Sunday, October 12, 2014

Book Assignment

When i first started looking on Amazon for books, i started out with very broad keywords such as, "the information society", "the network society", and "technology'.  After not having much success with those, especially in finding books published in the last two years, i narrowed by search down to keywords such as "social media" and not advantage of the suggested for you information Amazon provides.
The first book I found was "A Social Strategy: How We Profit from Social Media" by Mikolaj Piskorski.  It is a 288-page book and was rated 4.6 stars on Amazon. It is about the difference between social media and traditional media and how companies can capitalize on this new development.  There were only 9 customer reviews, they were mostly positive, however some did mention that the language used was little hard to grasp.  Using WorldCat, I found that there were not many available in libraries near me and it only had 2 reviews on Google Books.  I went to GoodReads, where the book only had 13 ratings, and some negative comments.  Based on the lack of feedback and the fact that it seemed more like a business heavy book i decided to keep looking.
The next book I found was "Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other" by Sherry Turkle.  It is about how as technology ramps up our emotional lives ramp down, based off of hundreds of interviews and over 15 years of study.  It received 4.1 stars on Amazon with nearly 145 customer reviews, many of the reviews stated how easy to read the book was.  It was found at a large number of libraries around me and had 13 reviews on Google Books.  On GoodReads it had over 400 reviews and a rating of 3.57, but it had a lot of mixed reviews, some either loved it or hated it.
The last book (and winner) I found was  "Writing on the Wall: Social Media, the First 2,000 Years" by Tom Standage.  It is a 288-page book and was rated 4.4 stars on Amazon.  It is about the history of social media, and how social media is not a new phenomenon by comparing modern online technology to ancient social media.  It had 63 customer reviews, almost all of them being 5 stars.  It was found in not a large amount of libraries around me on WorldCat, but had 26 reviews on Google Books, all very positive.  What really sold me on this book was the positive reception it had on GoodReads, with a 3.91 rating and almost 100 very positive reviews.  When I went to ProQuest and Project Muse I found a handful of articles on the book that could help me in the paper.




1 comment:

Unknown said...

This book sounds like it will be a fascinating read. I wonder why the author chose to title the book "Writing on the Wall" even though this book seems like it will explore more than Facebook, the social media outlet known for the term "wall". Also, it is interesting how this book presents a history of social media. I wasn't aware that the term social media existed prior to about 10 years ago.