Needy Media: How Tech Gets Personal by Stephen Monteiro
How smart devices play on the senses to tap into our emotions.
Needy Media: How Tech Gets Personal by Stephen Monteiro takes the reader on a journey through our history with personal computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices, while also examining how our interactions with these devices leave us open to manipulation by companies eager to leverage our use of them for profit.
The book’s opening chapter discusses the origin of the home computer, examining the popularity of the build-it-yourself home computer kits like the Altair 8800 microcomputer of the mid 1970s. Monteiro discusses the popularity of these units, which appealed to tech-minded hobbyists, while also exploring the ways in which this hobby was male-dominated and not receptive to women. The inclusion, here and elsewhere, of photos of specific equipment and advertising materials as well as quotations from articles written at the time supports the author’s arguments and enhances reader understanding.
“Monteiro also points out the subtle and not-so-subtle ways they [devices] are used to collect information about us—not just factual information, but how we are thinking or feeling at the time, or how long we pay attention to certain images.”
As the book continues, Monteiro explores the development of the computer mouse, and the importance of “pointing” as a concept. He also reviews the various approaches to touch-based interactions between users and their devices. Monteiro discusses our growing connection to our electronic devices, and how we might feel anxious when we momentarily misplace them.
Early surveillance tech, facial recognition software, phone alerts, and even devices like the Tamagotchi and other digital pets are examined. Monteiro also discusses selfies and wearable fitness and activity trackers.
Along the way, Monteiro points out ways in which habitual actions related to our devices may be making us vulnerable to the corporations who would like to harness our data and our attention to their own ends. He discusses how “playing games based on the device’s recognition of the face starts in electronics for young children,” citing the example of a children’s electronic diary equipped with a facial recognition lock. In a chilling way, devices like this aimed at children start to shape behaviours at an early age.
Throughout the book, Monteiro draws on concepts, methods, and research from a number of fields of study, including, but not limited to, anthropology, linguistics, sociology, psychology, and cultural studies as he examines the ways we interact with our devices.
Much as we might want to consider ourselves the “users” of the devices, and therefore in charge of them, Monteiro also points out the subtle and not-so-subtle ways they are used to collect information about us—not just factual information, but how we are thinking or feeling at the time, or how long we pay attention to certain images.
The impulse to be constantly connected is encouraged by corporations, and Monteiro alludes to the “seemingly limitless avarice of an all-sensing, ever-recording networked capitalism, where even a moment’s ‘distraction’ of the user away from the device represents corporate loss in data assets and revenue.” He also notes the ways in which electronic systems “can undermine agency, choice, and equal access and opportunity across users.”
Needy Media is written in an informative style, with plenty of factual information. Reference notes cite the sources used, and an index facilitates retrieval of important information. By tying in a broad range of fields of study, Monteiro provides a comprehensive and thoughtful look at our relationship with electronic media, while also offering cautionary information about how our everyday practices can leave us open to corporate manipulation and loss of privacy.
About the Author
Stephen Monteiro is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, Montreal and the author or editor of several books.
About the Reviewer
Ontario resident Lisa Timpf writes poetry, book reviews, short stories, and creative nonfiction. Her speculative poetry collections Cats and Dogs in Space (2025) and In Days to Come (2022) are available from Hiraeth Publishing in print and electronic formats. You can find out more about her writing projects at http://lisatimpf.blogspot.com/. Lisa is also on Bluesky, @lisatimpf.bsky.social
Book Details
Publisher: McGill-Queen’s University Press
Publication date: October 16, 2025
Language: English
Print length: 233 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0228026006