Lee Vinsel

If you know, you know.

If you are at @4sonline.bsky.social in Toronto tomorrow and you are free, please drop by our first-ever live-recording of Peoples & Things to tell us about your work. I'll be joined by my co-host Paula Bialski. It will be a hoot! 📅 Thursday, Oct 8, 12:20–1:30 PM 📍 Spruce, Mezzanine *GET EXCITED*!

Beyond hyped to have been invited by Lee to appear on his tech talk show 💫 So much to talk about, we really barely scratched the surface... Was exciting to be able to share that we are now formally an association and that we are working on Hype: A Glossary - out 2027!

you a freak, bro - the best kind of freak.

I am strangely optimistic that AI offers a framework to build the state we want. I argue in @dissentmag.bsky.social that progressives must not dismiss the energy and opportunity produced by technology’s productive amnesia to reimagine the state and society. dissentmagazine.org/article/ai-u...

Good question. It's been a long time since I was immersed in standards studies, sadly, but back in the day I would have turned to Andy Russell's histories of computer networks for this.

Truly tis the season. I will be introducing a new batch of graduate students to the Sandage Method for reading in grad school in my Intro to Science and Technology Policy seminar just next week. Always with an eye to making grad life *HUMANE*, as the story Scott tells in the link below says well.

The great historian of science, environments, and animals Mark Barrow has launched a new Substack, Wild History. Check it out! markvbarrowjr.substack.com/p/leave-it-t... It's leading up to Mark's new book, _Gator! The Making of America’s Iconic Reptile, from First Encounters to Florida Man_.

One of the podcasts I am working on is looking for scholars who are writing about the history and culture of "Gen X" in a serious way. Anyone come to mind?

Some colleagues are running a workshop called "What Has Driven Our Elites Insane?" and I had fun working up an abstract for a potential paper this morning, "How, Precisely, Does Elite Insanity Matter?: Getting Specific About Behaviors, Mechanisms, Effects, and Problems."

Cory is an incredibly generous and sweet guy. A Dutch friend also sent me a screenshot of Cory mentioning me on a Dutch documentary last week. He's taught me a lot about how to diligently spread the word about other folks' ideas.

This week on Peoples & Things, I chat with the wonderful @lanalanalana.bsky.social about _New Money: How Payment Became Social Media_ and her other current, highly-creative projects. I love how Lana thinks through things. It's a really fun chat! newbooksnetwork.com/117-lana-swa...

I'm teaching a graduate seminar on global science and technology policy this fall, and I would like to assign some stuff on "sovereignty" around digital technology, including AI. Do we have a good piece that explains where this specific policy use of "sovereignty" came from and how it spread?

Great thread as usual from Costa on where data centers fit in concerns about climate.

Good thread.

Wow. I will be returning to and chewing on this one for quite a while. A *lot* of great stuff in here. The only part I'm not sure about is the bit about "fascism," but that's probably because I don't find that word useful as an analytical concept in general.

ZOINKS!!!!! Looks so cool.

Stewart Brand joined The Maintainers listserv in 2019 - see below - and he attended the Maintainers III conference, also in 2019. He knows there are entire scholarly communities studying maintenance and repair. He's not ignorant; he's just a dick.

It just keeps getting better. Thanks to my friend Dr. @olamichael.bsky.social of the Hype Studies crew for inspiring the improvements.

I have friends who live in European cities where procuring air conditioning is basically illegal. One theory I've heard is that part of the problem is that the elites - who, let's be real, control environmental policy - have summer homes they escape to when it gets too hot.

Working on a short post called "Notes on Boomer STS" on the problematic twins of a) critique of "technocracy" and b) thinking "participatory democracy" is *the* solution, but now I think my prompt that led to this beautiful image may be my greatest contribution to the field.

Ah, the last bubble was so great.

I ask this question constantly. I thought our major upshot of the whole Aaron Swartz thing was that IP is a nonsense construction. Many GenAI haters would clearly have me believe otherwise.

MIT Technology Review asked me to review Stewart Brand's new book _Maintenance: Of Everything_, vol. 1. I went into it with a lot of questions, including about how he'd deal with labor, politics, and social structure. It's a lot worse than I expected. www.technologyreview.com/2026/04/17/1...

So wild that the first Maintainers conference was a decade ago!! The other day I looked back at the class I taught called Peoples & Things that eventually led to the podcast to see when I first conceived of it. ALSO A DECADE AGO. fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu TIME FLIES.

This ep of People’s & Things with @leev.bsky.social and @bialski.bsky.social interviewing @susansegfault.bsky.social about @torproject.org completely nerd sniped me and was very enjoyable! micro.chadkohalyk.com/2026/04/09/p...

VIBERCRIME!!! Hahahaha. This is neat. Also, the fact that cybercriminals find these tools useful suggests that they might . . . I don't know . . . . be useful?!?! Yes, for crime and for more than crime.

LMAOOOOOOOO. Not even a little bit surprising given what we already know about how these tools are being used in industry right now, but deliciously ironic given the anti-AI attitudes of some Bluesky subcultures. Should their non-use of AI also entail non-use of Bluesky?

Paula Bialski and I had such a fun time talking with Ben. I loved his approach to the Tor community, and it was also lovely discovering our many research community overlaps. As I say in the ep, I felt like the spirit of @biella.bsky.social was in the virtual room with us the whole time.

This week's Peoples & Things features me and my buddy and guest host Paula Bialski talking with Ben Collier, Senior Lecturer i at the University of Edinburgh, about his fascinating book, _Tor: From the Dark Web to the Future of Privacy_. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

This is one of the studies I'm most excited about right now. Wish I could watch the launch, but I'll be traveling. But YOU should check it out. Mentioned Lana's study as a great example of taking other humans seriously in this piece. peoples-things.ghost.io/why-do-peopl...