Andy K Stuhl

“Technology” has a long and problematized relationship with progress, efficiency, and efficacy. Sleek trains rushing through the countryside, the blinding reach of the electrical grid, or the instantaneous messages of networked communication are its shiny avatars. Contraptions, by contrast, are technical devices that barely work. They seem too complex, too circuitous, too labor intensive. They are frequently ad hoc—as unrepeatable and unreliable as Rube Goldberg’s fantastical machines. They push the received wisdom about technology’s defining features to the limit. Like the aesthetic “gimmick” theorized by Sianne Ngai, the contraption is a category charged with normative judgment. Contraptions may work, but they don’t work right. While the contraption is commonly associated with vernacular or retrograde alternatives to high technology, many “high tech” devices reveal a contraption-like character on close inspection: AI chatbots, internet protocols, and helicopters come to seem both over- and under-engineered the more attention is paid to them. This session invites STS scholars to think with the figure of the contraption: What alternatives to popular ideas about technology do these complicated and unruly objects offer? What is it about the present moment that pushes the contraption back into public thought? How does the normativity of contraption judgments manifest in everyday life? How do people come to perceive and evaluate technical complexity in social life? Work in this area may draw on theories of gimmicks, hacks, kludges, workarounds, tricks, bricolage, and other complex or informal technical activities.

STS folks, I'm organizing an open panel on CONTRAPTIONS for 4S this year, following up on a lovely panel at last year's AAA meetings. You should submit something if you got it! www.4sonline.org/accepted_ope...

Listening to the Past Listening to the Past: Digital Approaches to the History of Sound and Language March 19 – 20, 2026 | German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C. Workshop at the German Historical Institute Washingto...

Looking forward to co-presenting an invited talk with @sadiecouture.bsky.social at the German Historical Institute in Washington DC.

We'll discuss how we built - and more importantly have sustained - our Library of Congress academic/federal collaborative research project, now in its 12th year.

👀 The intro of Inventing Nadar is now up online for free!

Your grad rep here with some self promotion-- I've co-organized this conference at UC Berkeley 3/7-3/8- free and open to public-- possibly of interest to some in this community!
www.algorithmicmusicmethods.com

Cover of Wild Tides: Media Infrastructure and Financial Crisis in Ireland by Patrick Brodie. At the bottom of the cover there is a photograph of three empty houses in disrepair with abandon building materials and gravel in the foreground. The sky is dark and stormy. Above this, the cover is a solid dark teal green. The title is written in a white sans-serif type in all caps. The subtitle is below in the same type. The author’s name is below in a white serif font.

Save 30% on #NewBook "Wild Tides" by Patrick Brodie, which traces Ireland’s shift from reckless pre-2008 real estate development to a post-crisis investment in media infrastructure, revealing how financialization alters the daily life of a nation. buff.ly/NVSBjbJ

Hell yeah, fantastic news!! Congrats, Jess!

Publishers Marketplace Deal Report Announcement for Platform Hygiene

very cool and exciting news: my debut book, PLATFORM HYGIENE, is now under contract with @dukepress.bsky.social!

On R&B: Groups, Whitney Houston w/ Amani Roberts, Brandon Tensley, & Emily Lordi (PMBiP 18-02-26) YouTube video by Eric Weisbard

Listening to a fascinating conversation about R&B history with Amani Roberts, @brandontensley.bsky.social & Emily Lordi & just realized that Whitney Houston grew up in East Orange, NJ, also home to Queen Latifah & WFMU. Part of Popular Music Books in Process Series: www.youtube.com/watch?v=htEX...

UNC Student Group Illuminates Administration’s Decisions Several recent policy changes at the University of North Carolina flagship have been made in secret with little, if any, communication to campus. The students in TransparUNCy are working to expose the...

Cool to see students doing cool things www.insidehighered.com/news/student...

the abstract for the essay Platform authoritarianism in the creator economy

new essay on platform authoritarianism, disability, and class in creator economies out now in comm & critical/cultural studies!

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/P8HRY...

Everyone should be following the digitization and posting of the Adam Jacobs Collection. A 10,000 live concert chronicle of rocknroll-live-in-Chicago between the mid-1980s and today. archive.org/details/aada...

the cover of academic journal Creator & Influencer Studies. It's a purple gradient and the journal name appears in white font.

some exciting news:

announcing CREATOR & INFLUENCER STUDIES, the first open-access peer reviewed journal dedicated to creator and influencer culture research. I'm honoured to be named as one of the journal's inaugural associate editors.

submissions open Feb 12.

Thank you, Landon!

Thank you, Will!

Thanks, Josie!

Wow, thank you! This really means a great deal to me and I'm incredibly grateful for the committee's close attention to the work

Thanks, Rory! And very much likewise!

The annual Day of Noise—24 hours of live experimental music—at @kzsustanford.bsky.social is happening now! I'll be playing an ambient-drone set with a friend 9–9:30 p.m. PT. Tune in at kzsu.stanford.edu.

Image from Al Jazeera: a Minneapolis protester blows a whistle in the face of ICE's Gregory Bovino.

This week on Phantom Power: Yellow Swans' Gabriel Mindel on #sound, power, and Minneapolis. His research and criticism on noise, protest, and settler-colonialism couldn't be more relevant.

www.mackhagood.com/podcast/nois...

Thanks so much, Jess!

Thanks so much, Josh. That means a lot.

Big congrats to @akstuhl.bsky.social for winning the 2026 SCMS dissertation award. For “Unmaking a Medium: Automation and Art in American Radio, 1950–2010,” supervised by Jonathan Sterne (McGill).

Opinion | State Terror Has Arrived

“It’s only natural that our brains struggle to find logic in what we are seeing. There is a logic, and this logic has a name. It’s called state terror.“ www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/o...

A family member reacts after a federal immigration officer used a battering ram to break down a door before making an arrest on January 11, 2026, in Minneapolis.

Stunning photos from Minneapolis, including this one by John Locher for the Associated Press. www.theatlantic.com/photography/...

Games without frontiers Some thoughts about Marty Supreme’s postwar soundtrack

Good morning! I wrote about Marty Supreme’s anachronistic use of 80s art rock, which means that I also wrote about Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette soundtrack, Theo Cateforis’s new wave book, post-war neurosis and diplomacy, and synth mallets.

alyxvesey.substack.com/p/games-with...

Media Advisory: Mass March to say Hands off Venezuela, No Funds for I.C.E. or War - NYC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) No War, No Kings, No I.C.E. Protest Against Trump’s Oil War on Venezuela, I.C.E. Violence Mass March to say Hands off Venezuela, No Funds for I.C.E. or War CONTACT: press@socialists.nyc MEDIA ADVISORY...

Happening today! Show up to shut down ICE, the unaccountable murderous gestapo.

socialists.nyc/press-releas...

among other things, the indiscipline among people that carry weapons, from here to gaza and beyond, is absolutely terrifying. as if evil and malice were not enough.

hey!

hey!!!

if you are an academic of any rank in the critical tech studies space who cares about how money, finance, and business structures work in science and technology, i want to see your abstracts for a collected volume! they're due tomorrow!!!

https//oddletters.com/tech-money/

as part of it, i'm going to maintain a regular blogging practice and email newsletter, please sign up if that's your thing robarcand.info/blog/why-bot... robarcand.info/newsletter

anyone know of any good papers on how the vocal tone/inflection of the ChatGPT voice interface was/is trained?