On today’s show, Ben sits down with Dr. Iván Chaar López, Assistant Professor with the Department of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, to discuss his research on the history and politics of computing and information infrastructures. Iván’s recently published book, The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and Intrusion (Duke University Press), draws on his archival research to show how, as he writes, “the matter of ‘the border’ is as much a technological question as it is a cultural one.” During our conversation, we reflect on how cybernetics—the study of circular processes or the “system of systems” in organisms, machines, and organizations—has played a significant role in shaping border and immigration enforcement. Iván discusses the development of technologies like drones, ground sensors, and surveillance networks that turn people into data and depict them as “intruders” in the landscape. This timely conversation grapples with the lineages of the border’s violent history and also considers how art and activism challenge us to think about the ways these brutal systems might someday be undone.

Works referenced in this episode

Chaar Lopez, I. (2024). The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, Intrusion. Duke University Press.

Chaar Lopez, I. (2025). “Borders are a War by Other Means.” Public Books.

De Andrade, O. (2025). “Anthropophagic Manifesto (1928),” Luszo-Brazilian Review, 62 (1).

Irani, L. (2013). “The Cultural Work of Microwork.” New Media & Society, 17 (5).

Mbembe, A. (2003). “Necropolitics.” Public Culture, 15 (1), 11-40.

Nakamura, L. (2014). “Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture.” American Quarterly, 66 (4), 919-941.

St. John, R. (2012). Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton University Press.

Star, S. L. (1999). “The Sociology of the Invisible: The Primacy of Work in the Writings of Anselm Strauss.” In David Maines (ed.): Social Organization and Social Process: Essays in Honor of Anselm Strauss. Aldine de Gruyter, 265–283.

University of Texas at Austin Border Tech Lab

An accessible transcript of this episode can be found here (via Descript): https://share.descript.com/view/EQYznoqcyau