As part of the upcoming MOSAICS Symposium, my PhD student Ashlee Mirizio and I are presenting a paper on “Mapping the AI Debate: Beyond Binary Tribes and Flattened Landscapes”. The paper argues that although in the contemporary conversation about AI there is a perception that there are only two teams — boomers versus doomers, ethics people versus safety people — the actual debate is a lot messier and more interesting than that. Our paper explores three of the most popular ways of carving up the AI landscape (the “TESCREAL bundle,” the ethics/safety split, and all that talk of apocalypse) and argue that, like any map, each one is useful for some things and badly distorting for others, and that the distortions tell you a lot about the people doing the mapmaking.

The MOSAICS Symposium brings together scholars from the humanities, social sciences, information science, and the arts for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialogue on AI and mind, mentalité, data ontologies, postcolonialism, social hierarchies, power imbalances, inequality and intersections (race, class, caste, gender, disability), cultural meanings, infrastructures, landscapes, work, users, human and machine interaction, reappropriations, resistances, and adjacent topics and themes.

Having just published an essay in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, I was pleased to be invited to participate in a webinar on The Web World Wide: The Impact of the Internet. Moderated by Bulletin editor-in-chief Sharon Weinberger, the other participants include Renée DiResta (Georgetown) and Herbert Lin (Stanford). Our goal is to weigh what the internet has given us against what it has cost. Our discussion will set the web’s benefits, from scientific collaboration and climate organizing to open-source monitoring of nuclear stockpiles, against its role in dysfunctional politics, information warfare, AI, and environmental harm, and asked whether those costs now outweigh the benefits.

Almost exactly ten years ago I published an essay in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists entitled “The Dirty Bits of the Computer World.” In that essay, I argued that it was essential that we start to take into account the environmental costs of computing: “The knowledge and consciousness of these issues have not been a part of our collective conversation about the design and use of information technologies. They need to become so, and quickly.”

A decade later, everyone is talking about computing and the environment. The energy costs and water usage associated with data centers have become issues of impassioned political debate. So does this mean victory? In the most recent issue of the Bulletin, I revisit my original essay, and analyze the current state of the debate. The article is available for free until September 16, and for purchase thereafter.

Along with my colleagues Selma Šabanović and Staša Milojević, I am writing a book on the history of robotics as a discipline. The tentative title is Building the Dream Robot: People, Institutions, and the Making of Robotics. We just signed a contract with Springer Nature, with the expectation that it will be published in late 2027.

In a few days I will be giving a talk at the Historisches Institut at the Universität Paderborn as part of a series of talks on Verflochtene Zukünfte: Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit (“Entangled Futures: Digitalization and Sustainability”).

I am particularly pleased to be back in Paderborn (if only virtually). Almost exactly a quarter century ago I was invited to the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum to give my first talk as part of a workshop on the history of software. This talk became the basis of my first major academic publication, my PhD dissertation, and my first book.

Today I take on a new role as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Research for the entire Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering. My many thanks to our dean Joanna Millunchick and to my predecessor Paul Macklin.

I am pleased and honored to have been awarded a 2025-2026 Indiana University Trustees Teaching Award. I was also recognized with this same honor exactly ten years ago. It makes me particularly happy to be able to continue to learn and develop as an instructor. Many thanks to my students, teaching assistants, and colleagues who helped make my courses as excellent as possible!

The CCS Lab has its first major publication! Congratulations to James Tanfield-Taylor, Ashlee Mirizio, and Bryce Greene. Here is the citation:

James Tanfield-Taylor, Ashlee Mirizio, Bryce Greene, and Nathan Ensmenger. 2026. Beyond Microsoft and Monsanto: Denaturing the Monoculture Metaphor in Computing. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26), April 13–17, 2026, Barcelona, Spain. ACM, New York, NY, USA,

Here is a brief abstract:

Beginning in the late 1980s, computer security researchers began discussing the risks associated with “software monocultures.” Within a decade, this metaphor had gained such prevalence that it could be invoked as self-evident, taking for granted that the industry should “avoid monoculture in computer operating systems” for reasons “just as reasonable and obvious as avoiding monoculture in farming.”

This paper explores how the agricultural metaphor of “monoculture” migrated into computing discourse, naturalizing discussions of technical vulnerabilities and centralization patterns. Building on research from science and technology studies (STS), the authors argue that the monoculture metaphor is epistemologically significant, both describing and shaping computing practices. Rather than accepting the simplified narrative that monocultures represent only technical risks, the authors draw on agricultural history to develop a more nuanced understanding of monocultures as deeply entrenched systems of power relationships characterized by dependency, monopoly control, and systemic lock-in. The authors extend this analysis to the current development of a new monoculture of computing forming with the development of energy and resource intensive AI systems and infrastructure.

I will be giving a talk at the American Society for Environmental History Conference on my work on the history of the computerization of natural resource management. The talk is entitled “How a computer sees a forest: FORPLAN and the “optimization” of natural resource management.” A brief abstract of this talk can be found here.

I was honored to have been awarded a $90k grant from the New America foundation as part of their Public Interest Technology program. Over the past year, a group of almost 20 IU students have partnered with the Laurie Burns McRobbie Serve IT Clinic to develop new tools for serving the Bloomington community using generative AI technologies. You can read all about the Serve AI grant project here.