Elements of a Philosophy of Technology

Ernst Kapp (1808–1896) was a German philosopher of technology and geographer. He was prosecuted for sedition in the late 1840s and subsequently emigrated to Texas where he became a noted early Free Thinker and abolitionist.Jeffrey West Kirkwood is assistant professor of art history at Binghamton University, State University of New York.Leif Weatherby is assistant professor of German at New York University.Lauren Wolfe is a translator in the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University.Siegfried Zielinski is head of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design and is Michel Foucault Chair at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.

• IntroductionJeffrey West Kirkwood and Leif WeatherbyPreface1. The Anthropological Scale2. Organ Projection3. The First Tools4. Limbs and Measure5. Apparatuses and Instruments6. The Inner Architecture of the Bones 7. Steam Engines and Rail Lines8. The Electromagnetic Telegraph 9. The Unconscious 10. Machine Technology 11. The Fundamental Morphological Law12. Language 13. The StateAfterword: A Media-Archaeological Postscript to the Translation of Ernst Kapp’s Elements of a Philosophy of Technology (1877)Siegfried Zielinski

"I am convinced that, with this newly available translation, Kapp's ideas and concepts-like organ projection or the state as disciplinary machine comprised of parts functioning in circular full-closure-will enter and fortify the international field of media studies as well as, and more so, the more comprehensive field concerned with thinking the relationship of technology and civilization."-Siegfried Zielinski, from the Afterword"Ernst Kapp's book is long overdue in translation. This edition masterfully introduces the English speaking world to a text that is essential to both the history and the future of media theory. Elements of a Philosophy of Technology is required reading for anyone interested in the study of media and technology."-Bernhard Siegert, Bauhaus-University Weimar"With its Hegelian inflection, Ernst Kapp’s Elements of a Philosophy of Technology tells us of the spirit of a techno-philosophy that anticipates the centrality of the modern question of technology in the reconfiguration of the human and the meaning of civilization. He invites us not to overcome but to re-invent the human condition through an expanded techno-philosophical enquiry into the possibilities of the projection of techne today."-Luciana Parisi, Goldsmiths University of London"Elements of a Philosophy of Technology lays out a theory of culture and technology rooted in humans’ instinctual drive to make tools, a faculty that is called “organ projection.”" -LA Review of Books