Behold the hot computer technology of 1985
What was it like to do use a computer for chat, graphic design, banking or online shopping in the mid-1980s? What were the most innovative hardware and software…
Tag: Technology
Digitale Anthropologie
Dieser Text wurde 2017 für den Blog der Universität Wien geschrieben; für eine überarbeitete und erweiterte Version des Textes siehe Budka, P. 2019. Von der Cyber Anthropologie zur…
John Postill on his new book, The Rise of Nerd Politics
Interview by Angela VandenBroek https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/R/bo27407562.html Angela VandenBroek: The Rise of Nerd Politics is a captivating description and analysis o…
Web Roundup: Trapped in the Tar Pit by Kathleen Lynch
Earlier this month, Atul Gawande, physician-author and new CEO of the yet-to-be defined health venture formed by JP Morgan, Berkshire Hathaway, and Amazon, published the long-form New Yorker…
Greetings from Silicon Beach
Does technology mean something different when it leaves the Valley and goes to the Beach? In the summer of 2016, during preliminary fieldwork in California, I met with…
Navigating Silicon Valley’s Contradictions
Silicon Valley’s workers must maneuver their way through this place of diversity and discrimination, capitalist aims, and countercultural aspirations. You can spot the extremes on the street in…
Is Space a Human Place?
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS From space junk and the International Space Station to space colonization and SpaceX, space is becoming a more human place. What will it mean when…
E-Seminar: The digital turn: New directions in media anthropology
Udupa, S., Costa, E., & Budka, P. (2018) The digital turn: New directions in media anthropology. Discussion Paper for the Follow-Up E-Seminar on the EASA Media Anthropology Network…
A Report on the 2018 4S Conference in Sydney, Australia by Tessa Leach
What characterises STS in different regions? What kinds of research projects, educational programs, and people are doing STS around the world? What problems exist in different regions? Can…
‘Inclusive WASH’ – Contested assumptions about bodies and personhood in a Ugandan refugee settlement
As I skimmed through the first pages of the shiny brochure of the ‘Inclusive WASH’ project, I suddenly recognized some of the people that the leaflet depicted in…
User as a Currency
Both internet users and market regulators are becoming more concerned about who uses personal data and how. The recent events involving Cambridge Analytica have helped to raise the…
The Rise of Emotional Robots
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Listen to the companion episode of SAPIENS: A Podcast for Everything Human! When Dan White first pulled Pepper out of the box, it was slumped…
Is Robot Empathy a Trap?
[no-caption] David Williams/SAPIENS Can robots care? And why should we care if they do? SAPIENS host Jen Shannon meets Pepper the robot, and host Chip Colwell goes on…
Ancestry Tests Pose a Threat to Our Social Fabric
[no-caption] Andrew Brookes/Getty Images I have never understood why anybody would think humans are by nature violent, warlike creatures. True, we have all surely had arguments turn sour…
How to Book an Appointment Online when you have Aphasia
I’m meeting a fellow speech therapist researcher at a weekly drop-in session for people with aphasia when Markus* comes in, brandishing an envelope. “I went!” he exclaims. Markus…
System, Space and Ecobiopolitics: A Conversation with Valerie Olson About “Into the Extreme”
[This week we present excerpts of an interview with Valerie Olson conducted by Lisa Messeri focused on Olson’s new book, Into the Extreme (U Minnesota P, 2018).…
Can Cryptocurrency Revolutionize the Rituals of Money?
[no-caption] Andrew Baker/Getty Images Objects—pieces of paper, coins, lumps of precious metal—may serve as currency and represent specific monetary values, but what underpins the exchang…
How to Pay Attention by Nick Seaver
The main challenge in running a seminar on the anthropology of attention is that such a thing doesn’t exist.* While anthropologists often think quite deeply about attention, worrying…
The Incas’ Knotty History
Khipu in the Museo Machu Picchu, Casa Concha, Cusco. Wikimedia Commons This article was originally published at Aeon. The Inca Empire (1400–1532) is one of few ancient civilizations that …
What the Tech Sector Could Learn from Anthropology
Technology is a social tool that requires understanding of social and cultural factors for it to be a driver of equality. Failing to incorporate an anthropological perspective into…
On Permissionless Innovation
Many libertarians in Silicon Valley are advocates for permissionless innovation. They eschew waiting around for permission from a nanny state. They are impatient and see themselves above the…
The Age of Cultured Machines
Two robots traverse the desert floor. Explosions from a decades-old conflict have left a pockmarked and unstable territory, though many more improvised bombs lie concealed in its vast…
Carbon Farmers Work to Clean Up the World’s Mess
It was a bright afternoon in March of 2011 when I met Pedro (a pseudonym) on his organic farm in the mountains of Costa Rica, north of San…