Peer-Reviewed Publications (Articles & Chapters)
-
-
(In Development) Peters, Benjamin. “The Canny Field: Embodiment, War, and the Curious Absence of Anthropomorphic AI in the Soviet Union,” special issue “History of the Digital Age,” edited by Michael Holberg, Corinna Schlombs, Christopher Neumaier; Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 22 (expected 2025).
-
(In Development) Peters, Benjamin. “Television as Parataxis: Preface and Analysis of The Hinckley-King 60 Minutes Interview” in Mormon Oratory, University of Illinois Press.
-
(Delayed due to War) Peters, Benjamin. “Plant Media: Toward an Alphabetary of Vegetal, Farm, and Other Elemental Media Metaphors.” Special issue in Logos, now E-Flux.
-
(Under review) “Software in Science is Ubiquitous yet Invisible.” Nature: Computational Sciences.
- (Forthcoming) Peters, Benjamin. “Computing” in An Alphabetical History of Post-Colonial Planning, Fordham University Press.
-
Kish, Zenia & Benjamin Peters. 2023. “Farm Media: An Introduction” and coediting corresponding special issue for New Media & Society. Volume 28, issue 8, July 2023.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2023. “Afterword: Medium America and the Grounds of a Transnational History of Farm Media.” New Media & Society.Volume 28, issue 8, July 2023.
- Bozovic, Marijeta and Benjamin Peters. 2022. “Belarus as Media, Part II: Enter the Cyber Partisans.” Slavic Review: 81, 1, 2022, p. 207-208.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2022. “Russian Media Theory: Is There Any? Should There Be? How about These?” Media Theory.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2021. “The Main Event: The Media Circus of Protasevich’s Televised Confessions.” Slavic Review. Volume 80, Issue 3. Fall 2021.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2021. “A Network is Not a Network” in Your Computer is on Fire, Thomas Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, Kavita Philip, eds. Cambridge: The MIT Press, March 2021.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2021. “Afterword: How Do We Live Now? In the Aftermath of Ourselves” in Mullaney, Thomas, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, Kavita Philip, Your Computer is on Fire, Cambridge: The MIT Press, March 2021.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2021. “McLuhan” in Medium McLuhan, edited by Peter Bette and Martina Leeker. Meson Press, 2021.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2020. “Where in the World is Russian Media Theory?” Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian, and Central European New Media. 20: 2020, pp. 17-30.
- Bozovic, Marijeta and Benjamin Peters. 2020. “Hackers are Free People, Just like Artists Who Wake Up in the Morning in a Good Mood at Start Painting” in Gabriella Coleman, Christopher Kelty, and Paula Bialski’s online collective HackerCur.io.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2020. “The Theory in Conspiracy Theory is Dangerous” in Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age, edited by Kembrew McLeod and Melissa Zimdars. NYU Press. Also translated into German, “Vorsicht vor der Theorie der Verschwörungstheorie” in special issue of Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft, Vol. 19: Faktizitäten, 2019.
- Peters, Benjamin and Hu Yong. 2019. “A Conversation on Network Histories” in special issue “Computer Network Histories: Hidden Streams from the Internet Past” in History and Informatics journal, edited by Gabriele Balbi. Volume 21: 2019.
- Kneese, Tamara and Benjamin Peters. 2019. “Mormon Mommies Will Never Die.” Logic, 8, 2019.
- Peters, Benjamin and John Durham Peters. 2019. “Foreword” to Communication Theory through the Ages, by Igor Klyukanov and Galya Sinekopova, Routledge Press, 2019.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2018. “The Computer Never Was a Brain, or the Curious Death and Designs of John von Neumann,” in Verhaltensdesign. Technologische und ästhetische Programme der 1960er und 1970er Jahre. Edited by Christina Vagt and Jeannie Moser. 2018.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2017. “The Missing Medium: Rereading Revelation as Interruption.” A Dream, a Rock, a Pillar of Fire. Maxwell Institute Press: December 2017.
