“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…
An anthropologist shares his story of the environmental, sociocultural, and political consequences of a hydropower dam in India for communities living downstream. Discussions about the impacts of da…
Languid, tropical, monsoonal time?:net-activism and hype in the context of South East Asian politics. [From The Next Five Minutes3 Workbook (1999)… posted much earlier here: https://hutnyk.wor…
An anthropologist uses courtrooms in Turkey as his field site to understand how digital evidence is shifting legal practices. Today most people around the world are using digital…
A researcher who studies animal behavior looks at tool use in nonhuman primates to better illuminate tool use in humans. Many of our primate relatives use tools. How…
An anthropologist examines what past farmers can teach us about adapting to climate change amid—and sometimes against—powerful political influences. This article was originally published at The Conve…
Neanderthals made the oldest string ever found, providing new insights into the technology and culture of our hominin cousins. At the Abri du Maras site in southern France,…
A Paleolithic archaeologist sets out on a journey in search of the first cyborg, making discoveries that end up very close to home. These days, a mention of…
Meet Anuli Akanegbu, the host of the BLK IRL podcast and a doctoral candidate researching Black creatives who are contract workers in Atlanta, Georgia. Anuli Akanegbu is the…
In the seventh season of the SAPIENS podcast, listeners will hear a range of stories about how technology—in a variety of configurations—shapes humanity. Since the dawn of our…
Fabian Broeker‘s Love and Technology: An Ethnography of Dating App Users in Berlin explores how dating apps mediate intimacy among young Berliners. Presenting an immersive ethnography of app usa…
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…
I am holding out for the new intravenous culture industry critique. Cannot get students to leave their screen devices alone even if they are banned in the classroom.…
East African runners wearing “super shoes” have outpaced global marathon records. But the shoe fervor—alongside older stereotypes about African runners’ “natural” abilities—means athletes’ hard work o…
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,…
An anthropologist explains how a South African university used community-driven research to honor human remains acquired unethically. This article was originally published at The Conversation and has…
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…
In Arc of Interference: Medical Anthropology for Worlds on Edge, João Biehl and Vincanne Adams assemble reflections on the role of anthropology in understanding healthcare in today’s world of…
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…
An anthropologist investigates how one city’s rapidly expanding video surveillance system is transforming criminal investigation—sometimes in deeply flawed ways. ✽ In September 2022, a criminal prose…
Punting on the Cam: A punter sharing Cambridge history with a couple under the Bridge of Sighs on the Cambridge University campus. I just spent a summer studying…
An anthropologist explains how new forensics tools offer unprecedented answers to questions about who likely held or wore Stone Age objects. This article was originally published at The Conversation …
By choosing to look at the funding from the American Government on this field, I aim to tell a different story about AI. A quick search for the…
An archaeologist explains how novel applications of forensic methods—namely, blood residue analyses—have yielded evidence that Paleoindians hunted mastodons, mammoths, and other megafauna in eastern N…