When Calls for Vengeance Go Online
An anthropologist reckons with how digital media has changed youth gang culture dynamics—and what can be done to combat the spread of deadly rumors. ✽ In 2019, Luis…
An anthropologist reckons with how digital media has changed youth gang culture dynamics—and what can be done to combat the spread of deadly rumors. ✽ In 2019, Luis…
The kind people at Heidelberg dug this out of the drawer the mice keep for snacking in the lean times. I did not have a digital copy before…
An archaeologist explains how generative artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape our views of ancient people, arguing that a critical perspective is needed to use this technical…
What historians of science do is social and cultural history, but of a sort that is sometimes harder to look […] The post Soviet Russian and Armenian Radio…
‘When we talk about the National Atomic Energy Commission, what should an ordinary person think of?’ asked Tanzanian journalist Ramadhan […] The post Online Nuclear Regulators, Trust, and…
At 09:30 a.m. BST on 19 July 2024, IT systems around the world suddenly ground to a halt. Without their computer systems, pharmacies, doctors’ surgeries, airports, train providers,…
They Only Want Us from the Neck Down Across the airport car park, a figure in a mad dash—a sprawl […] The post Being Fungible – They Only…
An anthropologist witnesses the first integrated flight attempt of the world’s largest rocket—and the wide range of responses it elicited from people. This piece is part of a…
As the European Space Agency launches its flagship mission to explore Jupiter’s moons, an anthropologist explores the gap between launch enthusiasts and local residents. This piece is part…
An anthropologist recounts how a small island nation built and deployed its first satellite—and what their effort says about unequal access to the growing space economy on Earth.…
In a series of essays, a collaborative research project brings together “space anthropologists” to investigate how communities around the globe are grappling with the current boom in outer…
In Northeast India, a controversial hydropower dam moves toward completion—causing great uncertainty for downstream dwellers whose livelihoods depend on the river. ✽ At the peak of summer monsoon,…
Nicola Twilley. Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. Penguin. NY. 2024, pp. 387 ISBN: 9780735223288. Richard Zimmer. Sonoma State University The…
In Policing Patients, Elizabeth Chiarello examines the role of prescription drug monitoring programmes (PDMPs) in the opioid crisis in the US, arguing that they transform healthcare into patient…
I. Introduction In 2010 India found itself mired in a medical crisis of diplomatic proportions. The crisis was precipitated by a paper (Kumaraswamy et al 2010) published in…
Star computation scientist Stephen Wolfram has said that in order to accelerate the capacity of artificial intelligence towards a much more […] The post Wild Computing: a view from…
Motherhood on Ice: The Mating Gap and Why Women Freeze Their Eggs by Marcia C. Inhorn (NYU Press, 2023) Since 2012, when egg freezing by vitrification (flash-freezing) emerged from…
Here’s Why We Think It’s Amazing I’m incredibly excited to award Calm Tech certification to reMarkable Paper Pro, an innovative paper tablet with a color display. I recently completed the…
An anthropologist who studies human-computer interactions explores how and why losing one’s smartphone feels so unsettling. ✽ David, an American cyborg, has lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,…
Having already spent a month in Armenia, I uttered the usual “Barev Dzez ” [“hello” in Armenian] with confidence as I entered the Yandex taxi car. This magic…
Hey Adam! “In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. Dear brothers and sisters, today I would […] The post The Imam Chatbot: A Digital…
An anthropologist who works with deaf communities in the Arabic-speaking Middle East argues that ending Israel’s war on Gaza and occupation of Palestine is a matter of disability…
A biological anthropologist reflects on how scientific research can be used to reaffirm or undermine Indigenous land ties in Argentina. ✽ In the early 1900s, two amateur archaeologists…
Beginning in 2016, the Turkish government accused anyone with the messaging application ByLock of terrorism. An anthropologist investigates the risks of this kind of digital evidence. ✽ Summer…