When Friedrich Kittler, the German philosopher of media and technology, died in October this year, it wasn't a big international story – in fact, the Guardian published the only obituary in the Anglophone press.
In Germany Kittler's death made bigger waves: for weeks, newspapers published memorials and testimonials. The philosopher had generations of disciples and accolytes who compare the importance of his work to that of Hegel and Heidegger. Kittler, they say, was the first thinker to grasp the true nature of our relationship with modern technology and media. Typewriters, radios, computers: these innovations were not extentions of man, but they defined us and our behaviour.
In the latest episode of The Big Ideas, Benjamen Walker talks to philosopher Avital Ronell, novelist Tom McCarthy and Guardian writer Stuart Jeffries about the legacy of the man who has been called "the Derrida of the digital age".
