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This chapter discusses the medieval Western technology that drew from classical antiquity, Islamic and Asian societies, and its own original creativity. It observes that diffusion of new technology was usually slow, and that the old techniques often stubbornly survived and coexisted with the new for decades and even centuries. The chapter notes that in terms of direct contribution to aggregate output, changes in agricultural technology were particularly important, as the bulk of the population was engaged in farming. It also discusses energy utilization as the second area in which early medieval Europe was successful. The chapter notes that wind power had been used in sailing ships, but had not been harnessed in the West in other ways until the first windmills were built there in the twelfth century. In waterpower, radical improvements came early, and during the Merovingian and Carolingan eras, better and bigger waterwheels spread through Europe.

This chapter presents a media-archaeological approach to the study of religion and technology in order to reformulate religious practices in technological terms. The chapter focuses on the historical development of mechanical clocks, from their origins in the monasteries of mediaeval Christian Europe to the oscillating time-keeping mechanisms that lie at the basis of modern computers. The author argues that, despite the original religious and cultural goals that fostered the development of mechanical time-keeping, the history of the oscillating clock reveals a non-cultural, techno-poetical element at work, as demonstrated in the chapter's analysis of one of the clock's key mechanisms: the anchor escapement. Once set in motion, the anchor mechanism of the oscillating clock operated according to its own its technical logic, resulting in the generation of time-based media processes that challenge our very conceptions of historical narrative and the place of religion therein.

This chapter reconstructs a list as possible of all the ‘new’ medicinal substances that were more widely distributed than in the pre-Islamic period. It studies the contribution and influence of these substances on the theoretical and practical medieval medical legacy as well as how, and to what extent, these substances merge with the development and distribution of ‘new’ technologies and industries that evolved in the Middle Ages such as textiles and paper, and with the new trends, demands, and fashions regarding perfumes, ornaments, and foodstuffs. The chapter also seeks to trace the main routes of trade in these substances in the new ‘Arab space’ and to assess the actual relevance that should be ascribed to the Greek and Indian legacies in the formation of Arab medicine and pharmacology.