Humans and their tools have always been entangled to such a degree that it is difficult to say where one ends and the other begins. This has also been the case for the involvement of writing tools, as media studies has pointed out. This talk suggests that the doubt as to the written might not hold for long and will dissipate in the “post-artificial,” a state in which the difference between “natural” and artificial writing has come undone.

From the telegraph and telephone in the 1800s to the internet and social media in our own day, the public has welcomed new communication systems. Whenever people gain more power to share information, the assumption goes, society prospers. But Nicholas Carr's new book, Superbloom, tells a startlingly different story.