The Horror of Kittler’s End of Media

This paper examines Friedrich Kittler’s infamous assertion that “media determine our situation” in conjunction with his less-discussed proclamation that the “day is not far off when … the history of communications technologies will literally come to an end” with the advent of artificial intelligence. It explores what Kittler might have meant by suggesting that there could be a situation without media to determine it. First, I survey Kittler’s statements about the end of media. Second, I consider existing interpretations of the end of media and judge them to be inadequate. Finally, I present a reading of the end of media as a horrific event in which the technologically-mediated conditions for subjectivity collapse. This, I suggest, provides support for the notion, advanced by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, that Kittler came ultimately to find his media theory abhorrent and thus devoted his last years to studying ancient Greece rather than artificial intelligence.