Of digits and things: opening remarks

Abstract

Unlike our eyes, which bring us a world in images, our hands and fingers put us directly in touch with things in the world. Touching things directly, but also feeling themselves being touched at the same time, our hands and fingers are our first medium. But by remaining always contemporary – that is, always ready at hand – they are also our latest medium. Taking this observation as a starting point and keeping the idea of ‘the digital’ as a constant, this essay considers a few characteristics that establish German media theory as a distinct research project. It demonstrates, first, how artefacts ‘become’ media and, second, how this ‘becoming media’ can be formulated operationally and be studied in a manner consistent with the digital passages through which media appear as what they are. It is hoped that the discussion will shed some light on why and to what extent German media theory can be understood as ‘posthermeneutical’.