Customer Reviews

Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a stellar contribution to the understanding of how communication technologies affect world politics. Its rich in historical detail, wonderfully well written, and provocative in its conclusion. A must read.

Deibert has written a book that gives an awesome portrayal of the way in which information technologies interact with society and political forces. I would say that after having read this book I now have a much better grasp of a truly sophisticated understanding of the causal relationship between society and communications. This is a great contribution to medium theory.

I first used Deibert's text in a course some years ago, recently found it on my shelf & reread it.

It's a good, solid, authoritative history of communication in Western Culture. Deibert commands a range of sources from Elizabeth Eisenstein to Kenneth Gergen, and he does it in three ways that make the book work for popular audiences:

(1) Though Deibert has the academic chops, he does not write like most academics. The book is readable with little jargon and with a well-woven synthetic approach. Even my undergrads -- who generally hate to read ANYTHING -- liked the book and had no trouble understanding it;

(2) Deibert connects the "internal" history of communication with ways in which communication shapes our identity--think Martin Luther's subversive message or postmodern "imagined communities" on the web; and

(3) The book has a thematic glue -- "medium theory" -- that binds the story together. This McLuhanesque approach, even if you disagree with it, is clearly stated in ways that you can test against your own understanding and experience.

Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia was originally published in 1997 and has not been re-issued. Still, it has not been superseded by another work on this topic.