Platypus

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Hawa-laat: Polluted Air in Delhi, India

 Vasundhara Bhojvaid  August 7, 2025

In 2015, I was back in India’s capital city, Delhi after two years of fieldwork in villages in rural parts of the country. On my return, the city had changed. There was something different in the atmosphere, which was leading to far-reaching, unexpected effects. For instance, during my morning commutes as I turned on the radio to one of Delhi’s most popular radio stations the radio jockey blared every hour or so, ‘Hawa-laat’! The Hindi word Hawalaat translates as a prison. If the word is broken into two parts, Hawa and Laat, it signifies a kick by the wind, as Hawa means wind or air and Laat means a kick. The radio jockey called out the word in a long and stretched manner to get the listener’s attention, slowly elongating the word ‘Hawaaaaaaaaa’ and then abruptly ending with a forceful ‘Laat!!!’, bringing out the potency of the wind (air) kick we were all getting. Following this, air pollution levels were detailed, and listeners encouraged to indulge in carpools and get their vehicular pollution levels checked. (read more...)

Recent

Patch-“working” the Field: Methodological Reorientations During a Global Pandemic

 Anushree Gupta  July 29, 2025

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I began my doctoral journey right before the pandemic set in. My project was going to critically examine the notion of “technology for social good” within the hyper-charged tech startup and innovation ecosystem in a rapidly digitizing India. I wanted to examine how top-down imaginaries rooted in technocratic governance regimes were shaping emerging communities of practice and cultures of technology-based entrepreneurship. Deeply inspired by Ho’s (2009), Irani’s (2019), and Gupta’s (2024) ethnographies, I hoped to develop my research similarly through an in-depth investigation of techno-entrepreneurial cultures from within and examine their capture of the public imagination for charting pathways to economic growth and social mobility. The idea was to try and uncover the finer threads that were weaving the tapestry of neoliberal development in what would later be deemed as “pre-pandemic” India. Enter the pandemic and the paralyzing lockdown in March 2020 that brought “normal” life to a screeching halt. A sudden and totalizing isolation was mandated by the social distancing rules meant to keep the virus out. However, it didn’t keep the feeling of disaster at bay. The scenes that unfolded during the lockdown–on national television and social media screens, both closer to home as well as globally–demanded loudly and aggressively a reconsideration of everything important and urgent, and hence, worth studying. (read more...)

Technics in the Dust

 Spencer Kaplan  July 22, 2025

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One early morning in August 2024, I boarded a coach bus in downtown San Francisco. We drove over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, past Reno, and through the Pyramid Lake Paiute Reservation. After six hours, the bus entered the Black Rock Desert and arrived at Burning Man: an annual, week-long event where 63,000 “Burners” create a temporary city dedicated to art, self-expression, decommodification, and self-reliance. (read more...)

The Sovereignty of Wearables: Indigenous Health and Digital Colonialism in Taiwan

 Aaron Su  July 15, 2025

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Now that I’ve mentioned it to her, Ms. Pacidal—an Amis Indigenous woman in her 80s—starts to fiddle with the watch on her left hand. It has a black, square, and boxy plastic face, on which shines a dimly lit screen that shows the date and time, location tracking services, and a daily step count. “It’s light,” she says. “In fact, almost forgettable!” It’s secured on Ms. Pacidal’s arm with a rubber strap, and she tells me that she has not taken it off for months. “It goes with me into the shower, when I cook, when I clean. And the battery lasts for almost a week. So it’s almost invisible,” she says. “So invisible,” a nearby care worker interrupts and laughs, “that it’s measuring her vital signs and she doesn’t even know!” (read more...)

“I Just Want to Be Happy!”: Singing, Scrolling, and Healing in a Chinese Senior’s Digital Life

 Hui Wen  July 8, 2025

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Once considered a funny truth, Douglas Adams’s “three rules of technology” now feels increasingly outdated—especially his claim that any technology introduced after age 35 is against the natural order of things and therefore threatening. Today, millions of older adults who had little prior exposure to digital tools are not only using technology, but actively embracing the new worlds it opens up. (read more...)

“Excavating” Cosmotechnical Diversity in Colombia and Sweden

 Eric Orlowski, Juan Forero-Duarte  July 3, 2025

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Silicon Valley is many things, but perhaps most importantly it serves as a symbol; a metaphor. In public discourse, Silicon Valley frequently represents a particular vision of technology and the future, and much of its lasting influence emerges not from its inventions alone but from its symbolic significance, shaping aspirations and serving as a model to be replicated elsewhere (McElroy 2024; Chan 2025). Indeed, today there exists not merely one Silicon Valley but many—the Silicon Valley of Europe (Stockholm, London, Dublin), the Silicon Valleys of India and China (Bangalore, Shenzhen), and the Silicon Valley of Africa (Lagos), among numerous others globally. While this vision of technological innovation is often celebrated as a promising pathway toward future prosperity, it simultaneously raises anxieties about what critics describe as a form of “Silicon Valley Imperialism” (McElroy 2024). In this critical perspective, the ideals, practices, and economic models originating in Silicon Valley are exported worldwide, presented as the singular viable pathway to technological advancement. Hong Kong-based philosopher Yuk Hui notably refers to it as a “unilateral” future (Hui 2017:52). (read more...)

Simulating Systemic Violence: Game Design as Speculative Ethnography in “Seven Days of Destruction”

 Mayshu (Meixu) Zhan  July 1, 2025

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Gun violence in the United States is a statistical crisis, a political flashpoint, and an everyday reality for millions. But what if we could play through its structural logics? My game Seven Days of Destruction invites players into a speculative environment where systemic poverty, miseducation, drug abuse, and inequality are not only themes but mechanics. By designing this game, I sought to intervene in the ways we narrate and engage with structural violence: not through direct representation or journalistic realism, but via allegory, abstraction, and the aesthetics of defamiliarization. (read more...)

Smart Wallets and the Shifting Boundaries of Trust in Decentralized Finance

 Kate Zogaj  June 26, 2025

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Over the past decade, decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged as a blockchain-based alternative to traditional financial systems—promising open access, automation, and the removal of institutional middlemen. But with this shift comes a profound rethinking of what trust, security, and financial autonomy actually mean. DeFi challenges the idea that banks or regulators are the default stewards of money. In their place, users are increasingly asked to trust the code that runs decentralized protocols. (read more...)