A humanistic comparative study of cochlear implant technology as an early form of a neural-computer interface. 

Perhaps no medical device has sparked more popular discussion of the "dangers and opportunities of technology" than the cochlear implant (CI). The first true bionic device, CIs (re)produce an absent 'normal' human function. Despite debates about the ramifications of CI technology, few book-length studies of the technology exist and these overwhelmingly emphasize U.S. and European perspectives. This collaborative and comparative project will document the impacts of the technology itself, the influence of the global corporations that market it, and the range of ways implants have been domesticated, maintained, and re-interpreted. At this pivotal moment for the development and global dissemination of neuroprosthetics, with brain implants featured ubiquitously in the headlines, this multi-disciplinary, international project will serve both a documentary and a comparative function, as well as provide a platform through our conference and published work for alternative narratives of CI use.

Research and writing a multi-author volume on the ethics of biotechnology. 

This collaborative research project aims to provide ethical guidance for conservation applications of biotechnologies such as gene editing, synthetic biology, and gene drives. The project team, which includes experts in conservation philosophy, animal ethics, environmental justice, and Indigenous philosophy, will develop conceptual and evaluative resources that are inclusive of a broad range of values and informed by high-rate anthropogenic change. Project outcomes will include academic publications with interdisciplinary reach, conference presentations at interdisciplinary venues, and public-facing scholarship.

An ethnographic study of social media content creators comparatively analyzing folk theories and current academic theories of algorithmic governance. 

This project seeks collaborative team funding to strengthen an equal partnership between academic researchers at Arizona State University and community researchers from The Online Creators’ Association (TOCA) to gather community-based knowledge that TikTok content creators circulate to understand and resist algorithmic governance. We will conduct interviews to map how creators conceptualize the forces that impact their everyday lives: algorithmic content curation and opaquely-defined moderation. Participants will be recruited from TOCA, which is predominantly composed of people from historically marginalized groups. We will publish two academic papers: 1) a content analysis identifying folk theories; 2) a comparative analysis between folk theories and current academic theories of algorithmic governance. We seek to reveal overlapping narratives and produce a shared vocabulary to enable academics and community members to more effectively intervene in the spread of mis/disinformation.

An ethnographic study of beginning teachers in Los Angeles and Hawai’i and their understanding of ChatGPT’s influence on teaching in culturally and linguistically diverse classrooms. 

The aim of this project is to understand the implications and interactions of generative artificial intelligence (AI) upon preservice teachers’ identities and practices within the two culturally and linguistically diverse contexts of Los Angeles and Hawai‘i. Preservice or beginning teachers will be recruited to engage with Chat GPT through an interactive module. Participants’ responses to module prompts and interview questions will be analyzed to examine how preservice teachers make meaning of teaching with Chat GPT. Thick, contextualized description may surface tensions experienced by preservice teachers from diverse backgrounds, when positioning ChatGPT as a cultural versus neutral educational tool. Outcomes from this project have the potential to inform education communities of more culturally sustaining, equitable, and just ways to utilize ChatGPT in classrooms.

The humanistic analysis of the changing demographics related to purchasing and owning firearms in the United States. 

Gun ownership in the United States has skyrocketed in recent years. New gun owners are 40% of purchasers, and women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and self-defined “liberals” are arming themselves at unprecedented rates. Focusing on the changing demographics of gun ownership, this project seeks to 1) understand the symbolic dimensions of firearms as a technology; 2) understand the relationship of this technology to gun cultures; and 3) explore the implications of this relationship for gun violence. Gun research in the United States is largely dominated by a focus on epidemiology and criminology, i.e. what happens after the technology is used as a weapon of destruction. To understand and ameliorate the roots of this violence, we also need to understand the cultures and meanings of gun ownership and gun technology prior to its use.

Research and writing leading to a scholarly monograph about the modern history of transportation technology in Japan.

The Rickshaw and the Railroad examines the intellectual and social history of transportation in nineteenth through twenty-first century Japan. It argues that transportation is a keyword of modern history. It is a contested concept that historical actors and historians alike use to symbolize the past, define the modern and pre-modern eras, and critique the present and envision the future. Interweaving the histories of rickshaw pullers with human-car railway pushers, truck drivers, and parcel delivery workers, The Rickshaw and the Railroad shows that, (a) for over one hundred years, the promise that cheaper and faster transportation would benefit society at large has been used to override the concerns of those who sought to protect transport as a livelihood; and, (b) on a broad scale transport change has continually reproduced, rather than eliminated, the need for precarious human labor in transportation systems.

Research and writing leading to a scholarly monograph about the modern history of the use of natural gas in Iran. 

This project focuses on the history natural gas in 20th-century Iran, using the energy source—as both a varied material substance and an object of discourse—as a lens to study the country’s developmental programs, its charged politics of modernization, and their connection to the natural world. It follows the movement of gas from underground reservoirs through infrastructures of refining and distribution into everyday life, in the process exploring the roles of planners, oil firms, industrialists, consumers, mountain ranges, sedimentary rock, and natural gas itself. Drawing upon perspectives from Middle Eastern history, science and technology studies, and political ecology, it contributes to our knowledge of modern Iran, the creation of fossil fuel energy systems in the Global South, the role of anticolonial politics in the rise of hydrocarbon energy regimes and the climate crises they have spawned, and the theorization of precarity as an entrepot to studying human-nature interactions.

Research and development of a scholarly monograph on the history of the computational approaches to healthcare, 1960s-2000s. 

This project seeks to determine the implicit humanistic values embedded in the design and use of healthcare technologies. Through archival research and analysis of audiovisual media produced by medical professionals and technology developers, this project will explain how early ideas about emerging healthcare technologies transformed patient care by envisioning human bodies as quantitative data. This move not only excluded the messy, non-linear, emotional, and unpredictable aspects of embodied illness experiences, it also excluded the experiences of gendered, racialized, and minoritized patients. By examining how future uses of computers in healthcare were imagined from the 1960s onward, this project will show how the development of computational approaches to patient care worked precisely by erasing the human elements of illness and healing. A resulting book manuscript, The Visual History of Computational Health, will narrate the throughline from these early imaginings to the present.

Research and writing a book on the ethical impact of distraction by digital technology. 

The founder of Napster said that digital distractions like notifications and ads are made to “consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible… God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.” This is typical of Silicon Valley’s “move fast, break things” ethos. Companies change our lives and minds without knowing the risks and opportunities. One risk is familiar: digital distractions undermine our capacity to pay attention. The Spontaneity Deficit will identify another risk. Digital technologies not only make us more distracted; they also change how we are distracted. Our minds used to wander during idly times like riding a bus or walking. Digital distractions are instead designed to leave us “stuck” on a salient topic, such as moral outrage or doom-scrolling. This deficit of mind-wandering––the eponymous spontaneity deficit––is a problem because our idly ramblings are a fount of creative insight.