The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life/Putting the Public Back in Public Relations

* Kleinman, Sharon, ed. (2009). The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, pp. 390. * Solis, Brian and Deirdre Breakenridge (2009). Putting the Public Back in Public Relations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, pp. 314. From old technologies to new social media tools, scholars and practitioners alike are looking for answers of how best to incorporate both old and new technology tools into both businesses and everyday life. These books explore the ever-changing world of technology through the lens of communication. Building off of her previous 2007 book, Displacing Place: Mobile Communication in the Twenty-first Century, Sharon Kleinman, professor of communications at Quinnipiac University, has brought together a broader array of efficiency-oriented technologies and practices while highlighting their implications in her newest edited text, The Culture of Efficiency: Technology in Everyday Life. Kleinman mastered the gathering of twenty-eight authors from a variety of backgrounds. Each chapter attempts to demonstrate how everyday people are innovatively using technologies from a particular point of view in the human life cycle. As such, the book is divided into four parts that follow a life cycle structure; however, I find this to be a bit of a stretch. While the first chapter does start with birth, grouped in that same particular life cycle part, part one, is eating and connecting. Trying to find the connection of birth with eating to make a particular section is not needed. While these divisions make for structure of the volume, they are not helpful. Each chapter is a stand-alone article that can be read or studied individually, which could be of particular interest to those wanting to study only certain areas of interest. The book would have been better suited not to be divided into parts because they do not aid in subject matter comprehension. If readers are looking for a text to describe the newest technologies on the market, this is not the book to do so. As Kleinman points out in the introduction, each chapter in the edited volume is concentrated on efficiency-oriented technologies and practices. The forte of this edited volume is connecting numerous technologies to the current cultural expectancies that are placed upon each of us. Authors of each chapter offer realistic insights on the how and/or why their studied technology should be integrated or separated from activities that we as humans do every day, many that we conduct without thinking. The focus of the book is not to advocate one technology over another, but instead offer the reader a deeper understanding of each technology in order to make decisions in what technologies to engage - decisions made separate from cultural expectancies. As an edited volume with a diverse selection of contributions from a multitude of authors, The Culture of Efficiency is equipped with something for everyone who is interested in how and/or why technology, both old and new, is becoming increasingly prevalent in both renovating and organizing how we maneuver through typical daily experiences. As Kleinman so eloquently states in her conclusion, "We must continue to develop a deeper understanding of the challenges of living in the twenty-first century, appreciating individual experience and taking a global perspective" (p. 356). Most chapters could easily be used and assigned to upper-level undergraduate students. Professors who wish to implement this collection of works as part of graduate work should be advised that the book only offers a very broad perspective of technology, and additional material is needed to focus on particular technological tools. Most scholars can value research and textbooks conducted by fellow scholars. However, in the public relations field most can also appreciate thought leaders in the industry who conduct research and write texts as they practice the current trade. …