I'm looking for fellow scholars who are working on the history financial infrastructures from a history of technology and/or STS perspective. (Exploring potential conference panels etc etc.) If that sounds like you -- or someone you know -- let me know!
Will Deringer
@calculatedvalues.bsky.social
Scholar of sophisters, economists, and calculators. Program in STS + HASTS PhD Program at MIT. Author of CALCULATED VALUES (Harvard UP 2018). "TILT" (2005) fan account.
Honored and delighted by this recognition from @thenacbs.bsky.social! Article is open access! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Mr. Aecroid’s Tables: Economic Calculations and Social Customs in the Early Modern Countryside* | The Journal of Modern History: Vol 96, No 1
Abstract In the 1610s and 1620s, a new computational technology took hold in England: printed mathematical tables for compound interest and discounting (“present value”) problems. Historians of financ...
journals.uchicago.edu
The Walter D. Love Prize is awarded to William Deringer, for “Mr. Aecroid’s Tables: Economic Calculations and Social Customs in the Early Modern Countryside,” published in the March 2024 issue of the Journal of Modern History. Congrats @calculatedvalues.bsky.social !! 👏
The Walter D. Love Prize is awarded to William Deringer, for “Mr. Aecroid’s Tables: Economic Calculations and Social Customs in the Early Modern Countryside,” published in the March 2024 issue of the Journal of Modern History. Congrats @calculatedvalues.bsky.social !! 👏
The advance version of my article on "The 'Social Rate of Discount' and the Political Economy of the Future in Postwar America" is out in History of Political Economy! read.dukeupress.edu/hope/article...
The “Social Rate of Discount” and the Political Economy of the Future in Postwar America | History of Political Economy | Duke University Press
read.dukeupress.edu
So happy to see KSJ in such good hands. And so happy to return to being a full-time writer, with yet another book about poison in the works.
Thrilled that Usha Lee McFarling (@usha.bsky.social) join MIT as the next Director of the Knight Science Journalism Program! Usha will succeed the inimitable Deborah Blum (@deborahb.bsky.social), who has elevated the KSJ in countless ways over the past decade. ksj.mit.edu/news/2025/05...
Some personal news. I'll be leaving STAT to take up what is a dream job for me, and a critical position in a time when science journalism is threatened on so many fronts. I look forward to supporting my colleagues, and the field itself, as much as I can. ksj.mit.edu/news/2025/05...
Usha Lee McFarling Named Director of the Knight Science Journalism Program - Knight Science Journalism @MIT
McFarling, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and national science correspondent for STAT, was a 1992-93 Knight Science Journalism Fellow.
ksj.mit.edu
Thrilled that Usha Lee McFarling (@usha.bsky.social) join MIT as the next Director of the Knight Science Journalism Program! Usha will succeed the inimitable Deborah Blum (@deborahb.bsky.social), who has elevated the KSJ in countless ways over the past decade. ksj.mit.edu/news/2025/05...
Usha Lee McFarling Named Director of the Knight Science Journalism Program - Knight Science Journalism @MIT
McFarling, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and national science correspondent for STAT, was a 1992-93 Knight Science Journalism Fellow.
ksj.mit.edu
Pleased to announce the search for the next Director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT! Housed within MIT's STS Program, the KSJ seeks to advance science journalism in the public interest. Job link: careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl... Full ad: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qwvvn...
Director, Knight Science Journalism Fellowship
MIT - Director, Knight Science Journalism Fellowship - Cambridge MA 02139
careers.peopleclick.com
Beyond excited to share this article, ten years in the making. I think it’s the best work I’ve done. “Mr. Aecroid’s Tables: Economic Calculations and Social Customs in the Early Modern Countryside,” Jnl of Modern History Open Access! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
Mr. Aecroid’s Tables: Economic Calculations and Social Customs in the Early Modern Countryside* | The Journal of Modern History: Vol 96, No 1
Abstract In the 1610s and 1620s, a new computational technology took hold in England: printed mathematical tables for compound interest and discounting (“present value”) problems. Historians of financ...
journals.uchicago.edu
My excellent PhD student, Tola Ajao, was instrumental in putting this great resource together for @shothisttech.bsky.social www.historyoftechnology.org/doing-histor...
