My major research interests are new media, science and technology studies, and cultural policy studies.  I study the social dimensions of new media technologies, their institutional and cultural histories, and how various forms and uses of new media both support and challenge existing institutions, cultural practices, and ways of communicating.  I am interested in the relationship between the technical and the political: how political priorities are embedded in technical systems, and how an intense concern with technological development shapes present political priorities.

 

My recent research has investigated the central role of surveillance and identification systems in the development and expansion of information networks.

 

I teach a graduate course on the History of Communication Research and undergraduate courses on (1) Surveillance, the Media, and the Risk Society; (2) the Internet in Social and Historical Perspective; (3) Media Technologies from Gutenberg to the Internet; (4) Theories of the Information Society; (5) Media Criticism, and (6) Media Law and Ethics.