Technology and Culture最新文献

{"title":"Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica by Ignacio Siles (review)","authors":"Mónica Humeres","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926325","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica</em> by Ignacio Siles <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Mónica Humeres (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica</em> By Ignacio Siles. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023. Pp. 234. <p>What does it mean for people in a Latin American country to live in a datafied society? Bearing this question in mind, Ignacio Siles devoted five years to empirically study how people make sense of algorithms in Costa Rica, focusing on the use of three platforms: Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok. In this book, situated at the intersection of classic communication studies, human-machine communication studies, and the history of digital cultures, Siles demonstrates how individuals interact within a logic of \"mutual domestication.\" Considering that algorithms are designed to gather information and platforms have the specific purpose of keeping users engaged, his research strives to show how users, far from being passive victims, also use these technologies for their own purposes.</p> <p>While the theoretical arguments against technological determinism that inspire this study (ch. 1) may not surprise historians of technology, the subsequent subjects at hand developed in the following chapters, will indeed be of inspiration as the empirical discussion illustrates how users can transform algorithmic agency, changing the direction and form in which technology operates, while it also intervenes in their cultural practices. The five dynamics of domestication, which give titles to chapters two through six, are conceptualized as personalization, integration, rituals, conversion, and resistance. They shed light on the specific ways in which individuals comprehend and interact with the algorithms of these platforms.</p> <p>Although the study is firmly rooted in Costa Rica's reality, it has relevance beyond this particular national context. While an increasing number of scholars recognize that the role of technology in social change cannot be assessed independently of its context of interpretation and use, most research continues to prioritize the history <em>of</em> algorithmic development. Thus, Siles's book can be seen as a complement to works like J. L. Chabert and E. Barbin's <em>A History of Algorithms</em> (1999) or E. Finn's <em>What Algorithms Want</em> (2017), contributing to the understanding of the complex relationships between algorithmic production, circulation, and consumption.</p> <p>Notably, Siles makes us consider that the appropriation of algorithms is built on the depths of the desire for connection, closeness, and two-sided communication. A wide range of illustrated cases leads us to think that users feel that the close relationship of mutual recognition between content creators and audiences, historically disrupted by mass media technology, is now being reassembled by these new algorithmic mediations. As ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Tropicalizing the Portable Radio: Electronics and the U.S. Military's Battle against Fungi in the Pacific War","authors":"Boyd Ruamcharoen","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926313","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926313","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>abstract:</p><p>As the U.S. military became embroiled in \"jungle warfare\" across the Pacific during World War II, it was caught off guard by the rapid deterioration of materials and equipment in the tropics, where the air was hot, humid, and teeming with fungal spores. This article tells the story of how American scientists and engineers understood the \"tropical deterioration\" of portable radios and electronics and developed techniques to counteract it. Examining scientific efforts to prevent tropical decay reveals how exposure to tropical conditions during World War II shaped the development of portable electronics. Contributing to envirotech history and environmental media studies, this article uncovers the importance of climate proofing to the history of electronics miniaturization. Tropical deterioration, furthermore, provides a technology-focused lens for enriching our historical understanding of the tropics as an environmental imaginary.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939231","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cover Essay: La Gente, Controllers of the Universe","authors":"Peter Soland","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926310","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926310","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>abstract:</p><p>Diego Rivera's mural <i>El hombre controlador del universo</i> (1934) can be read as foreshadowing the anxieties and optimisms about atomic power that shaped popular culture in Mexico during the nuclear age. In epic fashion, Rivera's vision affirms the agency of ordinary people in the face of a technological epoch while eerily anticipating the bipolarity of the Cold War, themes that would be revisited by Julián Soler in his film <i>Santo contra Blue Demon en la Atlantida</i> (1969), which bears out the prophecy of Rivera's mural.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939241","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Revolution and Resistance in the Desert: The Guggenheim System's Impact on Nitrate Mining and Society in Atacama, 1926–31","authors":"Damir Galaz-Mandakovic, Francisco Rivera","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926317","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>abstract:</p><p>In 1926, during an economic crisis that severely impacted the mining industry, Guggenheim Brothers, the Guggenheim family business, implemented a new technological system to extract saltpeter from the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Known as the Guggenheim system, this cutting-edge technological innovation had a significant impact on regional society and facilitated the introduction of Chilean saltpeter into the global fertilizer market. For this system to succeed, however, it had to incorporate a sociopolitical strategy based on a highly hierarchical and well-controlled labor force. Through their political and cultural influence in the region, the Guggenheim family's industry transformed a remote area into a state periphery, creating new ways of inhabiting the desert within a strict framework in which workers' lives were regulated by company-imposed labor discipline. With more political power than the state, the Guggenheim family sought to suppress any social agency deemed dangerous to the production of saltpeter.