one of my _favorite_ critical technology books of the past decade is Morgan Ames's THE CHARISMA MACHINE on the OLPC project mitpress.mit.edu/978026253744...

NEW PUB ANNOUCEMENT! out today in @ejcs-journal.bsky.social, I wrote about lolcows, livestreaming, and how platform affordances and anti-fan practices catalyze digital freakery. journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

Just Published: For the latest @jcmsjournal.bsky.social issue, Mal Ahern and I co-edited an In Focus dossier on 'Images and (Infra)structures,' which originally emerged from a lively @scmstudies.bsky.social roundtable in 2022. What, we ask, do images and infrastructure have to say to each other?

people are actually very susceptible to just-so stories about human origins because listening to bullshit helped us survive on the savanna

NYU-MCC is hiring! Asst. Prof in the area of “Media and Global Cities.” Please help us get the word out. apply.interfolio.com/174886

Journal of Sonic Studies CFP on sound and radical organizing. www.researchcatalogue.net/view/558606/...

Feels like this week signaled the permanent reorientation of legacy media industries. There's no sustainable business model to "fire successful talent to obtain ephemeral political points with no tangible dividend."

Tomorrow I start as an Asst Prof in Communication, Media and Arts at Seton Hall. Last spring, news that this opportunity would pan out coincided very closely with the passing of my advisor, Jonathan Sterne. Some overdue reflections on that, mostly on Jonathan, here: akstuhl.net/blog/2025-08...

I'm excited to share that I'm on episode 1005 of the long-running and amazing podcast Kreative Kontrol, speaking with @vishkhanna.bsky.social about my recent book MUSIC IN ORBIT. We chatted at a skatepark and discussed streaming music, Bob Dylan, playing in punk bands in York Region + more.

Media academics! I'm putting together a 6-7 week media studies unit for our intro class (called Intro to Film and Media but historically taught as Intro to Film) and would appreciate any sample syllabi you're willing to share, or suggestions of readings/topics that *absolutely must* be covered.

A lot of this feels like "manager brain" to me - LLMs are an idea of intelligence for and by people who have been adulated all their lives as visionary or creative for _telling other people to do things for them_, and now can't tell the difference between giving an order and actually doing the thing

Many thanks to @burrata.bsky.social and Sounding Out for this nail-on-the-head Jonathan remembrance. Even the most serious work he did had playfulness at its core, animating those spry jumps across methodologies – and of course his very lively teaching, too soundstudiesblog.com/2025/07/14/i...

I am not done counting yet, but I'm trying to get a sense of the big picture of when colleges started investing in FM broadcasting:

Out Now - Media Theory 9.1 Full issue: journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt

A great editorial opportunity! Also, Field Notes give you some wiggle room to experiment. Pop music scholars, apply!

media scholars only start fixating on the interface between themselves and their computers when they’re in distress

The question is whether @akstuhl.bsky.social s thesis still applies and the next step is again more freedom and experimentation akstuhl.net/blog/2022-11...

Charging $90,000 annual tuition for a chatbot subscription sorta feels like blasting bad music when you want people to leave the bar

Join the Professional Development Committee’s “How to Prepare for the Job Market” virtual workshop this Friday, June 6 at 1PM EDT. Guidance on preparing materials, cover letters, and research/teaching statements. Sign up to receive the Zoom link: forms.gle/GENr6MkLGzi1.... @swapnilrai.bsky.social‬

📣 CFP DROP: SIGCIS 2025 ONLINE: POWER SURGE // 9/25-27 📣 the best conf in the biz for computer history ppl. CFP due 6/30. ft. keynote @lilygeismer.bsky.social PLUS ➕➕ SIGCIS is bringing back Works in Progress sessions for grad students! This is a great organizing team 🔜 APPLY! meetings.sigcis.org

Happy to announce that we are accepting submissions for the 2025 Claudia Gorbman Graduate Student Writing Award through 8/1. This award recognizes outstanding scholarship by a graduate student in sound and/or music media, and the winning essay is published in Music, Sound, and the Moving Image.

I’m finishing my term this summer as co-chair of the Sound and Music scholarly interest group of @scmstudies.bsky.social. I’d like to leave it in good hands. Here’s how to get involved:

Just renewed my subscription to The Wire--independent music journalism at its best, well beyond experimental music. You get access to the entire back run of the magazine for your subscription, by the way.

I wrote about my mom dying and my street getting leveled by a tornado in the same week (gift link).

