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Book Review: Asa Briggs and Peter Burke A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005, £16.99 pbk (ISBN: 0—7456—3512—1), viii+304 pp

Communication has now become a core subject in the social sciences. Communication theory had been around since antiquity in the rhetorical tradition. But in the social sciences, which emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries, the subject was initially relegated to special fields, such as public opinion research or mass communication. Only after the Second World War did the concept of communication and the closely-related concept of information enter science as basic, foundational scientific concepts. It is not difficult to see that this theoretical re-orientation reflects societal changes. The social sciences react to the technologies of information processing arising after the Second World War. The diffusion of new communication devices engenders far-reaching societal changes; these changes favour conceiving of communication as an elementary constituent of society and hence as a core subject of the social sciences. These developments also induce reflections on the history of communications devices; on the changing relationship between communication media and social practices. The book under review offers such a reflection on the social history of these media in the modern West, from the invention of printing (late 15th century) to recent developments in our ‘Digital Age’. The first edition of this book appeared in 2002; it has already been translated into other languages. This revised edition includes a new chapter on multimedia and globalization. But the ideas are again presented by means of an old medium: the printed book. This book includes some black-and-white illustrations, but the authors do not make use of newer communication media, such as CD, DVD or references to websites with additional information. The division of labour between both authors is made clear from the beginning. Peter Burke has been responsible for the introduction and Chapters 2 and 3, which mainly