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transparency: The Material History of an Idea by Daniel Jütte (review)","authors":"Kjetil Fallan","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926338","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Transparency: The Material History of an Idea</em> by Daniel Jütte <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Kjetil Fallan (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Transparency: The Material History of an Idea</em> By Daniel Jütte. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2023. Pp. 512. <p>The scope of Daniel Jütte's material history of the idea of transparency is daunting and might at first seem excessively so. Covering antiquity to the present, and with no clear-cut geographical demarcation, the study is instead defined by a single idea and a single material. Immediately narrowing it down further to equate glass with plate glass, or more precisely glass windows, and declaring that the idea of \"transparency first and foremost has been an architectural experience\" (p. 6), the project takes on more manageable—but no less impressive—dimensions. For students of material culture, this quick sidelining of nonarchitectural vitreous transparency (think of eyeglasses, drinking vessels, lighting fixtures, etc.) can appear slightly dismissive but ultimately comes off as justifiable in the name of coherency and clarity of argument.</p> <p>A key ambition of this book is to problematize the teleological bent of conventional narratives of how glass windows became a defining feature of our built environment. This is pursued chiefly by reconceptualizing the historical development of architectural glass as a complex movement of ebbs and flows, of fits and starts, of forces and counterforces. It is a long and winding road Jütte guides us along. Technological advances in the production of plate glass are given due attention, but the book places greater significance on the social, aesthetic, and material values assigned to glass when explaining its changing status. We learn that when glass was first used to seal windows in ancient Rome, it was a niche product primarily applied in bath houses, where it was particularly important to let light in without letting heat out. But it was a very different kind of building that for centuries would become the main arena for the discourse on architectural glass: the church. In explaining the extraordinary role of glass windows in church architecture, Jütte turns to the dogma of \"divine light\" in Christian theology. Crucially, the function of glass windows in churches was to let that light into the room, not to provide views of the outside. The equation of architectural glass with transparency in the metaphorical sense would have to await the emergence of glass windows one could actually see through, as well as the increasing articulation of \"openness\" as an intellectual ideal from the Reformation to the Enlightenment onward. Jütte navigates these open waters in confident and convincing ways, and he skillfully draws on a vast array of source material, from travelogues and architectural treaties to poetry and marketing material.</p> <p>One of the book's great strengths is the way it shows how ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140942465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile] ed. by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva (review)","authors":"Diego Arango López","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926322","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile]</em> ed. by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Diego Arango López (bio) </li> </ul> <em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad: Historia de la energía solar en Chile [The sun in the service of humanity: History of solar energy in Chile]</em> Edited by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva. Santiago de Chile: RIL editores, 2019. Pp. 218. <p><em>El sol al servicio de la humanidad</em>, edited by Mauricio Osses, Cecilia Ibarra, and Bárbara Silva, proposes a general history of the sun in Chile. It has 218 pages in eight chapters written by twelve different authors. This diversity is, precisely, one of the main assets of the book. However, this collective nature also causes its main weaknesses. In general, the book addresses the social, scientific, and technological relationship between a part of Chilean society and the sun, from the late nineteenth century to the present day. To introduce the book, the editors point out that in response to the current global climate crisis, societies are actively seeking new forms of nonfossil energies. This has renewed attention to solar energy and especially to photovoltaic technology. And recently, this has stimulated the interest for historical research on the relationship between human beings and their energy sources.</p> <p>Nevertheless, beyond the traditional claim of interdisciplinarity in collective works, the book does not explicitly clarify how it addresses the epistemological challenges of working from disciplines as dissimilar as history and engineering. Indeed, the main unresolved challenge of the book is to generate a theoretically coherent argument beyond the interpretative and methodological differences of each author.</p> <p>In two short chapters, Nelson Arellano Escudero elaborates the book's most compelling argument. His research proposes a four-stage periodization of the history of solar energy in Chile and demonstrates that, from its first moments on a global scale, Chile made important contributions to the global field of solar energy in terms of ideas, knowledge, and the circulation of scientists. Moreover, he proposes an epistemological and methodological approach that he calls \"intersected scales,\" which allows him to rigorously assume the multidimensionality of the factors that intervene in the history of solar energy. In fact, this author clearly demonstrates that the simple availability of diverse technologies to \"harvest\" the sun did not guarantee the development of a sustainable solar energy industry. He argues that the reasons for the underdevelopment of solar technologies in Chile are not technological, scientific, or even natural; on the contrary, they are cultural and social. Thus, the research stresses that the reproduction ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Theater of Electricity: Technology and Spectacle in the Late 19th Century by Ulf Otto (review)","authors":"Sarah Kriger","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926352","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Theater of Electricity: Technology and Spectacle in the Late 19th Century</em> by Ulf Otto <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Sarah Kriger (bio) </li> </ul> <em>The Theater of Electricity: Technology and Spectacle in the Late 19th Century</em> By Ulf Otto. