Renouncing and Returning to Shareholder Value
As pandemic restrictions began to ease in late 2021, the annual Finnish startup conference Slush made its return as an in-person event. Held for the first time in…
Tag: STS
The Ones Who Walk Away from the Internet
In the Andean cosmovision, constellations are not formed by connecting the dots of stars, but rather from the spaces of darkness in the night sky. The most important…
Dreaming of Security through Lanyards and Bollards
A perimeter is always porous, to certain people. Managing how it is perforated is a kind of professional work. In my fieldwork at a casino, a guard all…
Hawa-laat: Polluted Air in Delhi, India
In 2015, I was back in India’s capital city, Delhi after two years of fieldwork in villages in rural parts of the country. On my return, the city…
Submarine Cyborgs: At Sea with Haraway and Jue
It is a Tuesday in May in upstate New York, and the world is greening all around me. A little rain falls from a clouded-over sky scattering bright…
The Porosity of Promise: Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) and the New Science of Technofixation
Amidst the proliferation of material technologies developed to solve the problems of planetary climate change and carbon emissions, the technoscientific community increasingly champions a new molecula…
The Ecosystem Multiple: Navigating the Transatlantic Fate of Biosphere 1 ½
It is late March 2022, and as always the weather is sunny in Tucson, Arizona. But a big meeting gathers a binational party inside an air-conditioned building on…
“It’s like… ‘You’re welcome. Love, science’”: On Doing Critical Anthropology when the Enterprise is Under Attack
Next month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first ever working draft of our species’ entire genetic code. It was a major milestone in the Human Genome Project…
Resurrecting the Dire Wolf, or Clickbait Science for the 21st Century
On the May 12th, 2025 cover of Time Magazine, you will see a picture of a white wolf below the bold word Extinct slashed through with a red…
Common(s) in Science and Technology? Dispatches from the SEEKCommons Network
This is the Introduction post to our new SEEKCommons series. The posts in this series are forthcoming, and will be linked here in this Introduction as they are…
Connections between Health, Science, and Technology: What Does Anthropology Have to Do With It?
As I became acquainted with social studies of science and technology, particularly through anthropological research, I realized it opened new doors for me, offering fresh perspectives and…
Space Anthropology with Savannah Mandel
View/Download the transcription for this episode. For this episode of Platypod, I interviewed space anthropologist Savannah Mandel about her new book Ground Control: An Argument for the End…
Foucault, Dialectics, and Randomized Clinical Trials: Bridges Between Medicine and Anthropology
Graffiti on the facade of the building where one of the interviews was conducted. It features a drawing of a healthcare worker wearing a mask and cap, holding…
To Witness: Cell Phone Cameras, Immigrant Communities, and Police Accountability
“There is nothing like an iPhone …to show people the problem…” -Alex Vitale, The End of Policing An ACLU volunteer hangs informational posters in downtown Houston. The top…
Between the Bitterness of Anonymity and Ethics is Racism: Reflections for Anthropological Research on Science in the ‘Backyard’
The entrance of the room where the Mocambo group works. Photo by the author. This essay is one of the results of a roda de conversa (a conversation…
“We had to rethink many, many things”: Reflexivity in Scientific Practices during the Zika Epidemic in Recife, Brazil
Entrance door to the infectious and parasitic diseases wing. Image by author. Luiza is a pediatrician and researcher specializing in infectious diseases who works at a teaching hospital…
Lonely Planet Looking for Connection: Citizen Science SETI Research at NASA
NASA’s homepage is as glitzy as you would expect of the U.S. Government’s sexiest administration. Glossy pictures of nebulas, astronauts, and asteroids float across the top of the…
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.…
Junk Anthropology: A Manifesto for Trashing and Untrashing
It is currently held, not without certain uneasiness, that 90% of human DNA is ‘junk.’ The renowned Cambridge molecular biologist, Sydney Brenner, makes a helpful distinction between ‘junk’…
Ep#104 We let ChatGPT write this title: “”ChatGPT: The Future of AI-Assisted Conversations”
The Familiar Strange · Ep#104 We let ChatGPT write this title: ""ChatGPT: The Future of AI-Assisted Conversations" It’s been a while… We’re back, this time with Familiar Strange…
Transpositioning, a Hypertext-ethnography
This is a work of hypertext-ethnography. It is based on my research of a small genetics laboratory in Tokyo, Japan where I am studying the impact of the…
Becoming the Game: Hardware Hacking, Agency, and Obsolescence
Introduction When I asked my aunt back in 2014 if my old Game Boy Color was still around, she handed it to me, but confirmed that the A…
Ep #100 The laws of Robotics & Anti-Trust Laws: Frank Pasquale on AI Law & Multidisciplinary Interactions
We’re back this week with a great interview with Frank Pasquale! The Familiar Strange · Ep #100 The laws of Robotics & Anti-Trust Frank Pasquale on AI Law…