- Shilina, Marina, Robert Couch, & Benjamin Peters. 2017. “Data: An Ethical Overview,” introduction to the special issue “The Data Turn & Ethics” in the Russian Journal of Communication. Volume 9: Issue 3, 2017.
- Peters, Benjamin and John Durham Peters. 2017. “Introduction” to the special issue forum on “Mormonism as Media” in the Mormon Studies Review. Volume 5, 2018.
- Tatarchenko, Ksenia and Benjamin Peters. 2017. “Tomorrow Begins Yesterday: Data Imaginaries in Russian and Soviet Science Fiction” in Russian Journal of Communication. Volume 9, Issue 3.
- Geoghegan, Bernard and Benjamin Peters. 2017. “Cybernetics” The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (ed. Klaus Bruhn Jensen)
- Peters, Benjamin. 2017. “Norbert Wiener” The International Encyclopedia of Communication Theory and Philosophy (ed. Klaus Bruhn Jensen)
- Peters, John Durham and Benjamin Peters. 2017. “Norbert Wiener as a Pragmatist” Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication, 7: 2, 157-172.
- John, Nicholas and Benjamin Peters. 2016. “Why privacy keeps dying: The trouble with talk about the end of privacy,” Information Communication and Society.
- Benjamin Peters and John Durham Peters. 2016. “Master and Disciple: Communication.” As Iron Sharpens Iron: Listening to the Various Voices of Scripture, ed. Julie M. Smith. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016. 173-7.
- Geoghegan, Bernard and Benjamin Peters. 2014. “Cybernetics” in The John Hopkins Guide to Digital Media. Marie-Laure Ryan, et. al., eds. John Hopkins UP: Baltimore, 109-112.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2013. “Toward a Genealogy of a Cold War Communication Science: the Strange Loops of Leo and Norbert Wiener.” The Russian Journal of Communication. 5: 1, 31–43. (Also available here.)
- Peters, Benjamin and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen. 2013. “New Media,” Handbook of Communication History, Peter Simonson, et. al., eds. Routledge. (Also available here.)
- Peters, Benjamin. 2012. “Normalizing Soviet Cybernetics” Information & Culture. 47:2, 145-175.
- Peters, Benjamin and Deborah Lubken. 2011. “New Media in Crises: Discursive Instability and Emergency Communication.” The Long History of New Media. Peter Lang.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2009. “And Lead Us Not into Thinking the New is New: A Bibliographic Case for New Media History,” New Media & Society, 11:1/2, 13-30.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2008. “Betrothal and Betrayal: The Soviet Translation of Norbert Wiener’s Early Cybernetics,” International Journal of Communications, 2:1, 66-80.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2008. “The Search Engine Democracy: Metaphors and Muhammad,” in The Power of Search Engines /Die Macht der Such-maschinen, edited by Marcel Machill and Markus Beiler, (Leipzig, Germany: Herman von Halem), 228-242.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2007. “The Cybernetics of Nabokov’s ‘Beneficence,’” Ulbandus: The Slavic Review of Columbia University, ed. by Marijeta Bozovic, 173-190.
-
Scholarly Reviews
- (Forthcoming) Peters, Benjamin. Review of Migle Bareikyte‘s The Post-Socialist Internet: How Labor, Geopolitics, and Critique Produce the Internet in Lithuania in Slavic Review.
- (Forthcoming) Peters, Benjamin. Review of Gavin Feller‘s Eternity in the Ether: A Mormon Media History in Journal for Mormon History.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2022. Review of Mario Biagioli and Vincent Lepinay’s edited volume From Russia with Code in The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2020. Review of Sebastian Vehlken’s Zootechnologies: A Media History of Swarm Research. In New Media & Society. 2020 .
- Peters, Benjamin. 2019. Review of Rachel Plotnick’s Power Button: A History of the Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing. In New Media & Society, 2019.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2018. Review of Egle Rindzeviciute’s The Power of Systems: How Policy Sciences Opened Up the Cold War World. In Slavic Review. 2018, 1136-1137.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2017. Review of Ramesh Srinivasan’s Whose Global Village? Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World. Posted on Culture Digitally, May 4, 2017.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2015. “Review of Ronald Kline’s The Cybernetics Moment, or Why We Call Our Age the Information Age.” In Information & Culture. August 2015, 1-2.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2014. “Russia’s Competition, Times Two: A Review of Loren Graham’s Lonely Ideas: Can Russia Compete?” In Metascience. June 2014, 1-3.
