For many, the pandemic deepened our reliance on technologies, increasingly integrating them into our lives. As physical distancing became imperative, technologies—from the algorithms connecting restaurants, diners, and delivery drivers (and, in some markets, delivery robots) to the virtual and blurred backgrounds that keep untidy rooms off the Zoom screen—the pandemi[...]

Black cyberfeminism was born out of the desire to elevate the innovative, cultural production of Black users inside techno-culture. Black folks are often touted as poster children for the digital divide, but we are not interested in exploring reasons for the digital divide in this article. Why? Because this approach begins from a deficit mode, never having interrogated h[...]

My elderly relatives in India use social media far more than I do. Some are in their 80s and extremely active on WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube (i.e., they have their phones with them and are checking their feeds and posting regularly throughout the day). For some in my family, social media has been a way for relatives to communicate daily and be up to date with life �[...]

In recent years, police and prosecutors have implemented social media in a host of new ways to investigate and prosecute crimes. Social media, after all, contains a wealth of information—and misinformation—on individual users and their networks and few laws restrict what law enforcement can do with social media data. As more social media evidence fact[...]

In the age of COVID-19, one of the top 10 wearables of 2020 is an air purifier you strap on your face. Called the “Atmōs,” the mask claims to filter air 50-times better than top-grade masks. It has all the typical earmarks of wearable tech. It’s clunky, funny-looking, and expensive. It has a high-tech aesthetic, with s[...]

Since the start of the pandemic, we have spent more time in our homes than we ever expected to—working from home (if fortunate to have that possibility); learning from home; being entertained with streaming services; and doing virtual happy hours, birthdays, and holidays. Now we even have doctor’s visits and consultations with our therapists from home. The increas[...]

Glancing nervously at my watch, I tried to remember the password I had gotten at the coffee shop earlier that week—Was it a capital letter at the beginning? What was the number at the end?—stabbing at my laptop’s keyboard with increasing urgency as the seconds ticked by, closer to the beginning of the meeting that I was about to be late for. A few minutes earlier, [...]

The Social Construction of Technological Systems (MIT Press, 1987) was required reading for every science, technology, and society (STS) major at Stanford University in the 1990s, including me. The diverse papers in this volume are unified in their rejection of te[...]

I start this essay with a personal anecdote about working from home during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. By no means intended to be representative, I share my story with hopes of drawing out some insights about technology and the affective impact of “remote” work. Understanding the affective impact of remote work requires that we pay serious attention to our increas[...]