It seems to be common knowledge in the humanities that a book’s introduction is often its most important and most read chapter. As such, I’ve tried to make a habit of reading them even when they aren’t assigned, as Stiegler’s was in this case. Another part of academic books that may normally be overlooked by the general reader but that I find is often extremely useful is the preface or acknowledgements section. In the preface to Technics and Time, Stiegler mentions several philosophers and critical theorists with whose writing I am at least somewhat familiar thanks to the Critical Theory course I took last term, and I found it useful when getting into Stiegler’s work to keep these influences in mind. They are: Nietzsche, Freud, Derrida, Lyotard, and Virilio (and again, these are only the authors I have read and/or read about). One other aspect I took from the preface was that when Stiegler thanked the University of Compiegne, he described the institution as not having “forgotten the urgency and necessity of an encounter between philosophy and technology” (xi). That Stiegler finds such an encounter urgent should not come as a surprise given the nature of the book, but I also found this phrase useful in thinking about what media theory is and its purpose. As we move into Media Theory proper in the lecture portion of class, I am interested to see how each author locates the necessity for his or her work once the field has been established.

Another interest of mine that gets us into the real meat of Technics and Time is how definitions of modernity are informed by theories of technology. Stiegler claims that calculation “will come to determine the essence of modernity” and locates the “crisis of European sciences” in the “technization through calculation” (3). Like Diana, I thought back to my study of Heidegger’s Being and Time last term when Stiegler began to take up his treatment of technics. Stiegler states outright that “the modern age is essentially that of modern technics” (7). “The difference between traditional societies and modern societies,” Stiegler explains in a contrast that is helpful in determining another way that he defines modernity, is that “in the former, communicative action forms the basis of social authority…whereas in the latter, legitimation is dominated by technical and scientific rationality” (11). So, technical and scientific rationality, which would seem to be completely separate from human emotional valence, produces authority in our society, not (presumably personal) communication. In an age of blogging, social media, online dating, and cyberbullying, has communication lost its edge? Particularly because Stiegler bases his distinction of modern and traditional society on methods of authority-wielding, what would be the political implications to this alleged shift from communication to technical rationality?