Technics 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.

Nicholas 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).

Editorial
Acknowledgements
PART I Questions Concerning Technology
1. Technics: An Introduction - Nicholas Baer and Annie van den Oever
2. Ten Statements on Technics - André Brock, Dominique Chateau, Beth Coleman, Shane Denson, Amanda Egbe, Yuriko Furuhata, Tom Gunning, Jeffrey West Kirkwood, Laura Mulvey, and Jean-Christophe Plantin
PART II Philosophies of Technology
3. Machine Aesthetics: Animation through Technology, Animation of Technology - Gertrud Koch
4. “New Stars Were Rising in the Sky”: On Benjamin’s Concept of Cosmic Experience and Philosophy of Technology Around 1930 - Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky
5. Instructions for Use: Thinking Body, Machine, and Technicity with Simondon - Benoît Turquety
6. Knowing, Studying, Writing: History, Practice, and Other Doings with Technics - Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal and Bernhard Siegert
PART III Theories of Media
7. Protective Media - Francesco Casetti
8. Carried Away: The Carrier Bag Theory of Media - Yijun Sun and Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan
9. Beyond Access: Transforming Ableist Techno-Worlds - Neta Alexander and Jonathan Sterne
PART IV Archaeologies of Media
10. Coming to Terms with the “Smart” Phone - Wanda Strauven
11. The Afterlife of an Optical Device, or Making the Lantern Kosher - Doron Galili
PART V Filmic Techniques
12. Theories of the Frame and Framing in Cinema: A Genealogy - Ariel Rogers
13. Split Screens: A Discussion with Catherine Grant, Malte Hagener, and Katharina Loew - Nicholas Baer and Annie van den Oever
14. Specks of Time: Digital Editing and Verse Jumping in Everything Everywhere All at Once - Kartik Nair
PART VI Digital Humanities
15. Streams, Portals, and Data Flows: Digital Infrastructures of Film Studies - Malte Hagener
16. Six Memos for the New Millennium: A Dialogue with Andreas Fickers on Epistemic Virtues in the Digital Humanities - Annie van den Oever