14 books like MP3

By Jonathan Sterne,

Here are 14 books that MP3 fans have personally recommended if you like MP3. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance

Rachel Plotnick Author Of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing

From my list on technologies that seem boring but aren’t.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been attracted to picking apart “taken-for-granted” things and wondered how ubiquitous and mundane technologies have become that way. What were they before they were ordinary? When I started researching and writing about push buttons, I discovered that the interfaces right under our fingers have a long and complex history. I loved reading about a time when pushing a button was both a novelty and a danger, and these recommended books similarly reframe familiar technologies as anything but familiar. I hope that these books will add a little bit of strangeness to the every day, just like they did for me!

Rachel's book list on technologies that seem boring but aren’t

Rachel Plotnick Why did Rachel love this book?

I opened up this book as a skeptic–how interesting could a history of this ubiquitous writing tool be? However, I quickly ate my words (a fitting metaphor for such a book) after diving into Henry Petroski’s meticulously researched and easy to read tale of how a common thing becomes common in the first place.

While the book is a study in engineering, it’s also a story of people who doodle, think, design, and imagine. Petroski taught me that much as we live in a digital age, we’re indebted to the simple and impressively designed artifacts that stick around century after century. 

By Henry Petroski,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Pencil as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Henry Petroski traces the origins of the pencil back to ancient Greece and Rome, writes factually and charmingly about its development over the centuries and around the world, and shows what the pencil can teach us about engineering and technology today.


Book cover of The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another

Rachel Plotnick Author Of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing

From my list on technologies that seem boring but aren’t.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been attracted to picking apart “taken-for-granted” things and wondered how ubiquitous and mundane technologies have become that way. What were they before they were ordinary? When I started researching and writing about push buttons, I discovered that the interfaces right under our fingers have a long and complex history. I loved reading about a time when pushing a button was both a novelty and a danger, and these recommended books similarly reframe familiar technologies as anything but familiar. I hope that these books will add a little bit of strangeness to the every day, just like they did for me!

Rachel's book list on technologies that seem boring but aren’t

Rachel Plotnick Why did Rachel love this book?

Ainissa Ramirez is a scientist and a storyteller, and from page one of this book, I found myself transfixed by her ability to make complex things comprehensible. From the springs that make clocks work and the carbon filaments that help us see to the electrons in glass that now power computers and smartphones, Ramirez taught me how much matter matters in understanding technological developments of the present moment.

My favorite part of the book is her writing style, as she begins each chapter with an inviting anecdote, like how Abraham Lincoln’s body was carried in a funeral rail car made possible by the steel in train tracks. 

By Ainissa Ramirez,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Alchemy of Us as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A “timely, informative, and fascinating” study of 8 inventions—and how they shaped our world—with “totally compelling” insights on little-known inventors throughout history (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction)

In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines 8 inventions and reveals how they shaped the human experience:
 
• Clocks
• Steel rails
• Copper communication cables
• Photographic film
• Light bulbs
• Hard disks
• Scientific labware
• Silicon chips
 
Ramirez tells the stories of the woman who sold time, the inventor who inspired Edison, and the hotheaded undertaker whose invention pointed the…


Book cover of Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents

Rachel Plotnick Author Of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing

From my list on technologies that seem boring but aren’t.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been attracted to picking apart “taken-for-granted” things and wondered how ubiquitous and mundane technologies have become that way. What were they before they were ordinary? When I started researching and writing about push buttons, I discovered that the interfaces right under our fingers have a long and complex history. I loved reading about a time when pushing a button was both a novelty and a danger, and these recommended books similarly reframe familiar technologies as anything but familiar. I hope that these books will add a little bit of strangeness to the every day, just like they did for me!

Rachel's book list on technologies that seem boring but aren’t

Rachel Plotnick Why did Rachel love this book?

We live in a world of documents caught between new and old, between paper and bits–from library cards and movie tickets to PDFs–and media historian Lisa Gitelman explains why the “document” itself is so critical a category in modern society. Medical facilities, schools, governments, and prisons all require documentation, so this book is particularly useful in thinking about how societies organize around knowledge infrastructures and artifacts.

I marvel at how the book (and all of Gitelman’s work) is able to move so facilely between different historical moments and objects, weaving them together into a tapestry that is more than the sum of its parts. While we might think of “media” as radio, TV, newspapers, or the internet, Gitelman helped me understand that media is so much more.

