Vanessa Manceron argues that when naturalists take part in monitoring programs on their “local patch,” they are caught between two forms surveillance: care and control.

Elections are still about shaking hands and kissing babies, for the time being. Maria Vidart explores the first experience with social media campaigning in Colombia.

As food has industrialized, it has changed, along with our bodies and our economies. Matthew Hockenberry charts conceptual connections in this issue with a timeline.

One of the more spectacular signs of the onset of climate change is the decline of the polar bear population. But is it really in decline? Etienne Benson traces the long and controversial history of modeling the future population of polar bears.

A self-driving car is a computer you put your body in. Fiction by Cory Doctorow.

Robert Foster explores how mobile phones in Papua New Guinea offer new ways for both companies and consumers to give and receive care.

Does frozen blood send an ‘as yet unknown’ signal? Joanna Radin describes how serological epidemiology has made the recent past into a sentinel of the near future.

How do you plan for the sudden onset of total war? Stephen J. Collier and Andrew Lakoff describe the construction of a vast collection of data about the vital, vulnerable systems of every nation in the world in the aftermath of World War II.