Kittler's Absolute Limit

Friedrich Kittler's article on the history of communication media concludes with the notion of an 'absolute limit [...] where the history of communication technologies will literally come to an end.' This seems to be a slightly stronger version of his initial claim that the contemporary transition from writing to technical media involves a 'decoupling of communication and information' (I understand this decoupling in terms of Weaver's distinction of information from meaning). It also seems to link up with Kittler's invocation at the beginning of the article of the methodological problem of writing a scientific history of communication technologies. Without wanting to second-guess Kittler's own intentions too much here, I wonder whether he's trying to suggest that the possibility of history as a kind of empirical narrative practice is itself put into question by this epochal shift towards an information model, which seems to displace precisely the kind of subject-centred metaphysical model that had characterised both theories and histories of communication in the past. Or at least, that another kind of history is called for 'without reference to the individual or mankind.'

Also, for anyone who's interested, here is the link to the 2nd episode of Adam Curtis' documentary 'All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace - The Use And Abuse Of Vegetational Concepts'. It's a three-part series that looks at the impact of the machine model on post-war society. The second episode is the most interesting – it focuses on the development of ecology, together with cybernetics and systems theory, and examines the influence of these theories, especially the idea of self-organising networks, on various political and social visions. I really recommend it.

http://vimeo.com/57683671