We may have the chance to hire an outstanding researcher 3+ years post PhD to join Tarleton Gillespie, Mary Gray and me in Cambridge MA bringing critical sociotechnical perspectives to bear on new technologies. jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/jo...

Against Constitutional Originalism by @jgienapp.bsky.social is as accessible as it is important, which can rarely be said about a work of Constitutional theory and interpretation. Should be great for course use in law, poli sci, and history. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Delighted to announce CBI Research Fellow (& close friend & collaborator) Prof. Gerardo Con Díaz's (Con's) stellar new book is out (got to read it early & blurb it). Everyone Breaks These Laws: How Copyright Made the Online World. Congrats Con! #histtech yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

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The 🏆4S Mullins Prize winner for 2025🏆 is Anin Luo for “Animal Scientism: Making Biology Experimental in Republican China.” East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal 19(1): 8–36. Read more here: 4sonline.org/2025_anin_lu...

Assignment: use AI to find and discuss one of the issues in our class and identify a response that is clearly hallucinated and evaluate its implications for rational discourse

AI is a plagiarism engine built on stolen data, exploited labour, and enviro harm. Marketed as “intelligent,” it erodes critical thinking, empathy, and causes psychological harm. Run by authoritarian billionaires, it’s used for surveillance, profiling, and genocide—whether it works or makes up shit.

For a long time, I thought, if we could just *explain things* properly, people would see that technical decisions are absolutely, without doubt, political decisions. But I’ve seen enough to be convinced that there is no appetite to learn this. +

I know how horrible everything is, but I just got tenure and I refuse to let that man prevent me from celebrating. I genuinely didn't know if I was going to stagger across this line, so I have no intention of taking it for granted.

I have just finished The Dawn Of Everything and I highly recommend it if you're interested in the structure of society or how we look at history. It's a commitment (525 pages and reasonably dense) but it's eye-opening. And gives you hope for the future - there are *other* ways of doing things.

A Busy #NoKings day in #Durham #NorthCarolina #AntiTrump #StopTrump #HandsOff #TeslaShutDown #FiftyFiftyOne #50501Movement #HandsOff #PeoplesMovement #PROTESTS50501 #HandsOff #FiftyFiveZeroOne #StopTheCoup

Next on the reading list. (…Why do I do this to myself?)

Trump treats immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America worse than we treated Germans and Japanese subject to the Alien Enemies Act in World War II. He is a monster, not just a tyrant.

This thread is a helpful reminder of the historical contingency of America's R&D infrastructure and the very real possibility that its strength could eventually decline... (Also be sure to check out @williamthomas.bsky.social's slides: aip.brightspotcdn.com/91/cc/b6a413...) #histSTM #innovation 🗃️📜

Frighteningly true… “Trump compounds bad decisions with worse decisions, and worse decisions with catastrophic ones. This has always been his nature, and it’s why he bankrupted and destroyed so many businesses. The one thing Trump is really good at is fraud.”

🚀Fellowship opportunity🚀 The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum invites applications for its four fellowships in aerospace history (pre- and postdoc; mid-career & independent scholars; senior scholars). Due Dec. 15 airandspace.si.edu/get-involved...

“I would be lying if I said I don’t worry. I do. But as I wrote last month: “Despite that worry, I cannot stop standing up for what is right. I cannot turn a blind eye to injustice.” — @marcelias.bsky.social (4/5/25). Me too, Marc. In solidarity, LHT

MSNBC just showed a montage of world leaders calling the USA idiotic, illogical, hostile, unhinged.... literally never seen anything like this. From the shining city on a hill to an object of global derision and contempt.

The longest Zoom meeting I ever participated in (Summer 2023) was an NEH review panel. 5.5 hours, one 15-minute break. The fifteen of us all spent weeks preparing. All of the contenders were fantastic. D0Gee could never compete.

It’s important to understand the context of AI as a part of a toolkit of fascism, and how it fits into the history of political and social repression in the United States, writes Tech Policy Press fellow Dia Kayyali: www.techpolicy.press/ai-surveilla...

This speaks volumes: Yale professors, Timothy Snyder, a historian of totalitarianism and the author of "On Tyranny," and Jason Stanley, a philosopher and the author of "How Fascism Works", move to Canada. leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2025/03... munkschool.utoronto.ca/person/timot...

In my elder years it’s so satisfying to see that younger scholars have found my work useful. For links to my most cited works see my bio page at UVa engineering.virginia.edu/faculty/brya...

The Institute for Complex Social Dynamics and the Department of Machine Learning at Carnegie Mellon are hiring a postdoctoral fellow who works at the intersection of social dynamics and machine learning. Please encourage anyone interested to apply! cmu.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/CMU/job/Pitt...

The perfect metaphor for what the Supreme Court did to this country with Citizens United v. FEC.

Lever voting machines helped the US become the world’s model democracy. Voters couldn’t spoil their ballots, and every operation of the machines required bipartisan observation. Any attempt to rig them would be obvious to a technician with a high school education. Today?

I’m supposed to teach a PhD seminar next year and I’m thinking History of the Database.

So grateful to the incredible Prof. @anitachan.bsky.social for her tremendous lecture (& wonderful conversation) in MPLS "Predatory Data: Feminist Resistance to Eugenics in Big Tech," on Thursday!!! Hosted by CBI for Computing, Info. & Culture & HHH Ctr. on Women, Gender, & Public Policy. #Histsci

My department at Uppsala university has just announced two open PhD positions: one in history of science and the other in history of ideas. We research, for example, colonial history of science, history of medicine, and intellectual history. Deadline: 8 April

If we want to stop being reactive, one of the best things we can do is starting talking about & preparing for Republicans to destroy voting rights, corrupting the voting process itself, and possibly even ending elections themselves. We have been fighting things after they happen instead of before.

I just want to say for the record that when the history books are written centuries from now, I believe the election of Donald Trump in a free and fair election in 2024 will go down as one of the most senseless and self-destructive own goals in human history

Today, we are publicly launching the new Climate, Technology, and Justice program at Data & Society I can't think of a more important moment to be doing the hard work of gathering empirical evidence to track and mitigate AI's environmental and social repercussions datasociety.net/announcement...

Historians at an R1 can achieve tenure with major DH projects. I know because Virginia Tech did it in 2023.

My department, Science & Technology Studies at Rensselaer, is hiring two positions in Design, Innovation & Society—one tenure track (equitable design) and one teaching track (open area). It’s a very supportive department with excellent students. Please share! careers.rpi.edu/mob/en-us/jo...

Are you planning to attend APSA 2025? I'm putting together a panel proposal on democratic backsliding, democratic resilience, and opposition to democratic backsliding for APSA with Erica Frantz. I'm looking for other authors and discussants with interests in those topics. Thanks in advance!!

Our information environment is broken.

Bluesky is less of a “liberal” echo chamber than a, “I’m sick of being screamed at by Nazis” echo chamber.

The problem is very rarely "information" but a "harmony of illusions" as Fleck once put it.

“The abuse of social media has hastened the decline of American civil society and the ongoing collapse of American democracy, such as it was.” To understand how that happened we need to look at the history of technology in the context of American social, cultural, and political history