Global Health Diagnostics: Workshop Summary by Shona Lee
On January 17th, 2018, participants from the UK, Europe, and India gathered in Edinburgh for “Investigating Diagnostic Devices in Global Health”, a workshop that also marked the launch…
Tag: Technology
The Testing Revolution: Investigating Diagnostic Devices in Global Health by Alice Street
Image by Alice Street in collaboration with Jennifer Littlejohn. The origins of laboratory medicine are often traced to the establishment of a small clinical laboratory in Guy’s Hospital,…
What If Machines Could Learn the Way Children Do?
A good number of us shout at our laptops when they misbehave, often to no avail. Perhaps soon they will listen. Could we one day teach them—much like…
CfP for AAA2018: Inter-topia: Productive tensions within the collisions of techno-utopianism and techno-dystopianism
Panel Organizers: Jeremy Trombley (SUNY Cortland) and Angela VandenBroek (Binghamton University) Sites of digital technology development are immersed in competing techno-utopian and -dystopian ideolog…
Conference: ICA 2018 Pre-Conference “Articulating Voice. The Expressivity and Performativity of Media Practices”
International Communication Association (ICA) 2018 Pre-Conference “Articulating Voice. The Expressivity and Performativity of Media Practices” May 24, 2018, Prague, Czech Republic Conferen…
CfP: The Digital Turn: New Directions in Media Anthropology
The EASA Media Anthropology Network is organising a network panel at the 15th EASA Biennial Conference “Staying, Moving, Settling” in Stockholm, 14-17 August, 2018. Please find the Call…
Web Roundup: In the clouds by Lily Shapiro
As I’m sure many of you saw, this month started with the successful launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, giving a boost (sorry) to privatized space travel, and providing…
Semi-Feurdal Cyber-colonialism
Yes! thank you, Evers and Nordin [of course it is always slightly embarrassing to be posting citations, but the occasional acknowledgement of a phrase I particularly dwelt long…
What Would You Do?
Equality. A term flaunted in many public circles, political campaigns, and social justice movements. In these instances, “equality” refers to fairness and justice in life; the act of…
DragNet: February 1 – February 15, 2018
Image from ACLU.org For this dragnet update we have several fascinating articles to highlight. Among the stories from the United states was an article on the NYPD’s unofficial power…
Blue binders of white donors: sorting race out in South African IVF by Tessa Moll
Miracle babies. The microscopic enchantments of embryos. The image of a woman holding that much-desired infant. In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is replete with awe-inducing imagery, often bordering…
We Have Never Been Digital Anthropologists
anthro{dendum} welcomes guest blogger Rebekah Cupitt, contributing the third post in the Private Messages from the Field series edited by Crystal Abidin and Gabriele de Seta. We Have Never Been…
What Can Anthropology Tell us about Data in the 21st Century?
Last week I wrote a comment piece for the Corsham Institute’s Observatory for a Connected Society app asking ‘What can Anthropology tell us about data in the 21st…
Texting Like A State: mHealth and the first thousand days in South Africa by Nanna Schneidermann
What does making a new life look like from the perspective of a mobile phone? For the phone of a woman using the public health care system in…
Why YOU Should Be an Academic Cyborg (and Maybe Already Are)
Although I’ve often been heard to sigh and groan that “technology hates me”, just like any other self-respecting anthropologist, in this post I want to consider just what…
Kill the Animals, Save the Animals: Watch a Gamer Subculture Define Its Values at Games Done Quick
A crowd of fans and friends circle around Asa Tims, at upper left. Tims speedruns and commentates on others’ runs under the name Spike Vegeta. While he was…
#3 The flies that bind: Assa Doron talks waste in India
In this wide-ranging conversation, Dr. Assa Doron talks about India’s waste, both liquid and solid, and the physical and institutional infrastructures that handle it–or fail to, plus the…
Review: Digital environments: Ethnographic perspectives across global online and offline spaces
Budka, P. (2018). [Review of the book Digital environments: Ethnographic perspectives across global online and offline spaces, by U. U. Frömming, S. Köhn, S. Fox & M. Terry].…
Benzene, PCBs, and industrial chemistry: A narrative bibliography
How the Benzene Tree Polluted the World in The Atlantic by Rebecca Altman, is a narrative exploration of the rise of organic chemistry, and the industrialization of the branch of chemistry…
Learning to Trust Machines That Learn
Imagine lying on a hospital bed. Doctors with grave expressions hover. One leans down to tell you that you are terribly sick and says they recommend a risky…
Archaeology and blockchain: a social science data revolution?
Blockchain technology is revolutionising financial systems. Could it do the same for archaeological data? This month the world’s first “archaeology coin” launched to fanfare from a small community;…
The Automation and Privatization of Community Knowledge
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community, who we are as a community, what keeps us connected and together, and how community knowledge is stored and distributed.…
The Automation and Privatization of Community Knowledge
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about community, who we are as a community, what keeps us connected and together, and how community knowledge is stored and distributed.…
The Event! Designing Human Futures
Dr. Paul Hartley came to McMaster last night to give us a talk about Reassessing our (i.e. Humans’) Relationship with Technology. The talk was extremely useful in that…