REVIEW ARTICLE Books to think with 1 ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ PABLO J. BOCZKOWSKI Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ When Keith Hampton invited me to write a review of influential books in the study of new media, and asked me to submit a list of the three to five titles I intended to review, I followed two criteria to develop the list: to include books that I often find myself writing about, and that address a mix of topics, historical periods, and kinds of new media. The books I finally put in this list are: Douglas’ (1987) account of the technological, organizational, and journalistic dynamics that shaped American radio in the early 20th century; Suchman’s (1987) examination of the problem of mutual intelligibility in human–computer interaction; Marvin’s (1988) portrait of transformations in the self, family, class, and community in relation to the advent of the telephone and electricity during the late 19th century; Edwards’ (1996) analysis of the political and subjective dimensions of computing during the Cold War; and Bowker and Star’s (1999) study of the epistemological, organizational, and moral aspects of the information infrastructures that subtend media artifacts. In the process of rereading these books in order to write this review, I realized that there was a third and most important reason why they had been so influential to me: taken together, they provide the foundational building blocks of a heuristically powerful framework to undertake social and historical studies of new media. So, instead of writing a typical review, in what follows I take advantage of Keith’s invitation to pay tribute to these books by drawing from them to articulate answers to three basic questions in new media research: • What are new media? • How might we study new media? • Why should we study new media? WHAT ARE NEW MEDIA? The books that I selected have helped to articulate an understanding of new media that comprises of more than novel technical capabilities. In one of new media & society Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi Vol6(1):144–150 DOI: 10.1177/1461444804039901 www.sagepublications.com ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 144