New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Contemporary digital gameplay is only accessible by navigating an
ecosystem of interfaces that support its computational nature. Account
logins, controllers, and an assortment of menus, settings, and other
peripheral-to-gameplay elements support a range of practical and
necessary functions that result from the transformation of gameplay into
digital gameplay, as well as broader shifts toward an increasingly
networked and data-driven world. The games industry has adopted
usability testing on top of play testing to evaluate how these
interfaces may influence the accessibility and success of their game
software, but how embedding gameplay within webs of software, hardware,
and platform infrastructures impacts the medium, players, and production
has not yet been fully explored.

In Thresholds of Digital Gameplay (MIT Press, 2025), Daniel
Gardner demonstrates how a series of interfaces and other elements on
the periphery of digital gameplay fundamentally alter the phenomena of
gaming. This book examines non-gameplay-centered material or mechanical
attachments that surround and enclose gameplay while directing or
mediating our experience of it—for example, access controls, character
configuration, and microtransactional storefronts.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He
received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural
studies as well as contemporary and recent history from
Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies
(LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a
professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of
Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at
the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is
editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.
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The Commodore 64 is the most significant computer of its era. From 1982 to 1994, a total of 27 million units were sold—more than any other computer from a single manufacturer afterwards. Due to its widespread use as well as its techni­cal features, the C64 has a huge international following—even to this day. The 19 contributions compiled in Commodore 64: Past, Present, and Future of a Home Computer (Projekt Verlag, 2026) illustrate the significance of the platform for the digitalization of society, the general public’s computer science knowledge, as well as digital art and culture—both in the past, present, and also in the future. Volume 5 of the »Computer Archaeology« series is partly based on the confer­ence of the same name held in 2024 at the University of Bonn and has here been supplemented with additional contributions from the fields of artificial intelli­gence, quantum computing, and digital humanities.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.
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We use avatars to play video games. We use pseudonyms on social
media. We use VPNs to mask our identities and activities. In the digital
realm, anonymity is everywhere, a persistent option for those who wish
to hide, experiment, and deceive. But we are anonymous in more contexts
than the digital. In urban settings, we routinely experience the
anonymity of the crowd, and routinely use anonymity to participate in
political life and social protests. Anonymity matters. This book is a
wager that we can learn much about society, humanity, and power by
analyzing the structural tensions and possibilities of anonymity, and by
analyzing how the economy of anonymity is changing in a modernity
defined by computation.

While many have explored the connections between surveillance,
datafication, and privacy, relatively little has been done to theorize
anonymity and its critical role in our lives. The Economy of Anonymity: Power in the Age of Identification (Stanford University Press, 2026) rebalances
our intellectual investments by expanding our understandings of
anonymity. Putting the work of Gloria Anzaldúa and Bernhard Siegert into
conversation, Hector Amaya examines the contours of anonymity in
different social domains—in relationship to individuals, institutions,
and contexts; to epistemology and ontology; and to history and society.
As the book shows, anonymity entails paradoxical possibilities—sometimes
anonymity is experienced as freedom and other times as powerlessness,
or subjugation.
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Deserts,
the Arctic, outer space—these extreme environments are often seen as
inhospitable places at the edges of our maps. But from the 1940s through
the 1960s, spurred by the diverse and unfamiliar regions the US
military had navigated during World War II, the United States defense
establishment took a keen interest in these places, dispatching troops
to the Aleutian Islands, North Africa, the South Pacific, and beyond. To
preserve the country’s status as a superpower after the war, to pave
runways and build bridges, engineers had to understand and then conquer
dunes, permafrost, and even the surface of the moon.

Sand, Snow, and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments
(University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Gretchen Heefner explores
how the US military generated a new understanding of these environments
and attempted
to master them, intending to cement America’s planetary power.
Operating in these regions depended as much on scientific and cultural
knowledge as on military expertise
and technology. From General George S. Patton learning the hard way
that the desert is not always hot, to the challenges of constructing a
scientific research base under the Arctic ice, to the sheer
implausibility of modeling
Martian environments on Earth, Dr. Heefner takes us on a wry expedition
into the extremes and introduces us to the people who have shaped our
insight into these extraordinary environments. Even decades after the
first manned space flight,
plans for human space exploration and extraplanetary colonization are
still based on what we know about stark habitats on Earth.

An entertaining survey of the relationship between environmental history and military might, Sand, Snow, and Stardust
also serves as a warning about the further transformation of the
planet—whether through desertification, melting ice caps, or attempts to
escape it entirely.

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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This book is available open access.

For
more than six decades, the public has been promised that computers will
revolutionize politics, both nationally and internationally. In SimPolitics: America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers
(MIT Press, 2026), Dr. Fenwick McKelvey traces the entwined history of
politics and computers from the 1960s to the late 1980s. He shows how
programmers, consultants, academics, political scientists, and peace
activists all worked—sometimes in tandem, sometimes not—to build
simulations to win campaigns, predict coups, forecast the future, and render politics as legible as a spreadsheet.

Drawing
on novel archival and historical research, Dr. McKelvey recounts the
history of efforts to simulate politics by building models of elections,
voters, and international relations. Comparing attempts in the United
States to simulate domestic electoral politics and international
affairs, he reveals the unexamined connections and conflicts between the
two projects. His book provides a helpful guide to taking stock of
exaggerated claims that AI and technology will fix politics, while
presenting the long history of such promised technological fixes.

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