Everyday Adventures with Unruly Data by Melanie Feinberg
"We hear the word “data” on a daily basis, perhaps in terms of big data, open data, raw data, data management plans, data points, data analyses, data visualization, or data-driven decision making. There are data related to patient care, consumer behavior, public health, socioeconomics, grant-funded research, journalism, gun violence, library usage, and more—the list goes on."
Reviewed by Hannah Rutledge
Surveillance Capitalism in America ed. by Josh Lauer and Kenneth Lipartito
"The concept of “surveillance capitalism,” first coined in 2014, emphasizes how technologies designed to extract massive amounts of data from the raw material of human behavior have become central to a hyperexploitative new economic order of intensified inequality and frightening concentrations of power."
Reviewed by Nikita Shepard
The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media by Alice E. Marwick
"Alice E. Marwick’s timely and perceptive book, The Private Is Political: Networked Privacy and Social Media, is a stimulating work. In it, Marwick, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, tackles one of the most pressing issues of our time—privacy."
Reviewed by Sheila B. Lalwani
Resisting AI: An Antifascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence by Dan McQuillan
"In Cadwell Turnbull’s story “Monsters Come Howling in Their Season,” a mid-twenty-first-century artificial intelligence on the island of St. Thomas is democratically governed by its users.1 It aids them in adapting to and mitigating climate change; when it misbehaves they can elect to adjust its settings. Over the course of the story, the protagonist begins to trust the system with his own life’s data and accepts the terms of service."
Reviewed by Nathan Schneider
Electrifying Mexico: Technology and the Transformation of a Modern City by Diana Montaño
"On september 27, 1960, the Mexican government nationalized its electricity system. After Don Pedro Romero de Terreros illuminated the Zócalo of Mexico City on November 2, 1850, electricity transformed the daily life of the capital and the country. During this period, electricity transformed from a “beautiful unknown” experienced in the city to a technology destined to cross valleys and mountains in Mexican territory."
Reviewed by Fabian Prieto-Nañez
Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt by Andrew Simon
"In his book Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt, Andrew Simon presents a thought-provoking view of the fusion of technology with society through a comprehensive analysis of how a portable, affordable artifact generated broad changes in cultural, religious, and political spheres in Egypt between 1970 and 1990."
Reviewed by Ignacio Moreno Nava