti Lindfors (University of Helsinki), discussing Nicole’s book Media Hot and Cold (2022, Duke…
Milei, Crowds, and Concrete Waves in Argentina
I am home, reading Stefan Helmreich’s new book, A Book of Waves (2023). The news on TV then catches my attention: I see images from the inauguration of…
Algorithmic Imaginations in Agriculture: Automation?
In 2022, I was conducting my doctoral dissertation research on data-driven, automated digital farming technologies (drones, autosteering, sensors, GIS, smartphones, Big Data) in Turkey. Amidst the glo…
High Costs, Entangled Politics: What All Comes Inside a Medication’s Packaging
On October 17th, 2023, two news articles about the Brazilian federal budget circulated on social media. One announced the freezing of R$116 million (US$23.3 million) from the budget…
Belly Versus Bin: How Digital Autoethnography Brought Me Back From the Brink of Disordered Eating
Content and Trigger Warning: This post contains commentary and reflections about disordered eating. Food(ie) Fixation In September 2019, I responded to an advertisement by a Dutch university for a…
On Algorithmic Divination
Scientist operating an algorithmic divination machine as imagined by Midjourney’s AI (image by Author & Midjourney). Algorithms are tools of divination.[1] Like cowry shells, scapular bones,…
Funeral for an Embryo
On a freezing February morning, I pulled my rental car into the small parking lot behind a sprawling Minnesota church. I had flown halfway across the country to…
How to Imagine the Unknown: Choosing an Arm Prosthesis
When amputation happens, it is an un-ignorable event. After the surgery, the person learns how to be an amputee, they learn to conceptualize their altered body. This work…
Staring Contest
It’s 3 in the morning. I’m sitting at the end of the hallway of the boomerang-shaped intensive care unit (ICU) where I work, looking into the darkness beyond…
The Wild Pantry
Plants and Their Stories Finally, it’s time. As a team we have arrived in Cambodia—a geographer and an anthropologist embarking on a journey that we have joyfully planned…
“The Day I Discovered I Was Collaborating on a Eugenics Project”: On Imponderables in Collaborative Research
The title that opens this reflection is a statement by computer scientist Sandra Avila, who is also a co-author of the lines that will flow here. Her account…
Making Companion Species at a Robotics Lab
I spent many a warm summer day holed up inside a robotics laboratory, analyzing various datasets for my Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research project. The room was often dark…
“Blooming Biomes Mean Blooming Profits”: ‘Nature-based’ Industrial Farming and the Politics of the Industrial Animal Microbiome
Industrial trade shows are curious places. Potential customers milling around more than 500,000 square feet of exhibit space; technoscientific exuberance and hype; snappy names and enticing displays; …
Cards Against Digital Anthropology
Suzana Jovicic*, Simone Pfeifer** In 2014, US-based associate anthropology professor Matthew Durington held a class on game design. One of the anthropology games developed by his students was…
Female Truck Drivers in China Navigate Gender Norms on Douyin
It’s dark outside: 4:34 AM. I am peering through a truck’s windshield, gazing at a seemingly endless stretch of highway. “Female truck driver Li Ping is live streaming,”…
Between Pain and Relief: Morphine’s Ambiguities in India
The root of the word morphine is Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Neil Gaiman’s contemporary reimagining of the character in his magnum opus Sandman likewise thrusts upon…
Madam Cistern
The following monologue was originally written in Portuguese for the ongoing theatrical project Dramaturgias da água e da seca (Water and Drought Dramaturgies), developed by Pavilhão da Magnólia,…
Fake, Real, Real, Fake: Salvarsan on the US Medical Market
A Swindle Exposed 1913, Chicago: A reporter, assuming the name Edward Donlin, enters a downtown medical establishment that has advertised widely in Midwestern newspapers offering Dr. Paul Ehrlich’s…
Drawing More-than-Human Kinship
Introduction In my work as an anthropological ethnographer and illustrator, I have been working to connect seemingly disparate disciplines together—at times, even as a messy and rough bricolage.…
Hippocrates Against Protocols: Experiments, Experience, and Evidence-Based Medicine in Brazil
Image of a statue of Hippocrates (460 BC – 377 BC), considered the “father” of Western medicine.Source: Pixabay, no coyrights Introduction In this text, I address processes in…
AI, Climate Adaptation, and Epistemic Injustice
Amid global climate impacts, vulnerable communities—including indigenous peoples, farmers, fisherfolk, and low-income groups—are frequently expected to adapt, change, and build resilience to uncerta…
Tokens, Voids, and Archives: Locating Berlin’s NFT Projects
I’m standing on the train platform of U Schloßstraße, an U-Bahn station in Berlin’s Steglitz neighborhood. In front of me is an artwork: a beauty advertisement depicting a…