Review of Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet by Jennifer Gabrys. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

The different forms of social participation that rely on these sensors, with special attention to those involving smartphones or low-cost electronic devices, are the focus of Jennifer Gabrys's book. Using cases monitoring forests, air pollution, marine debris, water consumption, or city infrastructures in need of repair, among others, the author develops a conceptual account of how environment, participation, and politics are related through sensing technologies. [...]although the book has plenty of empirical examples, Gabry's use of process philosophy, postmodernism, and postphenomenology leads to abstract theorizations, slightly vague, and not always connected to her concrete observations.