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2023. Pp. xxvii + 314. <p>Ulf Otto's <em>The Theater of Electricity</em> examines a wide range of electrical presentations and technologies in use on the western European stage in the titular time period. Geographically, Otto examines mainly German cases, although the book also covers certain performances in France and England. His case studies include examples from opera, spectacular theater, dance, and technological exhibitions. Using these, Otto analyzes how electrical technologies, such as carbon-arc and incandescent lights, were integrated into and developed within theatrical material culture and how famous performances involving these and other technologies both influenced and were influenced by the cultural meaning of this new source of power. He is interested in particular in what he calls the \"aesthetic regime\" of electricity, which makes it possible to reconcile then-developing modernism with industrial materiality by permitting audiences and artists to avoid directly perceiving the labor that made electrical power possible.</p> <p>Otto shows the collaborative influences of theater, culture, and electrical technologies through eclectic historical examples; in fact, <em>The Theater of Electricity</em> often feels densely packed with these examples, each one seeming as though it could be expanded into a more detailed study. He draws on a rich variety of primary and secondary sources, exploring his thesis from many angles. Importantly, he is careful not only to describe the effects of electrical technologies on audiences and performers but also to integrate the backstage engineers and technicians to provide a fuller picture.</p> <p>However, for scholars who focus on the technological, not the theatrical, this wide-ranging approach is sometimes disorienting. This is in part because the author aims this book at an audience familiar with histories of theater but less so with histories of technology. His historiological purpose, he explains, is to criticize the tendency of history of theater to treat science and technology as distinct entities developed in the world outside the theater and then adapted for theatrical practice. Instead, he argues through example, performance histories must regard theater and technologies as interconnected, each influencing the other within the larger context of social, cultural, and economical changes. He explicitly incorporates approaches learned from histories of technology, such as Morus's work on electrical demonstrations in Victorian England, and integrates STS concepts, such as Latour's actor-network theory. Because Otto assumes readers' background in historiographie","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140926362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830 ed. by Kristin M. Girten and Aaron R. Hanlon (review)","authors":"Al Coppola","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926337","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830</em> ed. by Kristin M. Girten and Aaron R. Hanlon <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Al Coppola (bio) </li> </ul> <em>British Literature and Technology, 1600–1830</em> Edited by Kristin M. Girten and Aaron R. Hanlon. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2023. Pp. 216. <p>This volume collects eight articles exploring the relationship of literary texts and material realities, mostly in England, mainly during the long eighteenth century. Both of the editors and all of the contributors hold Ph.D.s in literature. So does the person who was asked to write this review. If only by virtue of these facts, this volume represents a provocation: What do a bunch of English professors have to contribute to the history of technology?</p> <p>If you read the thoughtful introduction by Girten and Hanlon, and especially Joseph Drury's deft afterword, \"On the Uses of the History of Technology for Literary Studies and Vice Versa,\" you'll get what strikes me as a darn good answer. The editors argue that some of the collected articles show how \"literary and aesthetic considerations contributed to the development of material technologies, while in others, the textual treatment of technology impacted how people understood and engaged with it\" (p. 10). As Drury writes, \"Technologies are ways of doing things, not just ways of knowing. As such, they extend deep into the rhythms of everyday life in a way that is less often the case with scientific knowledge\" (p. 164). Keying into the concept of affordance from design theory and the wealth of new formalist work in literary studies, which asserts that literary form \"<em>does</em> things, it doesn't simply mean things\" (p. 168), Drury argues that \"textual analysis [as] practiced by literary scholars\" is particularly suited to explore \"one of the key insights of modern science and technology studies\": that \"the function of a technical artifact depends on the particular circumstances of its use\" (p. 169). Attending to literary texts helps us investigate \"<em>imagined</em> uses of technologies\": showing us the futures that never came and the futures that yet might be, but also charting the widest circle of their reach. Not just the trials and tribulations of the innovators but also \"those who may have never had any contact with a technology but were nonetheless powerfully affected by it\" (p. 173).