Steve J. Wurtzler. Electric Sounds: Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media. (Film and Culture.) New York: Columbia University Press. 2007. Pp. xi, 393. $34.50

Extract

All of us are familiar with the ways in which the digital revolution is reshaping our current media environment, be it through the uses of music, innovations in the film industry, or its impact on radio and television broadcasting. Steve J. Wurtzler reminds us that media revolutions like these are not new and have fundamentally restructured our media uses and experiences in previous eras. The transformation that he focuses on took place in the early decades of the twentieth century, when the introduction of electric sound, first through the telephone and the phonograph, followed by the emerging radio industry and Hollywood's conversion to sound movies, forever altered Americans' media experiences and practices.

The strength of Wurtzler's book lies in its interdisciplinary nature and in the fact that it combines fields generally treated separately, such as the history of the phonograph, radio broadcasting, and the film industry. Wurtzler calls his approach an example of the “technological history of media” (p. 14), which highlights the cross-disciplinary nature of explorations that combine history of science with cultural and media studies. Throughout his discussion he emphasizes that although significant and even dominant at times, large media corporations did not by themselves decide upon the uses of new technologies: “Upon innovation, media technologies have multiple, often conflicting identities. The ultimate meanings they take within social relations are the product of contestations and struggles” (p. 15).