By Lisa Gitelman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Paper Knowledge as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Paper Knowledge is a remarkable book about the mundane: the library card, the promissory note, the movie ticket, the PDF (Portable Document Format). It is a media history of the document. Drawing examples from the 1870s, the 1930s, the 1960s, and today, Lisa Gitelman thinks across the media that the document form has come to inhabit over the last 150 years, including letterpress printing, typing and carbon paper, mimeograph, microfilm, offset printing, photocopying, and scanning. Whether examining late nineteenth century commercial, or "job" printing, or the Xerox machine and the role of reproduction in our understanding of the document, Gitelman…


Book cover of The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information

Rachel Plotnick Author Of Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing

From my list on technologies that seem boring but aren’t.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been attracted to picking apart “taken-for-granted” things and wondered how ubiquitous and mundane technologies have become that way. What were they before they were ordinary? When I started researching and writing about push buttons, I discovered that the interfaces right under our fingers have a long and complex history. I loved reading about a time when pushing a button was both a novelty and a danger, and these recommended books similarly reframe familiar technologies as anything but familiar. I hope that these books will add a little bit of strangeness to the every day, just like they did for me!

Rachel's book list on technologies that seem boring but aren’t

Rachel Plotnick Why did Rachel love this book?

Do filing cabinets matter anymore? I asked myself this question as I popped open Robertson’s book, quickly to find that these storage cabinets have a tremendous amount to teach us about “information” in the present moment.

Robertson demonstrates how the filing cabinet, through its vertical storage, became a “skyscraper” for the office, and this spatial arrangement not only influenced what information was but how it should be organized.

I love the fantastic archival images in the book, which made a humble and even “boring” technology incredibly relatable and vivid. At the same time, I appreciated Robertson’s ruminations on gender and the file clerk; it’s not just what gets filed, he convinced me, but also who does the filing.

By Craig Robertson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Filing Cabinet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with information

The ubiquity of the filing cabinet in the twentieth-century office space, along with its noticeable absence of style, has obscured its transformative role in the histories of both information technology and work. In the first in-depth history of this neglected artifact, Craig Robertson explores how the filing cabinet profoundly shaped the way that information and data have been sorted, stored, retrieved, and used.

Invented in the 1890s, the filing cabinet was a result of the nineteenth-century faith in efficiency. Previously, paper records were arranged…


Book cover of Sámi Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North

Barbara Sjoholm Author Of By the Fire: Sami Folktales and Legends

From my list on the Sami and Sápmi.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I’d been to Scandinavia many times as a translator and travel writer, it wasn’t until about twenty years ago that I spent significant time above the Arctic Circle, writing my travel book, The Palace of the Snow Queen. Over the course of three different winters spent in Lapland, I discovered a world of Sami history, politics, culture, and literature. I was particularly interested in the friendship between Emilie Demant Hatt and Johan Turi. It’s been inspiring over the past years to see a new generation of artists and activists shaping and sharing their culture and resisting continued efforts to exploit natural resources in territories long used by the Sami for herding and fishing. 

Barbara's book list on the Sami and Sápmi

Barbara Sjoholm Why did Barbara love this book?

Another new book by two scholars who work with Sami linguistics and folklore, this volume is a must-read account of how, beginning in the 1970s, the Sami began to employ Sami-language media, from recordings, books, and periodicals to films, tweets, and YouTube recordings, to maintain and create social and political awareness and art. I loved reading about the work of filmmakers and musicians in a way that respects their innovative work in the context of Sápmi’s long-standing indigenous culture. I only wish that more Sámi films and art exhibits were available for viewing in North America. Luckily we have YouTube and music streaming services to accompany our reading!

By Coppélie Cocq, Thomas A. DuBois,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sámi Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Digital media-GIFs, films, TED Talks, tweets, and more-have become integral to daily life and, unsurprisingly, to Indigenous people's strategies for addressing the historical and ongoing effects of colonization. In Sami Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North, Thomas DuBois and Coppelie Cocq examine how Sami people of Norway, Finland, and Sweden use media to advance a social, cultural, and political agenda anchored in notions of cultural continuity and self-determination. Beginning in the 1970s, Sami have used Sami-language media-including commercially produced musical recordings, feature and documentary films, books of literature and poetry, and magazines-to communicate a sense of identity both…


Book cover of Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children's Lives

Natalia I. Kucirkova Author Of The Future of the Self: Understanding Personalization in Childhood and Beyond

From my list on research on children’s technology use.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an avid reader, I have been fascinated by children’s reading development and began researching this topic with a specific interest in the personal motivation of young readers. I examined children’s reading in various digital formats, including e-books made by families and children themselves. Today, I work as Professor in Norway and the UK and enjoy working across academia and industry. I feel very passionate about communicating research in an accessible way to children’s teachers, caregivers, and policy-makers. The books on my list do this exceptionally well, and I hope you will enjoy them as much as I did.

