Jeffrey Yost

1960 Lucky Strike ad with woman smiling as she holds a lit cigarette--Wikimedia Commons

Just published in Interfaces-- tremendously insightful & timely essay by U. of Toronto's @hopelatta.bsky.social "People-in-Progress: 'Debate Escrow,' and the Language of Delay in Tech Research on Adolescent Digital Health." #histsci

cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces

I’m pleased to announce that my forthcoming book, _Deadly Divide_, will be out in spring 2026 with @uncpress.bsky.social with the help of my fabulous editor Cate Hodorowicz (@catehodorowicz.bsky.social).

1960 Lucky Strike ad with woman smiling as she holds a lit cigarette--Wikimedia Commons

Just published in Interfaces-- tremendously insightful & timely essay by U. of Toronto's @hopelatta.bsky.social "People-in-Progress: 'Debate Escrow,' and the Language of Delay in Tech Research on Adolescent Digital Health." #histsci

cse.umn.edu/cbi/interfaces

UMN HSTM group photo from the Pavek Museum today!

Grateful to Pavek Museum Curator @pelithehistorian.bsky.social for inviting me to speak on AI history today at The Pavek Museum & UMN HSTM colleagues & family making the trip to the burbs for it-- @honghongtinn.bsky.social, @waynesoon.bsky.social, & Jennifer Alexander !! #histsci

Flyer of talk w headshot

Talk tomorrow on history, power, & ironies & paradoxes of rhetorical & infrastructural appropriations of AI. #histsci

Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and AI - New York, United States job with Stony Brook University | 37879289 Assistant Professor in Rhetoric and AI Location: Stony Brook, NY Open Date: Aug 28, 2025 Deadline: Oct 06, 2025 at 11:59 PM Eastern...

jobs.chronicle.com/job/37879289...

This is a good job for a critical scholar of ai! please apply and send around your networks

I am giving a public lecture at the Pavek Museum on the 20th. Connecting Conversations – "Artificial Intelligence: Braiding Irony, Paradox, and Possibility."

Pavek Museum 3517 Raleigh Ave, St. Louis Park, Minnesota. September 20 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm. #Histsci

Listeners Like Who? How public radio has perpetuated racial inequality since its founding—and how journalists of color are challenging white dominance in the workplace and on the public airwaves

Many congratulations to Laura Garbes (University of Minnesota) on the publication of her pathbreaking sociology of the culture, idealism, and contradictions of public media. Out today on Princeton University Press.

Front cover of Just Code: Power, Inequality and the Political Economy of IT. Black lettering in bold with trailing pastel colors.

Just Code, just published!!! Open Access of full book is now freely available, see link below, made possible by @sloanfoundation.bsky.social grant to CBI! Am so honored to partner w Con & work alongside 19 stellar, fellow interdisciplinary authors on this book! #histtech

cse.umn.edu/cbi/just-cod...

Margaret W. Rossiter, 81, Dies; Wrote Women Scientists Into History

Saddened to hear of the passing of Dr. Rossiter, who told the stories of the many forgotten and underappreciated women of science.

Like many women of her generation, she survived academia by developing a tough exterior, but her support for jr women, myself included, was unwavering.

RIP, Margaret.

Cover of Island Tinkerers, which is an illustration of Taiwan on a map with cartoonish images of digital tech and people using digital tech.

Esteemed colleague in HSTM & CBI Asst. Prof. of HST & ECE, UMN @honghongtinn.bsky.social is giving ECE's Colloquium talk from her tremendous book Island Tinkerers on Sept. 4th 4 to 5:15 pm C. in 3-230 Keller Hall, U of MN MPLS. #Histsci

This is... just... very bad on so many levels. And the worst thing is that I bet this guy thinks he's been super progressive and enlightened in making his servile avatar appear as a young, Black woman.

Book cover of treed, hilly geography washed in pink-orange-purple tones. Title: “Alaska” is Not a Blank Space: Unsettling Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey by Julianne Warren part of Cambridge Elements series in Indigenous Environmental Research.

Grateful to so many in announcing today’s launch of *”Alaska” is Not a Blank Space: Unsettling Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey* (@universitypress.cambridge). Free downloads now til 9/11/25+for print order here: doi.org/10.1017/9781.... (I recommend checking out the whole series, starting with Gahman, et al!)

Pynchon, In His Absence In a footnote to “Fast Learner: The Typescript of Pynchon's V. at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin,” Luc Herman and John Krafft note that the letters Corlies (Cork) Smith graciously provided them for...

Nice brief textual and archival work here from @albertrolls.bsky.social on Pynchon's V., which at the end explains why my editions persists with errors fixed elsewhere orbit.openlibhums.org/article/id/3...

Cover-reveal of the first book in the @degruyterbrill.bsky.social book series 'Pop Culture in Context' I co-edit with @lizwfab.bsky.social & @hermioneclone.bsky.social! Congrats to Vaughn @gvaughnjoy.bsky.social & many thanks to @davideisler.bsky.social,our editorial director,for all your hard work!

One thing that really burns me: ‘learning’ tech/algorithms were showing how they could be a tool for good… aiding translators, supporting disabled folk, hell, matching paint colors. But #AI techbros wanted to replace humans and worship an (unobtainable!) artificial brain.

