[Air-L] Reading list on technology and society (with a communication twist)

Lee H. Humphreys lmh13 at cornell.edu
Wed Mar 5 09:36:56 PST 2014


Hi Rich,

Among the others that have already been mentioned, here are some old favorites:

Raymond Williams "Television: Technology & Cultural Form" 
Josh Meyrowitz "No Sense of Place"
Roger Silverstone "Television and Everyday life"
Jacques Ellul "The Technological Society"

Of course, there's also Innis' "Bias of Communication"  and McLuhan's "Understanding Media", which can be fun to teach as well. 

I'm also a huge fan of Nick Couldry's book "Media, Society, World.

Cheers,
Lee

Lee Humphreys, PhD
Assistant Professor 
Dept. of Communication
Cornell University

On Mar 5, 2014, at 2:38 AM, Rich Ling wrote:

> Dear all,
> 
> I am trying to think of a readings list on technology and society. I want
> to have a bit of a bias towards communication, but that it not the only
> technology. I have put together the following list. The two areas that I
> realize I don't have much on is steam technology (is there a book similar
> to Eisenstein for steam?) and transport/automobilism.  These are mostly
> books. Key articles are also of interest.
> 
> My current list (starting with the older technologies) is as follows:
> 
> ·      The Printing press as a agent of change, Eisenstein
> 
> ·      Shaping the day, Glennie and Thrift
> 
> ·      Latitude, Sobel
> 
> ·      The Victorian internet, Standage
> 
> ·      The Control Revolution, Beniger
> 
> ·      Technics and civilization, Mumford
> 
> ·      Electrifying America: Social meanings of a new technology, David Nye
> 
> ·      When old technologies were new, Marvin
> 
> ·      The social construction of technical systems, Bijker
> 
> ·      America Calling, Fischer
> 
> ·      Crabgrass Frontier, Jackson
> 
> ·      Virtual communities, Rheingold
> 
> ·      The rise of the network society, Castells
> 
> ·      6 Degrees, Watts
> 
> ·      Taken for grantedness (maybe New Tech, New Ties), Ling
> 
> ·      Configuring the User as Everybody: Oudshoorn, Rommes, Stinestra
> 
> ·      Sociology beyond societies, Urry
> 
> ·      In the Age of the Smart Machine, Zuboff
> 
> ·      Play between worlds, Taylor
> 
> ·      Where the action is, Dourish
> 
> -- 
> Rich L.
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