ABSTRACT
Technical mediation has become a key concept in contemporary philosophy of technology. Verbeek's practice-oriented philosophy of technical mediation was framed in discussion with the rather hostile critiques of technology by scholars such as Heidegger, Jaspers and Ellul. Verbeek's mediation approach was elaborated in opposition to dominant approaches in the history of philosophical thinking about technology that he rejected for backward looking. From the Enlightenment up to well into the twentieth century the dominant conception of technology as a whole was very positive, sometimes utopian. Marshall McLuhan points out however that the printing press could not have achieved this success without the simultaneous availability of spectacles. Compared to suggestion, persuasion can be characterized as a stronger type of influence on behaviour. Coercion is not the only form of physical interference. Products can also structure gestural routines. At the same time, the technologies fashion and mark the user's gestural routines that develop.