Out now! Summary Report: Workshop on the Geopolitics of Critical Minerals and the AI Supply Chain www.ias.edu/sites/defaul...

The report highlights how AI’s expansion is tied to critical minerals, energy, water, land, and labor—and why interdisciplinary approaches are essential for AI governance.🧵

👀

Thanks so much Eileen!!!

9. Pushing Fintech: Testing Mobile Money, Financial Inclusion, and “Rural Women” in Peru 212 Mariel García Llorens 10. Corporate Culture Made Material: Ephemera and In/equity at Control Data Corporation, 1957–1975 236 Elizabeth Semler 11. Reassessing the Iconic and Unbundling the Ironic: IBM System Engineering, Gender, and Antitrust 255 Jeffrey R. Yost 12. Y2K and the Politics of Labor 274 Dylan Mulvin PART III. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GRAPPLE WITH CODE? 13. From Programming to Platform Expertise: Technical Reformers and the Reinvention of Institutions 295 Shreeharsh Kelkar 14. Computers as Colonizers: British Computing Companies and Indian Technological Resistance, 1955–1975 325 Mar Hicks 15. The Mask of Humanity: Manipulation and Psychopathy at the Human-Computer Interface 344 Jennifer Alexander 16. Cryptography Goes Public: Contesting the Meaning of a New Field in the 1970s United States 372 Gili Vidan 17. Nodes and Codes: Iterating with the State in México 388 Héctor Beltrán Epilogue: Artificial Intelligence—Braiding Irony, Paradox, and Possibility 411 Jeffrey R. Yost and Gerardo Con Díaz Contributors 433 Index 435

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Just Code
Power, Inequality, and the Political Economy of IT

Edited by
Jeffrey R. Yost and Gerardo Con Díaz

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Encoding an Analytic. 1 Gerardo Con Díaz and Jeffrey R. Yost PART I. HOW DOES CODE BECOME BOTH A SUBJECT AND A MEANS OF GOVERNANCE? 1. Delivering Solidarity: Platform Architecture and Collective Contention in China’s Platform Economy 23 Ya-Wen Lei 2. Consent Code and Default Dramas 64 Meg Leta Jones 3. A Mirror, Not a Glass Door: Legal Code and Software Code in Practice 87 Justin Petelka, Megan Finn, Janaki Srinivasan, Elisa Oreglia, and A. P. Janani 4. Algorithmic Collusion, Modern Monopolies, and Their Market Power 109 Hamid R. Ekbia 5. Reopening the Politics of Openness in the Age of Cloud Computing: Reflections on Recent FOSS Relicensing 127 Shun-Ling Chen 6. The Great E-book Conspiracy 148 Gerardo Con Díaz PART II. HOW DOES CODE BECOME INFUSED WITH SOCIAL VALUES, ASSUMPTIONS, AND BIASES? 7. The Standard Head 171 Stephanie Dick 8. Spanning Space and Time Barriers: Computerized Conferencing, Disability, and Citizenship 193 Elizabeth Petrick

1/2
Just Code
Power, Inequality, and the Political Economy of IT

Edited by
Jeffrey R. Yost and Gerardo Con Díaz

Table of Contents

Front cover of Just Code: Power, Inequality and the Political Economy of IT. Black lettering in bold with trailing pastel colors.

Just Code, just published!!! Open Access of full book is now freely available, see link below, made possible by @sloanfoundation.bsky.social grant to CBI! Am so honored to partner w Con & work alongside 19 stellar, fellow interdisciplinary authors on this book! #histtech

cse.umn.edu/cbi/just-cod...

studying up for the coming ‘reindustrialization’ discourse

More cities need lines & more lines are needed per city, as networks expand, so will ridership. Mpls-St. Paul has two successful lines connecting the
downtowns of Twin Cities, the University of MN, & Mall of America. One new line, SW, & one ext. N in works IF fed committed dollars remain. #lightrail

Just posted, at last: A review of one of my favorite recent books, Benjamin Shestakovsky's "Behind the Startup"—the most rigorous and precise account I've seen of how the dominant startup model produces inequality: muse.jhu.edu/article/968586

Cover of The Chinese Computer, blue and gray with a woman sitting at a keyboard/machine and QWERTY keys magnified above with smaller Chinese characters on the keys.

Sharing a book review of Thomas S. Mullaney The Chinese Computer that I just published in the British Journal of the History of Science.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Huge thank you to AIP (@aip.bsky.social) History and Rebecca Charbonneau (@rebeccacharbon.bsky.social) for spotlighting my latest article! 🤩 #ligo #physics #history #histstem

Post-political clouds: Suspended failure in Google’s data centre development - Constance Carr, Karinne Madron, 2025 Digital corporations and governments alike are driving a post-political agenda around the expansion of data centres – the infrastructural backbone of expanding ...

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Historian Mar Hicks on why nothing about AI is inevitable The author of Programmed Inquality peers through the AI hype by recalling the rise of past technologies.

"One of the throughlines in the history of technology is that big, new infrastructural technologies often make more uncompensated labor. People may have to do more things to essentially shepherd those technologies along and make sure that they don’t break down..."
www.fastcompany.com/91384078/not...