A History of Digital Media

"A History of Digital Media is the go-to text for a compact overview of how our current communication universe came about. Spiced with sidebars and teaching helps, the book offers a gently revisionist account that places the telephone alongside the computer as a vector of innovation. Informed both by primary historical sources and classic theoretical insights, this easily readable volume will prove an essential resource to scholars and students sure to be fascinated by how the digital, while ever-pressing on the present, is in fact anything but new." -John Durham Peters, Yale University and Benjamin Peters, University of Tulsa

"An original, theoretically sophisticated and historically informed work about the digitization of media and communication. Gabriele Balbi and Paolo Magaudda’s pioneering book advances our understanding of the myths and mechanisms associated with the processes of digitization. Highly recommended." -Daya Thussu, University of Westminster, London

"A History of Digital Media is a first-rate introductory text that is as delightful to read as it is informative and instructive. It tells a complicated, global story in disarmingly charming and unhurried prose. Its long-range historical synthesis is rich but not labored, and can only be the fruit of meticulous research and deep theoretical thinking. Highly recommended to beginners and experts alike." -Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania