How Technology Remediates Practice: Objects, Rules, and New Media

Abstract

It was perhaps Friedrich Nietzsche who first had a glimpse of how technology remediates practice. In early 1882, the philosopher, suffering from encroaching blindness, bought a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, an early typewriter that had its keyboard arranged in the form of a sphere, which made it look like a hedgehog. The fixed positions and the large size of the letters allowed him to write with more ease than by handwriting. As he experimented with the new ‘writing machine’, he came to realize that the tool affected his thinking. Using the machine led him to express his thoughts in short, telegraphic sentences. His writing style in the later period of his active life shifted from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns. Indeed, Nietzsche understood how his writing practice was being ‘remediated’ by the tool, and in a letter to Peter Gast in February 1882 expressed his insight in terse language: ‘Unser Schreibzeug arbeitet mit an unseren Gedanken’ (Our writing equipment is also working with our thoughts)