Technology Strikes Back

Abstract

The concept of Rückschlag (relapse / striking back) seems to synthetize Flusser’s theory of technic. This paper tries to disclose the different layers of meaning of the concept by relating it to similar conceptions such as the idea of externalization theorized by the French paleoanthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan, the concept of feedback as it was developed by the inventor of cybernetics, Norbert Wiener, and the concept of interplay (Zwischenspiel) proposed by Walter Benjamin.

Keywords

• feedback
• interplay
• externalization
• apparatus
• prosthesis
• epithesis