Edward Jones-Imhotep

The IHPST is hiring! Assistant Professor - Philosophy of Science and/or Technology.

jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-...

Congrats to Prof. @ejonesimhotep.bsky.social on becoming co-editor of the Inside Technology series by @mitpress.bsky.social! Check out our curated list of @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcasts related to the series ihpst.utoronto.ca/news/profess...

“Living Fossils”: Anatomies of Race and Reproduction in Modern Egypt Abstract. This article traces the scientific afterlife of the mummy Queen Henhenit from excavation and circulation to examination and display in twentieth-

Taylor M. Moore traces the scientific afterlife of the mummified body of Queen Henhenit in “Living Fossils,” highlighting the implications of the use of women’s bodies in the practice of medicine and the production of race science in modern Egypt. 🗃️

This award-winning study examines how technological failures defined nature and national identity in Cold War Canada. "The Unreliable Nation" is now available in paperback: mitpress.mit.edu/978026205120...

The Unreliable Nation Throughout the modern period, nations defined themselves through the relationship between nature and machines. Many cast themselves as a triumph of technolog...

The Unreliable Nation, out in paperback today.

U.S. threats to Canadian sovereignty, against the backdrop of Soviet expansionism … told as a history of nature and technology and in the early Cold War.

@mitpress.bsky.social

mitpress.mit.edu/978026205120...

Bay Area! I'll be giving work at both Berkeley and Stanford this week. @Stanford: "Computing, Intimately," which will be a hands-on demo of my programming language, Ludus, with a pre-circulated paper of mine about "computational transitional objects." shc.stanford.edu/stanford-hum...

Three Fallacies: Alondra Nelson's Remarks at the Elysée Palace on the Occasion of the AI Action Summit | TechPolicy.Press Dr. Nelson was an invited speaker at a dinner hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Palais de l'Élysée on February 10, 2025.

I was pleased to attend a State Dinner, hosted by Pres. Macron, for participants of the AI Action Summit. It was an honor to be invited to deliver remarks at Elysee Palace on Three Fallacies in how we think about AI, now published @techpolicypress.bsky.social www.techpolicy.press/three-fallac...

So saddened to hear about the passing of Nicolas Nova @nicolasnova.bsky.social. I never met him in person, but was lucky enough to contribute to his wonderful special edition on failure in Techniques & Culture, "En cas de panne."
editions.ehess.fr/ouvrages/ouv....

So brilliant and so kind.

Ma contribution sur @franceculture.fr pour rendre hommage à Nicolas Nova. Un chercheur brillant, connaisseur curieux de nos mondes connectés.
Il avait 47 ans et venait d’achever son ouvrage « Persistance du merveilleux », un essai qui éclaire le petit peuple fabuleux de nos machines ✨Tristesse👇

What lies beneath the ice of our fascination with the North? | Aeon Essays The top of the globe has always meant fantasy, myth, adventure. What explains the icy northern grip on our imagination?

I wrote about what the current fascination with the icy far north means in this moment back in 2016; it seems relevant again.
aeon.co/essays/what-...

The New Artificial Intelligentsia | Los Angeles Review of Books In the fifth essay of the Legacies of Eugenics series, Ruha Benjamin explores how AI evangelists wrap their self-interest in a cloak of humanistic concern.

"The only AI I want to discuss is ancestral intelligence—the insights, experiences, and wisdom that grow under the rubble of progress." An incredible essay from @ruha9.bsky.social on the insidious philosophies that power AI evangelism. Must read 👇🏾
lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

Gross as this is, this feels like an effort to replace the labor of influencers crucial to the social media economy. Automating content creation through AI bots and another episode in the long sordid history of Black automata Edward Jones-Imhotep is studying. (His forthcoming book is so necessary).

Thanks for the shout-out! For anyone interested, this piece in @wired.com gives a fuller picture. From the amazing @virginiaheffernan.bsky.social .

www.wired.com/story/histor...

Elegant woman seated with a book in her lap gazing at the viewer.

Formerly enslaved, Anna Julia Cooper earned an MA in math in 1887 & a PhD. Educator, leader, democracy activist, her 1892 book championed women's rights. “The cause of freedom is not the cause of a race or a sect, a party or a class - it is the cause of human kind, the very birthright of humanity.”

