Category Archives: Friedrich Kittler

It’s out! The Textbook & the Lecture is published

Here’s a blog post about the book just posted by the publisher, Johns Hopkins U.P. I went to school at the dawn of the microcomputer. These were expensive, immobile boxes that only responded to coded commands. Today I hold a … Continue reading

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Lecture & Textbook: Education in the Age of New Media

Forthcoming from Johns Hopkins University Press. Why are the fundamentals of education apparently so little changed in our era of digital technology? Is their obstinate persistence evidence of resilience or obsolescence? Such questions can best be answered not by imagining … Continue reading

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New Book: Media Transatlantic!

I have a new book out as of the end of May. It’s published by Springer and titled Media Transatlantic: Media and Communication Studies between North American and German-speaking Europe. Here’s the blurb: This book reflects recent scholarly and theoretical … Continue reading

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Science (Scholarship) as Open Source Process

This very short piece from the late F. Kittler becomes increasingly relevant.as issues of open scholarship and open education become ever more established. For example: However, it was practical when some programmers at the MIT resisted venality and when a computer … Continue reading

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Friedrich Kittler’s “Forgetting:” The Whistler at the Gates of Morning?

I’ve tracked down a copy of an early paper by Kittler, titled “Forgetting” (1979). The translation appears to be quite good, except for the unfortunate rendering of Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn as in the title, above. … Continue reading

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What's "The Canadian School" of Media Theory?

  (Hint: It’s NOT the same thing as the Toronto School of Communications.) I’ve been working with Darryl Cressman on an article on “Die kanadische Schule” for a German Handbook of Media Studies. The piece will be translated and then … Continue reading

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German Documentary: McLuhan – Visionary of the Media Age

German Documentary: M. McLuhan: Visionary of the Media Age from Norm Friesen on Vimeo. (The entire broadcast can be viewed here.) Interviewer: …but [he] wasn’t a systematizer Martina Leeker (media studies, Cologne): …that makes it perhaps difficult to work with him … Continue reading

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Friedrich Kittler (1943 – 2011)

Yesterday (Oct. 18), marked the end of the life & career of a media theorist who played an important role in changing what media studies is and (maybe?) might come to mean. One German newspaper (the Baadischer Zeitung) said this … Continue reading

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