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

A smart watch worn on an older woman's wrist.
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...)

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Person in turquoise sweater and knit hat sitting on a chair using a mobile phone, with traditional Chinese wooden architecture and signage in the background.

“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Once considered a funny truth, Douglas Adams’s “three rules of technology” now feels increasingly outdated—especially his claim that any technology introduced after age 35 is against the natural order of things and therefore threatening.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...)

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City scape with unicorn

“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...)

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A psychedelic landscape featuring vividly colored skies, purple mountains, silhouetted trees, and floating whale-like figures.

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...)

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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...)

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The image shows a museum display featuring an early model of a diving suit, diving shoes, weights, and a helmet. Additionally, an old book is exhibited, displaying sketches of diving suits and helmets.

Submarine Cyborgs: At Sea with Haraway and Jue

Elexis Williams Gray June 24, 2025
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It is a Tuesday in May in upstate New York, and the world is greening all around me. A little rain falls from a clouded-over sky scattering bright neon gray light wherever it catches. Don’t be fooled by the stacks of books and papers beside my desk, or the false chiming of distant bells at the window. I am hunting a creature of the sea – a hybrid species, intimate with the queer spatialities of submarine worlds, the manfish. (read more...)

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Vivette García Deister apresenta um livro enquanto segura um microfone em uma mão e uma folha de papel na outra.

STS Academic Publishing As a Work of Service and Hope: A Conversation with Vivette García-Deister

Vivette García-Deister June 19, 2025
Este contenido también está disponible en español
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Thinking, writing, and publishing from Latin America pose significant challenges, especially for younger researchers. Academic work is affected by various kinds of asymmetries, but when we add to this the centrality of the English language and the predominance of theoretical perspectives from the Global North, the landscape becomes even more challenging. In response to this situation, several projects have emerged that view publishing as an intervention in the politics of knowledge. One such project that aims to undo these asymmetries and contribute to more horizontal practices is Tapuya: Latin American Science Technology and Society, an international journal that fosters conversations between the global North and South and helps its authors navigate the complexities of diverse languages and traditions of critical thinking. On this occasion, we had the opportunity to speak with Vivette García-Deister, the editor-in-chief of this journal. In this interview, she talks about why she considers academic publishing a service, how some editorial processes —such as reading, reviewing, and providing feedback— can theoretically and methodologically support young authors’ texts, and why publishing can be a form of hope. (read more...)

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The image shows a graffiti mural on a street wall. At the top of the image, a large umbrella for sun protection and the sky can be seen. The graffiti features a series of faces representing the diversity of the local population. In the center, there is a middle-aged man with a mustache; to the left, a boy with features next to a bird. On the right, there is an teenage girl, a pelican, and a titi monkey.

Peasant Reserve Zones as Techno-socio-environmental Assemblages

Julián Medina-Zárate, Nicolas Lara-Rodriguez June 12, 2025
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Peasant Reserve Zones (Zonas de Reserva Campesina, or ZRCs in Spanish) constitute a legal framework established to organize territories historically inhabited by peasant communities in Colombia. Designed as part of agrarian reform efforts, these zones are intended to promote environmental conservation and socioeconomic sustainability in rural areas. The ZRCs provide peasant organizations with a set of tools to structure their social, economic, political, and environmental governance. However, their effectiveness in achieving social and environmental objectives remains a subject of ongoing research across disciplines such as ecology, sociology, and economics. Existing studies yield inconclusive results, instead highlighting the complexity of the dynamics surrounding this institutional mechanism.   (read more...)

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