New Books in Science, Technology, and Society

Despite the importance of innovation for the growth of firms, industries, and the national economy, the strategic tools available to effectively manage and create new technologies are often neglected by entrepreneurs and corporate managers. The Management of Innovation: Managing and Creating Technology Capital (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2024) examines how firms can leverage and create technology capital. The analysis considers the two key stages of the innovation process: technology management and technology creation. Each stage involves complex managerial decisions related to resource allocation and the assessment of relevant costs and benefits. This book examines the most frequent trade-offs that shape the innovation process across these two stages. It also provides an introduction to intellectual property and patent analytics.
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The happier the teacher, the better the learning experience--for instructor and student alike. With this equation at its core, The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes (U Oklahoma Press, 2026) provides practical guidance for making distance learning infinitely more enjoyable and effective, and for improving the online teaching experience in asynchronous classes that often take place in Learning Management Systems (LMSs) like Canvas or Blackboard Learn, and where instructors and students rarely interact in real time, contributing to low completion rates. One of the most pervasive challenges in distance learning is the absent online instructor; and one clear reason for this problem is the often unsatisfying nature of teaching online. A leading voice on online education, Flower Darby draws on the sciences of learning, emotion, and motivation, three decades of her own teaching, extensive research on online student experience, and the stories of joyful online teachers to present concrete tips for making online teaching more rewarding. The key, Darby suggests, is learning to love teaching online. To that end, her book offers instructors accessible, inspiring, common-sense hacks for connecting with students, finding passion, navigating the structural inequities of higher ed, and more--all with a focus on building rapport and relationships, the central ingredients of happiness and satisfaction. These time-tested strategies and hard-won insights promise to help online teachers find meaning, purpose, and, yes, joy in their work--and, consequently, to fulfill the enormous, largely untapped potential of online education.
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Tracing the cultural history of play--from Fluxus to SimCity Games and gamified activities have become ubiquitous in many adults' lives, and play is widely valued for fostering creativity, community, growth, and empathy. But how did we come to our current understanding of what it means to play? The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play charts the transformation of notions of playfulness beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, when a legion of artists, academics, and engineers developed new ways of theorizing, structuring, and designing ludic activity. Through examples ranging from experimental Fluxus games to corporate role-playing exercises and from the Easy Bake Oven to Tetris, The Impossible Reversal presents four styles of playfulness characteristic of the "era of designed play": the impossible reversal, which puts a player in a seemingly hopeless scenario they must upend with a tiny gesture; expending the secret, which involves silly rules that gain an obscure power and require players to embrace failure; simulated freedom, a satiric criticism of the ordinary world; and oblique repetition, a way of playing that stumbles toward unimaginable outcomes through simple, meaningless, and endlessly iterated acts. A unique genealogical account of play as both concept and practice, The Impossible Reversal illuminates how playfulness became essential for understanding cultural, technical, and economic production in the United States. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

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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Lithium is necessary for the green transition but its mining comes with significant environmental and social harms. This is the conundrum at the core of decarbonisation, which host Licia Cianetti discusses with Thea Riofrancos. They talk about how Riofrancos’s book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (published by W.W. Norton in 2025) helps us understand the local and global politics of lithium extraction and the lessons it holds for a more just green transition.

Transcript here

Thea Riofrancos is Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. She researches the politics of climate change and of resource extraction and is also the author of Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020) and co-author of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019)

Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
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Who makes a living from the music industry? In Music Technology Panic Narratives Beyond Piracy: From Taping to Napster to TikTok (Anthem Press, 2026) David Arditi, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington, looks at the history of technology in the music industry. This history illustrates the way the industry continues to profit even as artists struggle to make money. The book charts the development and evolution of listeners’ uses of formats and technologies, from cassette tapes and CDs through sharing to streaming, demonstrating how the record industry has initiated moral panics to stop threats to their profits. This is in a context where listeners and independent labels have found new ways to engage with music because of these same formats and technologies. An engaging and accessible overview of issues central to creative industries, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary culture.
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