#AcademicRunPlaylist - 1/11/26

It was great/heartbreaking seeing so many people out exercising their first amendment rights this weekend, and luckily I was able to decompress a bit by going out for a run and listening to talks and books for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an important talk by Trina Vithayathil on counting caste in the Indian census at the Boston Study Group https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45RZjAuGPHE

Next was "The Scientific Journal" by Alex Csiszar. This book captures the transition from scientific societies to the journal as the center of the scientific world, with Csiszar documenting the confluence of technological, political, and scientific changes that amalgamated to become our current system. It's illuminating that articles gained their prominence because some royal society members got annoyed that membership was growing too large and wanted some way to thin the ranks, hitting upon those who had written for their publication. Still, this move away from the book and deliberations and grand projects within societies didn't happen all at once, and while certainly the early instantiations of what we would recognize as the modern journal, complete with reviewing process, was certainly developed to cope with some of the problems that came up it becomes quite clear that these developments were choices rooted in the incentives of those in power in the scientific community at the time. This book is essential for those in academia, people who want to understand how knowledge is disseminated, and policymakers alike. Highly recommend https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo28179042.html

Last was "Piracy" by Adrian Johns. This book provides an incredible, inverted history of intellectual property by focusing on the "pirate" side of the equation starting with the emergence of the printing press and continuing to the modern day. Johns paints a complex picture of how the notion of piracy emerged, and how it is inextricably linked to political and technological development. The pushback of industry (rather than artists and inventors themselves) throughout history is instructive, and the era of sheet music piracy and the legal debates and industry efforts to tamp down on these "pirate kings" was fascinating. The attempts in the UK to deter private radio operators and listeners was also incredible, down to the Orwellian detection vans that roamed the streets to locate "pirates" (probably ineffectively). This book is an essential companion to intellectual property volumes and is even more relevant as generative AI systems pose challenges to the system once again. Highly recommend https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo8273977.html