“Wide-ranging, playful, erudite, and delightfully diverse, The Marvelous Clouds redefines media in the largest possible terms, as anything that communicates meaning, including bodies, the environment, and the world itself.  Although this may seem to rob media of its specificity and therefore of its theoretical purchase, in Peters’s hands it becomes the occasion for making surprising and insightful connections.  A treat for academics and general readers alike, this is a book not to be missed.”

N. Katherine Hayles, author of How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis

“Peters’s dazzlingly intelligent and elegantly written book has the potential of marking a long-anticipated threshold in the world of media studies. Conversant with the philosophical traditions and with the ongoing debates in Germany, where this emerging discipline took its origin, his epistemological realism overcomes the conventional positions of the ‘linguistic turn’ and of ‘constructivism’ with a fresh and truly inspired unfolding of intuitions ranging from Martin Heidegger's ‘fourfold’ to the Emersonian philosophy of nature. Between earth and sky, Peters understands and analyzes media as the energy behind our environment’s permanent transformations. The Marvelous Clouds, I believe, is the foundational media epistemology that we have been awaiting for decades.”

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, author of Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature

“The book is, on one level, an ambitious re-writing — a re-synthesis, even — of concepts of media and culture. On another, it is a rich and entertaining compendium of arcana, covering everything from shipwrighting to planetary motion, from bone evolution to calendrical design. Ultimately, it is nothing less than an attempt at a history of Being, from an unusually brisk, cheerful and pragmatic Heideggerian.”

Los Angeles Review of Books

“A highly original book. . . . This is a deeply philosophical and beautifully written account of the modes of being of all things, and their interrelationships.”

Independent (UK)

“More than fundamental. Media in this book are not defined as just more technological supplements to human beings but as a source that opens an extension for human self-knowledge. . . . Peters defines modern technologies as a space endowed with intelligence that seeks to be like God.”

Dmytro Drozdovskyi, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

“With great accessibility, Peters presents an overview of media philosophy since the mid-20th century. Figures notorious for their opaque philosophical ruminations, such as Martin Heidegger and Marshall McLuhan, are introduced with an inviting blend of humor and clarity. Throughout his thorough discussions of contemporary German media theory, Peters blends in unexpected liter­ary allusions and offers comparisons to American think­ers such as Thoreau or Emerson. Peters’ ability to turn a good phrase is welcome.”

ArtPapers

“Working from the belief that there is meaning in nature, Peters posits that media are environmental. He philosophizes beyond the divides and creates a conversation between the material and the immaterial to navigate the digital landscape. In seven chapters, Peters sketches the landscape of media theory by examining media via the metaphors of sea, fire, sky, Earth, and the ethereal. In a particularly interesting chapter, ‘God and Google,’ Peters explores the ‘right to be forgotten’—the right to have old and unflattering data wiped from the Web. In the conclusion, he argues that the public sphere has always needed nature as its condition, but now the public sphere needs content as well. Other fine books have engaged the topic of digital media . . . but until now, none offered a philosophical exploration of media's place at the very heart of human interactions with the world. Recommended.”
 

Choice

"Peters, a natural prosaist, is delightful to read. His pages brim over with philosophical wisdom and life experience, which he combines with an irascible optimism and sense of wonderment."

Technology and Culture