Review of Understanding and Communicating Social Informatics: A Framework for Studying and Teaching the Human Contexts of Information and Communication Technologies, by Rob Kling (who died in 2003), Howard Rosenbaum, and Steve Sawyer, presented as the first monograph on the subject, “an overview, designed to be short, readable in pieces, and directed to our colleagues and those who wish to engage with the concepts and issues of computing from a social perspective.” Social informatics (SI) is a recently named subject domain, referred to as an inter-, multi-, or trans-disciplinary field, and the book does not fit easily into any recognizable publication genre. Concludes that it is a landmark text that is easy to navigate and fills a gap, but its overt mission to promote and reposition the domain threatens to unbalance the content. It is recommended to anyone who wants a fuller understanding of SI research, its approaches and applications