Enjoy James! And all the very best for the holidays.

Hidden in Plain Sight: Discerning Signal from Noise in the Expanded Laboratory Environment What happens when disturbances in precision measurement instruments are indecipherable to physicists despite extensive review of the instruments and their outputs? How do physicists parse instrument o...

Really enjoyed the lively conversation tonight at the Yale Hist & Phil of Physics Working Group about my latest article in @hsnatsci.bsky.social on the blurring of field and laboratory with precision instruments like LIGO's interferometers! Article available here: online.ucpress.edu/hsns/article...

Thank you so much for this! Could you add me, please?

YouTube video by Rotman Institute of Philosophy Pragmatism & The Philosophy of Science: Fall 2024 Conference - Alisa Bokulich

Recordings of talks from the conference Pragmatism & the Philosophy of Science held at Rotman Institute at Western U Sept 2024 are now on Youtube!
Here's my talk on "The Geodetic & Metrological Roots of C.S. Peirce’s Pragmatism" if you're interested...
#HPS #pragmatism #Peirce #geodesy #metrology

Outstanding thread on the little-known origins of African studies in Europe.

A graphic with a purple background that is an image of a grey sphere landing in a net. Beneath this is a chartreuse bar with black lettering: Five Theses on the Gravity of Platforms

Last year at the Institute for Advanced Study, I had the great pleasure of convening an amazing group of multidisciplinary scholars on the topic of the platform in society. One of our collective efforts was "5 Theses on the Gravity of Platforms" www.ias.edu/stsv-lab/fiv...

Bsky profile for Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at U of Toronto

Welcome to bsky the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the Uni of Toronto! #HPS
@ihpst-uoft.bsky.social

Fantastic open access article on the history & historiography of technology in modern South Asia by @amandazillo.bsky.social (which I had a small part in bringing to publication). She invites us to rethink hierarchies of technical authority and the notion of “vernacular” technical knowledge.

Fara Dabhoiwala · A Man of Parts and Learning: Francis Williams Gets His Due The only certainty about the picture is that it shows Francis Williams. No one has ever been able to discover who...

Absolutely brilliant piece by Fara Dabhoiwala in @londonreview.bsky.social on the polymath Francis Williams. You'll never see this portrait, or the history of 18th-century science, the same way again.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Grandma’s ‘Bawena’: On the Kinship of Plants and People My family introduced me not only to plant knowledge but also to a frame through which I place myself into my environment and universe.

"There is little distinction between our world and that of nonhumans. We all share the same breath. I am the mint tea, the bawena, that Grandma used to offer to soothe my ailing."

Luvell Anderson :: Follows you @luke-rage.bsky.social 3 followers 5 following 2 posts Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Podcaster: sn|101.info, Co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language|andersonluvell.weebly.com

Yes-the awesome philosopher Luvell Anderson is on Bsky! @luke-rage.bsky.social
#philsky

Kara Walker Is No One’s Robot At SFMOMA, the artist enacts a parable about trauma and healing in Black life — and makes her first foray into robotics. “I went down a little sci-fi rabbit hole the last couple years working on this ...

"[Kara] Walker’s foray into robotics is new but perhaps not surprising. The automatons are instantly recognizable as a product of her hand and imagination, reminiscent of her signature silhouettes..." -- Hilarie M. Sheets via @nytimes.com

More info on the PSA Underrepresented Philosophy of Science Scholar (UPSS) Prize in Philosophy of Science & Race. Submit by June 15!
philsci.org/psa_prize_in...
#philsci #BlackInSTEM #NativeInSTEM #histsci #STS

Politics—Not Tech—Can Save Black Jobs from AI Don’t plan to make individuals retrain for new jobs. Instead, build a society that upholds the lives of everyone.

In 1964, Black radical autoworker James Boggs observed that an encroaching crisis of automation “exclude[d] more and more people from playing any productive role in society.”

His writings were prescient, Jason Ludwig argues in a new piece at PB: www.publicbooks.org/politics-not...

Thanks so much, Alisa! Always wonderful to share a space with you.