</p> <p>Great collections contain solid chapters that make a meaningful contribution to their subject. In this regard, this collection is more than worthy, particularly insofar as the authors employ science and technology studies to deepen the scholarly conversation about their literary objects of study. Exceptional collections do all that while gathering a body of work that shares a unity of purpose and exemplifies the theoretical approach and critical <strong>[End Page 709]</strong> interventions outlined by the editors. This collecti","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939233","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy by Sara J. Grossman (review)","authors":"Sara M. B. Simon","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926343","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy</em> by Sara J. Grossman <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Sara M. B. Simon (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy</em> By Sara J. Grossman. Durham: Duke University Press, 2023. Pp. 246. <p>In <em>Immeasurable Weather</em>, Sara J. Grossman explores the historical production of U.S. weather data through an examination of the data's inextricable proximity to power. As the full title suggests, the book spans nearly two centuries. Gross-man covers state incentives to capture weather data, the labor demands required to collect and contextualize data adequately, the eventual militarization of weather data, and the damaging legacies baked into contemporary understandings about the data's utility. Most acutely, the book shows how settler colonialism has been foundational to shaping the U.S. public's conception of data production as an objective form of truth building and as a tool of control: \"What was countable could be quantified; what was quantifiable could be known and claimed\" (p. 90). Grossman writes about these troubling hegemonic data conceptions with urgency, clarity, and beautiful attention to prose. A sociocultural history of weather data, <em>Immeasurable Weather</em> is a feat both in substance and style.</p> <p><em>Immeasurable Weather</em> begins in the early nineteenth century with stories of the steadfast workers—from \"academy professionals to weather observers and enthusiasts\" (p. 29)—who filled out weather tables tediously, helping to construct a national project of data collection. As Grossman describes, this system of volunteer labor laid the groundwork for a shared cultural narrative around knowledge production and nation building (ch. 1). The book's second chapter builds on this theme of data labor by examining the national network of white women weather data workers who compiled and calculated information for the Smithsonian Meteorological Project. Next, <em>Immeasurable Weather</em> recounts late nineteenth-century efforts to gather upper-air data automatically and remotely, through the male-dominated <strong>[End Page 720]</strong> domain of meteorological kite technologies (ch. 3). The book moves into the twentieth century by further examining the professionalization of weather data, interrogating the shift away from careful, hand-produced data forms and toward a more systematized and automated network of continuous data streams (ch. 4). In the final chapter, Grossman examines the power consolidated and obtained through satellite meteorology, noting how government agencies like the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency have supported the development of U.S. weather data systems.</p> <p>Grossman provides evidence for her claims through a fascinating collection of letters, data fo","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Different Engines: Media Technologies From Latin America by Andrés Burbano (review)","authors":"Edgar Gómez-Cruz","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926332","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Different Engines: Media Technologies From Latin America</em> by Andrés Burbano <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Edgar Gómez-Cruz (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Different Engines: Media Technologies From Latin America</em> By Andrés Burbano. Abingdon: Routledge, 2023. Pp. 220. <p>In <em>Different Engines</em>, Colombian scholar Andrés Burbano invites readers to contemplate an intriguing alternative genealogy of pervasive technologies like photography, computer music, color television, programming languages, and physical computing by looking at technologies developed in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, and Mexico. Through this lens, Burbano unravels a concealed history of technological development, innovation, and creativity in Latin America, shedding light on the intersection of cultural, social, economic, and historical factors in the innovation process. In dispelling the notion that the Global South merely consumes technologies from the North, the book asserts that Latin America is a constant hub of creative innovation, often operating independently of market logics. The book not only serves as a historical account but, more importantly, invites readers to actively participate in the construction of media and technological futures rooted in and emanating from Latin America. The overarching message is a call to reconsider technological innovation not solely within the confines of global economic power centers but as a dynamic force that can emanate from diverse and unexpected sources. Thus, the lines between \"historically significant\" and \"historically successful\" are blurred.</p> <p>Burbano employs a media archaeology perspective with an artistic sensibility, delving into the geopolitical, social, and personal circumstances surrounding the development of five distinct technologies, each of them developed in Latin America. Each chapter meticulously examines one of these technologies: photography, a color wheel for television, COMDASUAR (a personal computer), Lua (a programming language), and Wiring (an interface for physical computing). Channeling the role of an archaeologist revealing new artifacts, Burbano explores the inception, conditions, barriers, <strong>[End Page 697]</strong> and logics behind each invention, providing a comprehensive understanding of how they \"failed\" or \"succeeded.\"</p> <p>The book has two sections: \"Backtracking\" and \"Sidetracking.\" Each chapter aligns with the logic of its respective technology. Consequently, the chapters on photography and television read more like media histories, while others delve deeper into technical computational details. This approach transforms each chapter into a discrete story, with varying levels of readability.</p> <p><em>Different Engines</em> goes beyond a historical exploration, intertwining personal involvement with the technologies discussed and creating a narrative that bridges historical analysis and hands-on experience. For example, Bu","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}