New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Technothriller: Film and the American Imagination
(MIT Press, 2026) is the first dedicated examination of popular movies
classified as “thrillers” that channel societal anxiety or dread about
advanced technologies like supercomputers, robotics, AI, biotech,
military weaponry, and surveillance culture. Technothriller is
about the changing imagination of technology within an American context
and its role in engineering some of the most profound ideologies of
modern life.

Soraya Murray
is a Professor in the Film and Digital Media Department at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. Her work explores the visual
culture of innovation, advanced computation, and its imaginaries as
imaged in popular American films, for which technology assumes a central
role. Murray’s first book, On Video Games: The Visual Politics of Race, Gender and Space (I.B. Tauris, 2018, paperback 2021), examines popular video games like Assassin’s Creed, Spec Ops: The Line, Metal Gear Solid, and Grand Theft Auto as visual culture. She currently serves as Provost of Porter College, UCSC.
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In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny sits down with Alexis Cruz, founder of Enough Consulting and former strategic advisor for governance at Meta. Cruz explores how the proliferation of AI and digital platforms has shifted global politics into an "anocracy"—a precarious gray zone situated between traditional democracy and authoritarianism.
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Since the 1990s, technologists have promoted a vision of the “cloud” as a shapeless and intangible entity. Grounding the Cloud: Urbanism in the Shadow of Data
(University of Minnesota Press, 2026) by Dr. Ali Fard peers through
this hazy façade to reveal the earthly material foundations of global
computing and data extraction. Tracing the historical and technological
development of the cloud computing paradigm, Dr. Fard exposes an
ever-evolving project in which ideologies, economic models, and
marketing images collude to shape our shared urban environments.

Demonstrating how technology’s spatial footprint now stretches to nearly every corner of the globe, Grounding the Cloud analyzes
the often-hidden infrastructures that facilitate platform
capitalism—from the mines extracting rare earth minerals in remote
regions to the vast global network of fiber-optic cables at the bottom of the oceans to the nondescript data centers
that sit on the peripheries of major urban areas. Meanwhile, with
compelling examples of smart-city initiatives and corporate campuses,
Dr. Fard shows how the future of urbanism is deeply intertwined with the
growing economies of data extraction.

Breaking
down the myth of a clean and efficient tech urbanism, this book makes
visible the complex material geographies and geopolitics that undergird
today’s most powerful and omnipresent corporations. A timely critique of
the growing agency of tech platforms in determining the future of urban
space, Grounding the Cloud offers an essential framework for understanding the shifting relationship between technology and urbanization.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
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The first chemists were Sri Lankan forgers who crafted
unimaginably strong steel millennia before it should have been
possible. They were alchemists in Roman Egypt, who designed apparatus
still in use today. They were Stone Age leatherworkers, Tang Dynasty
herbalists and Mayan stoneworkers. 

The Enlightenment is usually
credited with the origins of chemistry, but in truth, the science
blossomed gradually. As early innovators distilled, smelted, forged and
fermented their way through the centuries, they blurred science and
mysticism in search of answers to life's greatest mysteries.

In reading The Age of Alchemy: How Early Innovators Shaped Modern Chemistry (Profile Books, 2026), join
Kit Chapman on a global quest to achieve immortality, cure all disease
and transmute lead into gold as he reveals the illuminating stories of
how the alchemists first broke new ground and shaped the scientific
method.
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In
the bustling market towns and growing cities of medieval England
between 1200 and 1600, public works were the lifelines of urban society.
In Urban Infrastructure in Medieval England: Sustainability and Resilience (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Dr. Roberta J. Magnusson offers
the first comprehensive study of how medieval towns built, financed,
and sustained their defenses, bridges, streets, water systems, and harbors.

Dr.
Magnusson reveals how even modest communities, like the Warwickshire
town of Atherstone, boldly pursued projects that reshaped their futures.
Grants of tolls and taxes funded paving initiatives, bridge repairs,
and fortified walls, while enterprising lords and abbots sponsored
sluices, conduits, and quays. These efforts were not confined to
England's great cities; small towns with limited means also sought
to enhance their competitive edge, even when such investments strained
their resources. Drawing on royal records, municipal archives, and
archaeological evidence, Dr. Magnusson situates these civic undertakings
in their broader social and environmental contexts. She shows how
townsmen adapted traditional obligations of labor
and charity alongside innovative fiscal tools to sustain projects that
could span generations. Yet the balance was fragile. The crises of the
fourteenth century—famine, plague, and the harsher climate of the Little
Ice Age—undermined local resources, leaving many communities to
struggle with maintenance or watch their infrastructures decline.

At
once a history of engineering, economy, and community, this study
illuminates how medieval people conceived of security, health, and
prosperity through the material fabric of their towns. By tracing the
rise, transformation, and survival of these infrastructures, Dr.
Magnusson demonstrates how urban communities navigated centuries of
change while shaping the very landscapes in which they lived.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society