This book is the first critical genealogy of Jacques Derrida's philosophy of technology. It traces the evolution of what Derrida calls 'originary technicity' via an appraisal of his own philosophy of technology together with that of key interlocutors including Marx, Freud, Lacan, Heidegger and Bernard Stiegler.

'This brilliant book is at the frontier of new thinking about 'originary technicity.' To say that technology was there from the beginning as an originating force implies that all organic life, including human life, is machinal through and through. The automatic working of genetic programming in any form of 'life' would be an example of this. Plants, animals, and human beings are chemical machines. Though a putting in question of Derrida's thinking about technics holds center stage, many other recent explorers of these new ideas (Marx, Freud, Lacan, Heidegger, Stiegler, Hayles, Hansen) are also shown with admirable clarity, learning, and insight still to make a residual anthropocentric appeal to the presumably non-machinic thinking subject. Essential reading for technophobes and technophiliacs alike.' - J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished Research Professor of Comparative Literature and English, University of California at Irvine, USA