- Peters, Benjamin and John Durham Peters. 2014. Matter Made Graciously Present: a Review of Adam Miller’s Speculative Grace: Bruno Latour and Object-Oriented Theology. In Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Vol. 46: No 4, Winter 2013, 190-197.
- Peters, Benjamin and Abraham Gong. 2013. “Two Myths of Network Text Analysis: A Critical Response to Paranyushkin.” In The Russian Journal of Communication, 5:3, 288-292.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2012. Review of Marshall Poe’s A History of Communications: Media and Society from the Evolution of Speech to the Internet. In New Media & Society, 14:2, 356-359.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2008. Review of Turizm: The Russian and East European Tourist Under Capitalism and Socialism in Russian Journal of Communication, 1: 2, 235-237.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2007. Review of Thinking with James Carey: Essays on Communication, Transportation, History in Journal of Communication Inquiry, Sage, 366-370.
Other Publications (Commissioned & Not Peer-Reviewed)
-
(In Development) Peters, Benjamin. “Media Future, or How Futures in the Mirror of Media May Be Closer than They Appear,” Foreword for Making Media Futures: Machine Visions and Technological Imagination, under consideration at Routledge Press.
-
(In Development) Peters, Benjamin. Afterword for Making a Difference in a Datafied Society.
- (Forthcoming) Peters, Benjamin. “Archipelagic America, Archipelagic Russia.” Foreword for Russian translation with Academic Studies Press of Brian Roberts’ Borderwaters (Duke University Press, 2022).
-
Frenzel, Janna, Tamara Kneese, and Benjamin Peters. 2023. “Labor: How Tech Worker Organizing Intersects with Climate Action,” Critical Carbon Computing: Special Issue in Branch. July 2023.
-
Peters, Benjamin and Marijeta Bozovic. 2023. “The Internet Runs Faster at Night: The Belarus Cyber Partisans,” Harriman Magazine (75th Anniversary Edition). Columbia University. 2023.
-
Peters, Benjamin. 2023. “Eternity in the Ether: A Mormon Media History: a New Book Interview with Gavin Feller.” Wayfare Magazine. Spring 2023.
-
Peters, Benjamin. 2023. “A Royal Pain: On How to Come Together–to Avoid Royalty Headlines.” Wayfare Magazine. Spring 2023.
-
Peters, Benjamin. 2022. “Mourning before Comfort: On the Rituals, Proximity, and Grace of Grief,” Wayfare Magazine. December 2022.
-
Peters, Benjamin. 2022. “Renewing New Year’s Resolutions.” Wayfare Magazine. December 2022.
-
Peters, John Durham and Francois Coreen, with Benjamin Peters. 2020. “Dialogue, dissémination et matérialization: une entrevue avec John Durham Peters,” in Médiations & Médiatisations (no 4: 2020).
-
Peters, Benjamin with Olga Dovbysh. 2020. “No Study of Media is without its own Politics.” Russia Media Lab Network. November 2020.
-
Peters, Benjamin. 2020. “How to Use Media Before (or After) an Election.” Public Square. September 2020.
-
Likacvan, Lukasc and Benjamin Peters. 2020. “Automation with a Human Face: The Curious Czechoslovak Case of Radovan Richta’s Civilization at the Crossroads.” Public Seminar.
- Peters, Benjamin with Krzysztof Gutfranski. 2020. “Interview (Polish): Jak podbijano cyberprezestrzen” Obieg Magazine.
-
Peters, Benjamin. 2018. “Smart Media is a Pain.” Public Seminar. November 2018.
-
Peters, Benjamin. 2018. (In German) “Crackers and White-Hat Hacker” Kulturaustausch. With English pre-print “Reimaging Russian Hackers.” Summer 2018, 90-92.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2016. “How the Soviets Invented the Internet, and Why It Didn’t Work” Aeon.com. Feature piece, with over 150,000 views, posted on October 6, 2016.