Natalia's book list on research on children’s technology use

Natalia I. Kucirkova Why did Natalia love this book?

Many parents are worried about the amount of time their children spend with screens and look for ways and a deeper understanding of how to best manage children’s use of modern technologies. I loved how Livingstone and Blum-Ross brought together research, deep thinking, and applicable strategies in one coherent book volume. I learnt so much from reading this book, including how algorithms shape children’s games and social conversations. The most important takeaway for me was the vital need to support children’s rights in the digital age.

By Sonia M. Livingstone, Alicia Blum-Ross,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Parenting for a Digital Future as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. In Parenting for a Digital Future, Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross draw on extensive and diverse qualitative and quantitative research with a range of parents in the UK to reveal how digital technologies characterize parenting in late modernity, as parents
determine how to forge new territory with little precedent or support. They chart how parents often enact authority and values through digital technologies since "screen time," games,…


Book cover of The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age

Victoria Dunckley Author Of Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen

From my list on effects of screen time on kids on neuroscience.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an integrative child psychiatrist with a special focus on how screen-time detunes the nervous system, causing issues with sleep, mood, focus, and behavior. In fact, technology use is the most underestimated influence of our time; it causes problems whose connections aren’t always obvious, leads to misdiagnosis and overmedication, and wastes resources. I am passionate about helping children and families methodically reverse these changes using screen fast protocols that provide dramatic improvements in functioning and well-being. I speak regularly to parents’ groups, schools, and health providers, and my work has been featured on such outlets as NPR, CNN, NBC Nightly News, Psychology Today, and Good Morning America.

Victoria's book list on effects of screen time on kids on neuroscience

Victoria Dunckley Why did Victoria love this book?

This book will make you a little uneasy; some of the descriptions and scenarios are downright disturbing. Yet the information is necessary to navigate parenting in today’s world. I felt a strange form of validation reading this work, as I’m all too aware of these issues (bullying, kids feeling ignored, sexting, lack of empathy, etc), but when I bring them up, parents often respond that I have a skewed perspective. But as Dr. Steiner Adaire points out, the kids themselves say “parents are clueless” about their kids’ digital lives.  Her writing is beautiful, and her advice about helping kids think critically about online behavior is second to none. 

By Catherine Steiner-Adair, Teresa H. Barker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Big Disconnect as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Wall Street Journal Best Nonfiction Pick; Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year

Clinical psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair takes an in-depth look at how the Internet and the digital revolution are profoundly changing childhood and family dynamics, and offers solutions parents can use to successfully shepherd their children through the technological wilderness.

As the focus of the family has turned to the glow of the screen—children constantly texting their friends or going online to do homework; parents working online around the clock—everyday life is undergoing a massive transformation. Easy access to the Internet and social media has erased the boundaries that…


Book cover of Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Author Of Confronting the Internet's Dark Side: Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway

From my list on the internet's history, development, and challenges.

Why am I passionate about this?

Raphael Cohen-Almagor, DPhil, St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, is Professor of Politics, Olof Palme Visiting Professor, Lund University, Founding Director of the Middle East Study Centre, University of Hull, and Global Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Raphael taught, inter alia, at Oxford (UK), Jerusalem, Haifa (Israel), UCLA, Johns Hopkins (USA), and Nirma University (India). With more than 300 publications, Raphael has published extensively in the field of political philosophy, including Liberal Democracy and the Limits of Tolerance; Challenges to Democracy; The Right to Die with Dignity; The Scope of Tolerance; Confronting the Internet's Dark Side; Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, and The Republic, Secularism and Security: France versus the Burqa and the Niqab.

Raphael's book list on the internet's history, development, and challenges

Raphael Cohen-Almagor Why did Raphael love this book?

