Is the continuing unfolding of the digital media a brand new era in communications history, as some of its proponents breathlessly claim? In his timely monograph, Boddy offers us a perceptive historical overview. He compares this time with several other periods, but most pertinently, to when radio and television were new. By citing the historial record, he shows that each instance of a new technology also caused existing business models and consumer habits to be plunged into controversy and change.Specifically, the changes in society in transitioning to wireless communication from 1900 to the 1920s were greater and more traumatic than those espoused due to today's digital media. Ironically, that early radio era gave rise to a gender perference for male hobbyists that echoes the current gender imbalance amongst early computer users. We also see concerns that radio fans might obsessively devote too much time to their hobby. Very might like today's video game users.There are contrasts. Radio was seen as offering a mass unifying effect on its audience, at a national level. As distinct to fears that digital media might lead to an increasing fragmentation of the contemporary public experience.Boddy also offers a perspective on Virtual Reality. He recaps the rise of this theme in the early 1990s, as personified by people like Jared Lanier. However, as I write this in 2004, VR is still over the horizon. Unaffordable as a mass consumer item. Over 10 years after VR burst on the mass consciousness. Several entire Moore cycles later. But if you look at his descriptions of how television struggled for some 20 years, before it became a success in the 1950s, you might appreciate where we stand with VR today.