-
Peters, Benjamin. 2016. “555 Questions to Make Digital Keywords Harder.” A teaching resource supplement to Digital Keywords. Posted at the book site at Princeton University Press. (2016)
- Peters, Benjamin. 2016. “How the Soviets invented the internet and why it didn’t work” featured at Aeon.co. (Viewed over 100,000 times.)
- Peters, Benjamin. 2015. “9.5 Theses toward Internet Reformation: An Anti-Manifesto” at Medium.com.
- Peters, Benjamin. 2014. “How to Write a Book Review: The Gordin Method” at Vitae (a service of the Chronicle of Higher Education).
- Peters, Benjamin. 2013. “The Martial Art of Argument” and (with Jon Henshaw) “Feedback” in A Life of Inquiry: 31 Invitations from Faculty Members at the University of Tulsa. Tulsa: U of Tulsa Press.
Publicity and Coverage of Major Works
Peters, Benjamin. How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet. The MIT Press, April 2016.
- Translations currently under discussion in German, Mandarin, and Russian.
- Excerpted in 20th-anniversary issue of First Monday.
- Featured in Aeon (translated into Russian at Inosmi.ru).
- Reviewed by Michael Gordin in Nature, Eden Medina in Public Books, Slava Gerovitch in The Russian Review, Janet Abbate in New Media & Society, Loren Graham in IEEE Keywords, Ksenia Tatarchenko in Cambridge Review, Alexander Voiskounsky in Russian Journal of Communication, John Gilbey in Times Higher Education, David Strom on his Web Informant, Ben Rothke in RSA, Dominic Lenton in Engineering & Technology.
- Interviewed by Kerri Smith on Nature Podcast, Carla Nappi on New Books Network, Sean Guillory on Sean’s Russia blog, David Levine on Hearsay Culture (transcript), on WOSU radio All Sides with Ann Fisher, on KWGS radio Tulsa Studio with Rich Fisher, and on CaMP Anthropology and the MIT Press blog.
- Covered in BBC, Freakonomics, Gizmodo, The Atlantic, Wired (by Bruce Sterling), Telepolis (in German), Bergamo Post (in Italian), Nexo (in Portugese), Rossiskaya gazeta, InoSMI, and Nasha Gazeta (in Russian), El Diario (in Spanish), Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish), and Blurbed at Margin Revolution, Hacker News, Survival, etc.
- Listed on Nature’s “Top 20 Books of 2016“
Mullaney, Thomas, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, Kavita Philip, eds. Your Computer is on Fire. The MIT Press, March 2021.
- Recipient of “the Best Book in Business Technology 2021” from Strategy + Business.
- Selected as a “Public Pick 2021” by editor B. H. Cohen at Public Books.
- Reviews in Los Angeles Review of Books, New Scientist, Boundary 2, IEEE, Information Resource, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, the Register, Technology & Culture, Times Literary Supplement, Venture Beat (also translated in Italian at News Flash 24), South Morning China Post, Jillian York, etc.
- Interviews in New Books Network, Oxford Internet Institute, Radical AI, Booksmith & Mother Jones, Hearsay Culture, Tech Won’t Save Us, A Public Affair 89.9 WORT, etc.
- Excerpted in Fast Company and Engadget.
Peters, Benjamin, ed. Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture. Princeton University Press, June 2016.
- Excerpted (introduction, ToC, algorithm, analog, culture, digital, hacker, participation, 555 Questions to make Digital Keywords Harder) at Culture Digitally.
- Reviewed in Engineering & Technology.
- Interviewed on the Princeton UP blog.
- Covered in NYU’s The Gov Lab.
Dissertation
Peters, Benjamin. (2010.) “From Cybernetics to Cyber Networks: Norbert Wiener, the Soviet Internet, and the Cold War Dawn of Information Universalism.” Dissertation. New York, Columbia University. (Abstract: Available in full upon request.)