Made the trip to Shelburne Falls, MA this weekend to visit the new Raven Used Books location--stunning! No better place to browse University Press titles. Especially thrilled to have found @calculatedvalues.bsky.social's book CALCULATED VALUES!
Congrats & Thanks to @calculatedvalues.bsky.social MIT's William Deringer who gave an amazingly insightful lecture for our U of Minnesota HSTM Colloquium yesterday on Irving Fisher & the wide & deep history of discounting from finance & psychology to understandings of the present & future. #histsci
Excited to present Friday at Minnesota in the Hist & Phil of Sci / Tech / Med Colloquium! I'll be talking discounting calculations, Irving Fisher, the economics of time, "New Thought," and the idealization of economics in the early 20c. Equal parts wonky and woo-woo. cse.umn.edu/hstm/fall-20...
Fall 2023 Colloquium
cse.umn.edu
Louis Gottschalk book prize for studies of the long 18th century: deadline is Dec. 1! Info here: asecs.org/resources/aw... Please share widely.
Louis Gottschalk Prize – ASECS
asecs.org
If you have power over a search committee (or are on it) and it still is asking for 3 letters of rec before making a long short list...c'mon. Be serious. #BurnInHell
When and why did the standard epithet for someone who overindulges in gambling become “degenerate”? Are others who are overcome by different vices described as degens?
Dutch Book arguments lose most of their power once you’ve seen how a four year old can both absolutely refuse to get into the bathtub and absolutely refuse to get out of the bathtub
"Applications must include a letter of application, CV, a writing sample of ca. 25 pages, evidence of contributions to DEI, and three letters of recommendation. Finalists will also be asked for teaching evaluations" Rice University - shame. There's no need to ask for all this up front.
This is the kind of post I want to see more of on bluesky
The only good part of doing the dishes is finishing the last bites of salad with the big salad fork thing and pretending to be a giant
"Why is there no epistemology of the humanities that is even remotely comparable to the epistemology of the sciences?... I’m not so sure we really know how we know what we know... The first step in justifying our ways of knowing to... doubters wld be to justify them to ourselves." - Lorraine Daston
How We Know What We Know
Lorraine Daston Why is there no epistemology of the humanities that is even remotely comparable to the epistemology of the sciences? Why is it that humanists can gesture to only a handful of seminal w...
critinq.wordpress.com
To departments and institutions that explicitly do not accept generic recommendation letters or recs from a dossier service: Why? (More directly: this is a terrible practice and you should stop it.)
How poignant: on the very same day that there’s a conference in her honor at the University of Toronto, Evelyn Fox Keller passes away ihpst.utoronto.ca/news/full-pr...
2023 British Society for History of Science Hughes Prize for accessible book in #histsci is awarded to Keith Wailoo for Pushing Cool. Big Tobacco, Racial Marketing, & the Untold Story of the Menthol Cigarette. Free online lecture on October 17, 10 am ET / 3 pm GMT www.bshs.org.uk/hughes-prize... 🗃️
First post is to say: If you or anyone you know is interested in a PhD program where they can explore the social, cultural, and historical dimensions of the technical worlds we inhabit, check out HASTS at MIT! We host a virtual visit day October 13. More info here! hasts.mit.edu/visiting/
The 2023-24 program for the Séminaire romand d'histoire des sciences et des techniques #histsci #histtech, organized jointly by EPFL and the universities of Geneva, Lausanne, and Neuchâtel, is out! More details here: www.epfl.ch/labs/lhst/la...
Technically done with coursework ... but how could I not take this one!! #blessed ccct.uchicago.edu/courses/coll...
Colloquium: The Emergence of Capitalism
The Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory (3CT) is an interdisciplinary space for sustained, comparative discussion of social and political processes in the contemporary world. 3CT is a part of Divis...
ccct.uchicago.edu