For me, every book by Clifford (Cliff) Christians is always a celebration. I met Cliff in 1996 and we kept in touch ever since then. Christians has contributed to the field of media ethics more than any other scholar I know. In this book, Christians explores the fundamentals of ethics and justice in moral theory. In addition to “the usual suspects,” i.e., Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte, and Max Weber, Christians explores modern liberal philosophy, feminist philosophy, African philosophy, Latin American liberation theology, Confucianism, and Islam. He does this in his usual dazzling and most comprehensive style, exhibiting wide knowledge of the literature and brilliant analysis that adds layers upon layers of sharp insights. As in his previous books, Christians invokes an ethics of care and humanity in order to alleviate poverty, homelessness, and unemployment, issues that trouble Western and non-Western societies, albeit in different…

By Clifford G. Christians,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Media Ethics and Global Justice in the Digital Age as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Today's digital revolution is a worldwide phenomenon, with profound and often differential implications for communities around the world and their relationships to one another. This book presents a new, explicitly international theory of media ethics, incorporating non-Western perspectives and drawing deeply on both moral philosophy and the philosophy of technology. Clifford Christians develops an ethics grounded in three principles - truth, human dignity, and non-violence - and shows how these principles can be applied across a wide range of cases and domains. The book is a guide for media professionals, scholars, and educators who are concerned with the global ramifications…


Book cover of The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st-Century Techonology?

Paul Armstrong Author Of Disruptive Technologies: A Framework to Understand, Evaluate and Respond to Digital Disruption

From my list on disrupting your competitors sleeping patterns.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always asked why too many times I am told. From my early days studying psychology to working for Myspace out in LA and now with clients in London, my fondness for understanding what drives change, inertia, and pain has always been a focus. I knew from an early age that understanding people and how they are affected by, use and fear change and technology would be a useful skill to focus on. Doing so has enabled me to work with big brands, and smart cookies and interview some of the best minds of our generation. I recently brought everything under one roof, TBD Group, to help people see around corners.  

Paul's book list on disrupting your competitors sleeping patterns

Paul Armstrong Why did Paul love this book?

Tracey’s first book was a smash hit with tech and business folks alike for its take on where identity is going after she had a run-in with Facebook. From the initial fascinating (and frankly scary) story, Tracey explores how identity is changing and that’s important for any business out there. You’ll explore all facets of what identity means and could mean in the future. As we rethink ourselves and create digital twins, understanding the psychology behind this area will be business-critical in the coming years. 

By Tracey Follows,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Future of You as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the future, how many identities will you have? How many do you want? Digital technology is causing us to think differently about who we are and who we could become, but with the right knowledge we can turn this incredible capacity to our advantage.

'Who am I?' is one of the most fundamental questions of all. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to answer as technology enables us to negotiate and create many different versions of ourselves.

In our digital, data-driven world, Facebook gets a say in verifying who we are, science can alter our biology, and advances in…


Book cover of Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture

Sonia M. Livingstone Author Of Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children's Lives

From my list on children and parents in the digital age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve researched children’s digital lives since the internet first arrived in many people’s homes. Recently, I noticed parents’ concerns weren’t listened to – mostly, researchers interview parents to find out about their children rather than about parents themselves. Worse, policymakers often make decisions that affect parents without consulting them. So, in Parenting for a Digital Future we focused on parents, following my previous books on Children and the Internet and The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age. As a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, I love that moment of knocking on a family’s door, and am always curious to see what I will find!

Sonia's book list on children and parents in the digital age

Sonia M. Livingstone Why did Sonia love this book?

As a researcher, I’m always looking out for fresh ways to approach familiar problems.

Three problems really bother me. One is the idea of reducing all the different types of media, and all the different ways families use media, to a simplistic formula – screen time. As if we could just measure screen time, reduce it by turning parents into screen time police, and thereby solve the problems of our digital age.

Another is the idea of seeing parents as having all the power and children as willful or ignorant or naughty and so needing to be controlled. As if families weren’t trying to be more democratic and as if parents had nothing to learn from their children. The third is the idea that families have got to work all this out on their own, as if digital innovators and the wider society weren’t in some ways part of the…

By Elisabeth Gee (editor), Lori Takeuchi (editor), Ellen Wartella (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Children and Families in the Digital Age as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Children and Families in the Digital Age offers a fresh, nuanced, and empirically-based perspective on how families are using digital media to enhance learning, routines, and relationships. This powerful edited collection contributes to a growing body of work suggesting the importance of understanding how the consequences of digital media use are shaped by family culture, values, practices, and the larger social and economic contexts of families' lives. Chapters offer case studies, real-life examples, and analyses of large-scale national survey data, and provide insights into previously unexplored topics such as the role of siblings in shaping the home media ecology.


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