Books like Understanding Media

01

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr · Science

The Shallows is Nicholas Carr's argument that the internet — and the way we habitually use it, skimming hyperlinked text, watching short videos, checking feeds — is reshaping the neural circuits responsible for deep reading and sustained concentration.

A kindred philosophy read.

02

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · History

Sapiens traces the full arc of human history from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa roughly 70,000 years ago to the present.

A kindred philosophy read.

03

The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

James Gleick · Science

The Information traces the history of information — as a concept, a technology, and a way of understanding the universe — from the talking drums of West Africa through the telegraph, the printing press, the telephone, and into the digital age.

Both dig into communication.

04

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Shoshana Zuboff · History

Shoshana Zuboff spent years researching what she calls surveillance capitalism — a new economic logic in which human experience is turned into raw material for prediction products that are sold to businesses wanting to influence behavior.

A kindred philosophy read.

05

Art as Experience

John Dewey · Philosophy

Art as Experience, published in 1934, is John Dewey's attempt to rescue aesthetics from the museum pedestal and return it to ordinary life.

Shares culture and perception with Understanding Media.

06

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind

Al Ries and Jack Trout · Business

Positioning, first published in 1981 and revised in 2000, introduced an idea that restructured how strategists think about marketing: the real competition is not in the marketplace but in the customer's mind.

Shares communication and perception with Understanding Media.

07

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Yuval Noah Harari · Philosophy

Where Sapiens traced humanity's past and Homo Deus speculated about its future, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century plants itself in the present.

Both dig into technology and society.

08

Designing Design

Kenya Hara · Philosophy

Kenya Hara is one of Japan's most respected graphic designers, best known for his long association with Muji, and Designing Design is his attempt to articulate what design actually is — and, more specifically, what distinguishes a distinctly Japanese approach from the Western design tradition.

Both dig into communication.

09

Experiencing Architecture

Steen Eiler Rasmussen · Philosophy

Experiencing Architecture is the Danish architect and town planner Steen Eiler Rasmussen's attempt to teach non-architects how to see and feel buildings.

Both dig into perception.

10

Finite and Infinite Games

James P. Carse · Philosophy

Finite and Infinite Games is James Carse's 1986 philosophical meditation on two fundamentally different ways of engaging with the world.

Both dig into culture.

11

Interaction of Color

Josef Albers · Philosophy

Josef Albers published Interaction of Color in 1963 as a teaching instrument, not a textbook.

Both dig into perception.

12

Lying

Sam Harris · Philosophy

Lying is a short philosophical essay — barely 80 pages — in which Sam Harris argues that lying is almost never justified and that most people dramatically underestimate its costs.

Both dig into communication.