Science & Technology

Again, Again, Again: On Carmen Machado and J. Robert Lennon’s “Critical Hits” and Frank Lantz’s “The Beauty of Games”
Neuroscientist Patrick House reviews two new books on the art of repetition in video games—“Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games,” edited by Carmen Machado and J. Robert Lennon, and “The Beauty of Games” by Frank Lantz....
Patrick HouseNov 29
Whither Queer Biology? On Richard O. Prum’s “Performance All the Way Down”
Banu Subramaniam gets whiplash when she reads Richard O. Prum’s “Performance All the Way Down: Genes, Development, and Sexual Difference.” For a book engaging with queer theory, it is decidedly unqueer, she writes....
Banu SubramaniamNov 15
- Science & Technology
What Is Internet Art Actually Doing? On Omar Kholeif’s “Internet_Art”
Cal Revely-Calder finds much to appreciate, and more to decry, in Omar Kholeif’s “Internet_Art: From the Birth of the Web to the Rise of NFTs.”...
Cal Revely-CalderNov 11
The Bulgarian Computer’s Global Reach: On Victor Petrov’s “Balkan Cyberia”
Alex Langstaff calls “Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age Behind the Iron Curtain” a must-read for anyone interested in how the Iron Curtain was circumvented in the digital age....
Alex LangstaffNov 10
Everything Is Embedded in What Came Before: A Conversation with Robert M. Sapolsky
Julien Crockett interviews Robert M. Sapolsky, author of “Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.”...
Julien CrockettOct 22
State Eyes in the Sky: On the History of Helicopters in Policing
In a preview of the new LARB Quarterly, no. 39: “Air,” Nicholas Shapiro, Kate McInerny, Matyos Kidane, and Jacobo Pereira-Pacheco discuss the effects and racialized nature of police-helicopter monitoring and the noise pollution these machines produce....
Nicholas Shapiro, Kate McInerny, Matyos Kidane, Jacobo Pereira-PachecoOct 13
- LARB Quarterly
- Science & Technology
Ask Not What Your Robot Can Do for You, but What You Can Do for Your Robot
Jerrine Tan visits a LOVOT robotics lab and is unexpectedly enchanted....
Jerrine TanOct 4
A Fireball in the Marshall Islands: How a Nuclear Test Changed the World
Émile P. Torres describes how it was not the dropping of the atom bombs in 1945 but the testing of a nuclear bomb is the Marshall Islands in 1954 that marked the moment when people became preoccupied with human extinction....
Émile P. TorresSep 20
Weaponized Plumbing: On Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman’s “Underground Empire”
Krzysztof Pelc mostly agrees with Henry Farrell and Abraham L. Newman’s “Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy” but quibbles that it’s hard to draw the line between the peculiarly 21st-century type of influence they describe—which flows from fiber-optic cables, data centers, and dollar clearinghouses—and more conventional types of power....
Krzysztof PelcSep 13
Perma-noon: On Light Pollution and the Way We Talk About the Natural World
In a preview of LARB Quarterly no. 39: “Air,” Lauren Collee explores the history of light pollution....
Lauren ColleeSep 4
- LARB Quarterly
- Science & Technology
Fact, Fiction, and the Father of the Bomb: On Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”
Alex Wellerstein assesses the depiction of J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s 2023 film....
Alex WellersteinAug 30
Comment for Comment: On Michael Tedder’s “Top Eight”
Grant Sharples reviews Michael Tedder’s “Top Eight: How MySpace Changed Music.”...
Grant SharplesAug 20
- Music
- Science & Technology
Withering Green Rush: California Cannabis Breeding at a Crossroads
In a preview of LARB Quarterly no. 38: Earth, Ali Bektaş examines one of the state’s most contentious and consequential industries....
Ali BektaşAug 5
- LARB Quarterly
- Science & Technology
Nothing “Proto” About It: More on MIT Press’s New Radium Age Series
The pleasures of reading the titles from MIT Press’s new Radium Age series, writes historian of science Michael Gordin, lies in the science fiction genre not yet having congealed....
Michael D. GordinJul 27
Red and Green Make … Degrowth: On Kohei Saito’s “Marx in the Anthropocene”
Andrew Ahern reviews Kohei Saito’s “Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism.”...
Andrew AhernJul 23
- Politics and Economics
- Science & Technology
From Robots to iBots: The Iconology of Artificial Intelligence
W. J. T. Mitchell asks, What kind of intelligence does AI actually represent?...
W. J. T. MitchellJul 22
- Philosophy
- Science & Technology
Machine Voice: Programmer Fiction
Many decades before generative AI, the writer J. M. Coetzee actively engaged with machine voices, says Andrew Dean, and also grappled with the perils of “automatism,” as he called it, the tendency of language to reproduce itself....
Andrew DeanJul 19
- Fiction
- Science & Technology
L.A. and the Birth of Car Culture: On Darryl Holter and Stephen Gee’s “Driving Force”
Gary Cross reviews Darryl Holter and Stephen Gee’s “Driving Force: Automobiles and the New American City, 1900–1930.”...
Gary CrossJul 15
- History
- Science & Technology
Territorial Taxonomy: On Melissa L. Sevigny’s “Brave the Wild River”
Mary L. Holden considers Melissa Sevigny’s “Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon.”...
Mary L. HoldenJun 25
- History
- Science & Technology
On Other Intelligences: A Conversation with Mashinka Firunts Hakopian
Nora N. Khan interviews writer and artist Mashinka Firunts Hakopian about her new book, “The Institute for Other Intelligences.”...
Nora N. KhanJun 19
- Art
- Science & Technology
Romantic Myths of American Environmentalism: On Scott Chaskey’s “Soil and Spirit”
Jenny Liou reviews Scott Chaskey’s “Soil and Spirit: Cultivation and Kinship in the Web of Life.”...
Jenny LiouJun 18
- Nonfiction
- Science & Technology
Sleepwalking to Madness in Mid-Century America: On Audrey Clare Farley’s “Girls and Their Monsters”
Ellen Wayland-Smith is haunted by Audrey Clare Farley’s exposé, in “Girls and Their Monsters: The Genain Quadruplets and the Making of Madness in America,” of white American mid-century pathologies....
Ellen Wayland-SmithJun 13
$Foundational Anxieties, Modern Mathematics, and the Political Imagination$
Foundational Anxieties, Modern Mathematics, and the Political Imagination
Massimo Mazzotti uses a forgotten episode in revolutionary Naples to demonstrate the entanglement of mathematics and politics....
Massimo MazzottiJun 2
It’s Not What You Think: On Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell’s “The Smartness Mandate”
Evan Selinger reviews Orit Halpern and Robert Mitchell’s “The Smartness Mandate” and finds it “vertigo-inducing.”...
Evan SelingerMay 30
- Nonfiction
- Science & Technology