It’s not fitness. It’s life. This is a marketing slogan of a high-end fitness center where I have worked as […]
The Strange Nostalgia of Childbirth
Nostalgia inflects modern childbirth. When I first became pregnant, back in August 2022, I joined a few Facebook groups dedicated […]
An Intimate Numbers Game: Histories of Quantifying Pelvic Floor Strength
The Elvie Trainer promises to “take the guesswork out of your workout.” Alongside other devices like the Elitone and the […]
On the Move: How Sports Clothes Became Fashion?
Even if you are not a gym rat or a sport enthusiast, it is almost impossible today to escape the […]
Are We Becoming Ivan Drago? Analyzing Today’s Fitness Tech through Rocky IV
In Rocky IV (1985), American Rocky Balboa fights the USSR’s Ivan Drago in a boxing match that animates Cold War […]
Will Technology Change How We Understand Interpersonal Violence? Maybe. Probably Not.
The Atlantic’s August cover story by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, “An Epidemic of Disbelief,” describes how some jurisdictions, in the midst […]
Are Our Smart Devices Turning Us into Dumb Humans?
Are all of our “smart” devices training us to be “dumb” humans, too-often indistinguishable from mere machines? As click-through contracts […]
Microwave Cookbooks: Technology, Convenience & Dining Alone
The microwave is celebrating its 50th birthday this year, but even that can’t redeem the innumerable copies of microwave cookbooks […]
VULVALUV: Taking Wearable Tech to a New Place
It seems like every day a new health tracking gizmo appears in stores. The fitbit. The Apple Watch. TICKRx. Leaf, […]
Adventures in the Archives…Of Our Lives
This semester, I taught an introductory-level course on historical methods. One of our tasks was to consider an array of historical materials. We read novels and memoirs; watched documentaries and Hollywood films; read speeches and government policies; looked at architectural plans and advertisements for suburban homes. We even watched an episode of Star Trek. Throughout this exploration, a theme we kept coming back to was how people of the past documented their daily lives. This prompted us to consider how historians of the future will examine our daily lives. What sources will they use? What sources are we leaving behind?
