To Read
Media Studies
Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism, Anna Kornbluh (2024)
Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture, Andrew DeWaard (2024)
- Want to read because of interest in the film industry and the money that makes it go round.
Information Science and STS
Living Thinkwork: Where Do Labour Processes Come From?, Mike Hales (1980)
- I think this would just be really relevant given the conversations around labour w/ AI in the world today. Plus I really like a book situated in a very specific time and place that explores broad, abstract ideas in that context.
Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change, Wiebe E. Bijker (1997)
- "This book crystallizes and extends the important work Wiebe Bijker has done in the last decade to found a full-scale theory of sociotechnical change that describes where technologies come from and how societies deal with them."
- Beyond its material, I think this would be a useful book to learn how to construct theoretical arguments based on situated, specific case studies.
- I also think that the idea of sociotechnical change (like long term stuff) is something that I would like to talk about more going ahead, and I'm hopeful this book will help me learn how.
Online Communities
Against Platforms : Surviving Digital Utopia, Mike Pepi (2025)
- Particularly excited for the chapter on the impact of platforms on institutions of information gathering / dissemination (Chapter 3), but also broadly excited to read a book about the values embedded into platform design. I wonder what's new to say on that front in 2025.
Computing
The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline, Matti Tedre (2014)
- I want to read this because it touches on a lot of different characterisations of computing, as engineering, as theory, as a discipline. It would be nice to learn more about the different discourses in my field.
- Found via: Julius Togelius' post on research vs. tinkering