Operation Valhalla
- 272 pages
- 10 hours of reading
Operation Valhalla collects eighteen texts by German media theorist Friedrich Kittler on the close connections between war and media technology.
Friedrich Kittler Book order
June 12, 1943 – October 18, 2011
Friedrich Kittler was an influential literary scholar and media theorist whose work redefined media studies from the 1980s onwards. Kittler focused on the autonomous logic of technologies, arguing that media are not mere extensions of humanity but follow their own developmental trajectories. His provocative arguments, which linked technological conditions to epistemology and ontology, often emphasized that existence itself is bound to what is switchable or controllable. Employing a mix of polemic, erudition, and humor, he posited that technology forms the fundamental basis of human knowledge and being.
- 2021
- 2014
The Truth of the Technological World
- 400 pages
- 14 hours of reading
Collection of essays from throughout the author's career.
- 2009
Optical Media
- 332 pages
- 12 hours of reading
This major new book provides a concise history of optical media from Renaissance linear perspective to late twentieth-century computer graphics. Kittler begins by looking at European painting since the Renaissance in order to discern the principles according to which modern optical perception was organized.
- 2007
Medien vor den Medien
- 282 pages
- 10 hours of reading
Das Dazwischen (to metaxy) macht das Sehen und Hören, die Erkenntnis und die Liebe erst möglich – das überliefern uns Texte der Antike. Die Medien prägen so unser Wissen und verstören unsere Sinne seit jeher. In der deutschen Medienwissenschaft ist es fast zur Selbstverständlichkeit geworden, nur heutige oder doch neuzeitliche Medien zu erforschen. Nun geht aber schon der Begriff 'Medium' auf die griechische Antike zurück. Eben diesem Sachverhalt sucht der Band Medien vor den Medien gerecht zu werden. Vom Feuertelegraphen zur Ontologie, vom Marienglas zur sakralen Lichtarchitektur und immer wieder vom Ton zum Bild. Da die Medien der Antike zunächst zur Sprache kommen, wird es möglich, Brücken zu anderen Wissenschaftskulturen und in jene Neuzeit zu schlagen, die unseren kurrenten Begriff physikalischer und technischer Medien prägt. Das Buch richtet sich an Philosophen, Kunst-, Kultur- und Medienwissenschaftler.
- 1999
Part technological history of the emergent new media in the late 19th century, part theoretical discussion of the responses to these media—including texts by Rilke, Kafka, and Heidegger, as well as elaborations by Edison, Bell, Turing, and other innovators—this book analyzes this momentous shift using insights from Foucault, Lacan, and McLuhan.
- 1997
Literature, Media, Information Systems
- 204 pages
- 8 hours of reading
The collection presents the public writings of German post-structuralist Friedrich A. Kittler, blending literature, war, and technology into a cohesive narrative. Kittler's insights challenge traditional distinctions between mediums, offering a forward-looking perspective that anticipates a future where these boundaries dissolve. His work invites readers to reconsider the interplay of cultural and technological forces shaping contemporary society.
- 1990
" A new and encyclopedic vision of modern German literary, intellectual and social history, achieved through the optic of discourse analysis, psychoanalysis, and semiotic theory, analyzed in a spirit of playfulness and impudent precision." Stanley Corngold, Princeton University