ABOUT THIS BOOKTechnics gathers leading international media scholars to rethink technology for the contemporary digital era. The volume’s 28 contributors provide cutting-edge theoretical, historiographical, and methodological reflections on media and technology. Chapters explore the ideas of Walter Benjamin, Ursula Le Guin, Bernhard Siegert, Gilbert Simondon, and Sylvia Wynter in conjunction with urgent issues such as ableism, algorithms, digital infrastructures, generative AI, and geoengineering. An expansive collection of writings on media technologies in the digital age, Technics is an essential resource for students and scholars of film and media studies, digital humanities, science and technology studies, and the philosophy of technology.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYNicholas Baer is Assistant Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley, with affiliations in Film & Media, Critical Theory, and Jewish Studies. He is author of Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (2024) and co-editor of The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 (2016) and Unwatchable (2019).
Annie van den Oever is a Professor of Film at the University of Groningen; an Extraordinary Professor of Film at the University of the Free State (until January 2024); and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg (since March 2024). Recent books: Doing Experimental Media Archaeology. Theory (De Gruyter, 2022, with Andreas Fickers); and Digital Distortions and the Grotesque as a Dominant Format Today (AUP, 2024).