Born in Ludwigshaven in 1953, Norbert Bolz studied at Berlin's Free University, and the Universities of Mannheim and Heidelberg, where he focused on a combination of Philosophy, German Literature and Comparative Religion. He returned to Berlin as Assistant Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and in 1988 received his Habilition (enabling exams and dissertation for full professorship) and took tenure at the University of Essen's Faculty of Design.

He is a leading member of the Kassel Media Research Program, which takes philosophy and literature as the starting point for an analysis of media and attaches great importance to the storage and text-handling capabilities of the computer. Among the six books he has written are Am Ende der Gutenberg-Galaxis (1993), Philosophy nach ihrem Ende and his most recent Das kontrollierte Chaos (Düsseldorf 1994). Bolz co-edited with Friedrich Kittler the latest Kassel publication, Computer als Medium (Fink Verlag, 1993).