Please RT! Radio/sound scholars: June 15 is LAST CALL to sign up for the @rptf.bsky.social /BEA/RAMP SIG mentorship program. Senior scholars looking to mentor grad students/ECRs for a 1 year term are especially encouraged to join. Sign up at the BEA website: bea.memberclicks.net/login#/login

I was recently a guest on the Radio Survivor podcast @radiosurvivor.bsky.social to discuss MUSIC IN ORBIT and the history and relevance of satellite radio to both radio culture and the music industry. Listen at the link below: www.radiosurvivor.com/2025/05/podc...

BREAKING: Our SEIU 509 union sibling Rümeysa Öztürk is being released from detention! We are so grateful to all of our labor and community allies who have stood with Rümeysa throughout this fight.

dang this is good and features interviews with David Goren and Susan Douglas! the Divided Dial on "the untold story of shortwave radio" #othernetworks www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...

I somehow missed that Tufts Arts & Sciences put Rumeysa on the home page: as.tufts.edu

Sound conference

Writing about push-button car radio presets has made me yearn for push-button tuning… and push-button everything again in cars.

Inaugural conference! Media Theory at the Coach House November 7-8, 2025 Centre for Culture and Technology - University of Toronto Keynote speakers: Dr. Shane Denson (Stanford) Dr. Alessandra Renzi (Concordia) Abstracts due: June 30. CFP: mediatheoryjournal.org/cfp/

ICYMI, here’s yesterday’s PMBIP. @askjerseth.bsky.social and Catherine Provenzano talked about presets, genres, samples, Oblique Strategies, vocal stylings, stereotypes, Jonathan Sterne, and more. And keep a pen handy for the biblio these two whipped up off the dome. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGdv...

just gonna repost my AI policy for my doctoral seminar.

I wrote about cross-border e-commerce, tariffs, and Trump memes and memorabilia @nytimes.com

ICYMI: I drew from MUSIC IN ORBIT's second chapter, "Targeting Subscribers in Satellite Radio’s Formative Years" to write a short post for the @ucpress.bsky.social blog: www.ucpress.edu/blog-posts/t...

Writing a book indebted to Jonathan’s thinking (solidarity to his grad students) is freighted and weighted with memory. “What would Jonathan do,” as Mack Hagood said on Phantom Power recently? Today I encountered Jonathan's humility and humor in advice on “good” writing: superbon.net/2021/04/13/o...

My friend Joyo and I are playing an ambient set on @kzsustanford.bsky.social tonight at 9 p.m. PT. If you want some gentle music for your evening, you can tune in here: kzsu.stanford.edu

Just Published: In 'Informatics of Domination,' edited by Zach Blas, @melodyjue.bsky.social, and @jsrhee.bsky.social, published by @dukepress.bsky.social, we were all set the task of writing about one entry each from Donna Haraway's famous chart in her 1984 legendary cyborg manifesto.

Hashtag fix: #scms25

Good morning #scms2025 crowd, check out our panel I23 this afternoon (in Zurich 2 aka Zurich B) where @malahern.bsky.social, @moiraweigel.bsky.social and I will disentangle and/or re-entangle *mediation* and *automation*

The Sound and Music SIG is once again collaborating with our friends in the Radio, Audio Media, and Podcasting SIG to host a mixer during the 2025 conference, on Thursday, April 3rd. Check your SIG update email for location. Here's a picture of a "mixer" for the algorithm:

Legal/medical/justice fundraiser for Rümeysa Öztürk: https://chuffed.org/project/justice-for-rumeysa-ozturk Link via her union chapter SEIU 509

SEIU MA State Council Denounces Detention of Tufts Graduate Student & SEIU 509 member Rumeysa Ozturk. Read more here: www.seiu509.org/seiu-massachusetts-state-council-denounces-detention-of-tufts-graduate-student-and-seiu-509-member-rumeysa-ozturk/

As part of the tribute to Jonathan Sterne in #SCMS25 session L6 (formerly “Rewinding Tape Across Media"), I invite everyone to send in a memory, photo, song, etc., that you associate with Jonathan. I’ll display the slides at L6 and share them virtually. Email amy(dot)skjerseth*at*ucr(dot)edu by 4/3.

like this is how to study technology

It is with profound sadness that we mourn the passing of Jonathan Sterne, an extraordinary scholar whose groundbreaking work transformed the fields of sound studies, media theory, and the cultural study of technology.

Now is a good time for faculty, esp those with tenure, to get a radio show at your university station. Talk about what we do. Recap a class topic. Give some writing tips. Talk about AI. Analyze a source. Demonstrate what a public good is. Just do what we do, on the public’s airwaves

MUSIC IN ORBIT: SATELLITE RADIO IN THE STREAMING SPACE AGE is *officially* out today with @ucpress.bsky.social. Available in a number of formats and you can now get 30% off with the promo code: UCPSAVE30 www.ucpress.edu/books/music-...