Media Studies and the Philosophy of Technology

This course will provide students with the approaches, competencies, and vocabulary needed to analyze and critically engage with technology in any era. We will follow an historical arc that begins with industrialization and terminates at the advent of digital technologies.

We will therefore approach the study of media recursively: in other words, this course will ask if “media” has ever been a consistent object of study (and if so, for how long) or if it refers instead to a plurality of problems for theorists, practitioners, and consumers in different eras. Are media and technology synonyms or is technology the material basis for media? How can we critically define these terms and our usage of them if they are lodged within a common sense that renders them so applicable and universal that they risk meaninglessness?

In attending to these questions and developing a language adequate to them, students will be trained in approaches from German, French, and American media theory and the philosophy of technology, general systems theory and cybernetics, discourse analysis, theories of simulation and simulacra, and infrastructure and storage media studies.