A media scholar and author, I write and teach on how media technologies change over regimes of time, space, and power. My work takes critical, historical, and global approaches to that basic puzzle of why media in general, and digital media in particular, take hold differently in different contexts. I am particularly concerned with how and why media technologies distribute and concentrate power and knowledge unevenly–and what to do about it.

My area of research focuses on the causes and consequences of the information age across the Soviet century, especially between the Berlin Wall and the Chinese Firewall with an epicenter in Kyiv. I have authored an award-winning book on the Soviet internet and am currently developing a solo-authored book project on the Soviet prehistory to artificial intelligence, a book manuscript coauthored with Marijeta Bozovic on Russian hackers, and a major project on the transnational history, philosophy, and critique of media theory, broadly understood. I am also finishing a short self-help book called How to College: Letters For the First Year.

On a more personal note, I have developed these interests over the last two decades alongside Kourtney Lambert, who is, in addition to so much else, an incandescent math teacher, math education consultant, and alumna of Columbia’s Teachers College. Together we luxuriate in learning languages, sampling cuisines, and geeking out. Kourtney chronicles the occasional antic on her blog.