Research on the influence of the technology of communication on philosophical thought has in the past few decades brought forth many remarkable results. Striving at a kind of summary of those results, the present work-in-progress paper considers the history of philosophy mainly as a history of reflection on changing media. Explicit remarks on the different media of expression and their consequences emerged quite early, e.g. in Plato's dialogues, but later on explicit reflections on the topic became sparse. This fact notwithstanding I would like to show that philosophy, ever since the dawn of literacy, typically tried to solve problems caused by media changes. The main topics of philosophy and the crucial concepts of metaphysics seem to correspond to the specific powers and limitations of the actually dominant medium. The paper concludes by focusing on the question how and why the technology of communication recently became a significant issue of philosophy.