ABSTRACT
Creating new organs increases the mental, often also the physical strength of humans. Thus technologically-induced change led to new instruments which were thought of either as potentially dangerous prostheses or as auxiliary organs which help to conquer space and time. Ernst Kapp was thus inverting the Cartesian tradition of regarding the organic as a mere mechanism by considering mechanical artifacts as unconscious projections of organic potentiality. As mechanical tools are unconscious projections of the osteomuscular apparatus and instruments are eventually projections of human organs, the international cable networks can be explained as projections of the nervous system. Historical artifacts such as cave discoveries and archaeological excavations signaled a new history of human development. Less a visionary and more a forgotten analyzer of the intrinsic relationship between tools and organs, Kapp demystified the advance of modern technology and avant la lettre thus offered a defense for the need for a cultural theory of technology or even a media philosophy.
