Overview

With the pervasive digitalization of communication and information devices in society, and with the increasing supremacy of software that dissimulates its physical medium, actual technologies are increasingly disappearing behind their user-oriented surfaces and manifest content. The more human users are superficially in touch with such devices, the more their technical essence recedes into an almost non-intelligible sphere, culminating in the hidden layers of neuronal nets in Artificial Intelligence. Transitive Media [Philosophy] argues for a media engagement that instead stays close to the mechanism and becomes conscious of its knowledge value in real time. Rejecting symbolic abstraction, the book argues for a ‘transitive’ engagement, in the grammatical sense of an immediate relation between verbal expression and its objects where the actor remains entangled in the action. Concrete technical scenarios explore how knowledge arises from real-time interaction with machines, whether through reactivating obsolete devices in Berlin’s Media Archaeological Fundus, analysing glitches as epistemic revelations, or reframing writing itself as a technical act. A hands-on, entangled philosophy emerges through—not just about—technology. Addressing a broad readership in media culture and philosophy, this volume offers a new kind of doing-media theory, urging readers to trade passive observation for embodied, operational insight to achieve a more conscious dialogue with their smartphones, tablets and other such items. Emerging from the author’s long academic training in media theories and from practical media-archaeological experience with generations of technical devices, this provocative book compels a rethink of how thought and technology co-constitute one another.

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9781804132326

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Wolfgang Ernst was full professor for Media Theories at Humboldt University in Berlin until his retirement in autumn 2024, where he founded the seminar for Media Science. He received his doctorate in history, then focused on media studies and cultural studies. Since his research turn towards media archaeology, he has devoted his writings and teaching primarily to theories of the archive, media temporalities and sonic media processes. He is currently exploring the intra-technical technológos of cultural knowledge.

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