System, Technology and Vernacular Innovations. Piotr Sitarski, Maria B. Garda, Krzysztof Jajko, Nowe media w PRL, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego, Łódź 2020, ss. 250.

This review concerns New Media Behind the Iron Curtain: Cultural History of Video, Microcomputers and Satellite Television in Communist Poland (original title: New Media in Polish People’s Republic), a book co-authored by Piotr Sitarski, Maria B. Garda, and Krzysztof Jajko. The publication offers a unique insight into vernacular usages of new technology (videocassette recorders, microcomputers and satellite TV) during the last decades of the Communist rule in Poland. Making the diffusion of innovations theory its basic approach to the subject, the book grounds its claims using rich data including interviews, photographs and documents from the analyzed era. New Media presents a comprehensive, case study-focused approach to the analysis of political, economic and social contexts concerning the dissemination, appropriation and application of technological innovations by individual users.

This review concerns New Media Behind the Iron Curtain: Cultural History of Video, Microcomputers and Satellite Television in Communist Poland (original title: New Media in Polish People’s Republic), a book co-authored by Piotr Sitarski, Maria B. Garda, and Krzysztof Jajko. The publication offers a unique insight into vernacular usages of new technology (videocassette recorders, microcomputers and satellite TV) during the last decades of the Communist rule in Poland. Making the diffusion of innovations theory its basic approach to the subject, the book grounds its claims using rich data including interviews, photographs and documents from the analyzed era. New Media presents a comprehensive, case study-focused approach to the analysis of political, economic and social contexts concerning the dissemination, appropriation and application of technological innovations by individual users.