This project develops a media theory informed by the intellectual history of eastern Europe, specifically in dialogue with the non-fiction writings of Polish doctor, philosopher and science-fiction author Stanisław Lem.

Through a life of alienation, occupation and forced displacement, it argues, Lem was able to predict civilizational trajectories that would in time implicate the whole of human species, while outlining a singular vision of technology that is not reducible to inter-human relations, but rather alters the co-evolution of organic and inorganic existence. I propose a philosophy of contemporary technologies as existential pursuits in dialogue with his insights and the history of Poland as such.

As debates around the future of technology beyond the West draw increased attention in media and technology studies, Eastern Europe remains a neglected territory. Eastern European scholars, having emerged from Soviet constraints on intellectuals, have only recently entered this discipline. This project, looking to expand the canon of media theory and philosophy, is in dialogue with Summa Technologiae, a unique work at the intersection of philosophy and popular science published in 1964. Lem's futurology, focusing on the relationship between technology and human cognitive capacities and evolutionary trajectories. Focusing on vast arrays of futuristic technologies—ones that maintain planetary and cosmic homeostasis, ones that alter the evolution of sex and cognition, ones that disrupt our present moral and intellectual commitments—this project articulate a vision of the future aligned with inhuman and existential trajectories of technology, while examining how Eastern European history primes intellectuals for embracing alienation.