END TELL is a complete record of every key pressed on the author’s private computer between June 2008 and February 2010. For this, Julian Palacz made use of a keylogger, a piece of software used in hacking for retrieving the login data of unaware users, sitting between the operating system and the most fundamental input device of human-computer-interaction: the keyboard. In this way, one gains insight into what is otherwise between the lines, into the writing, thinking and feeling, into the error and the “not written,” since deleted.

What is particularly unsettling is that during this period, a fellow student stayed with Palacz for a few days and, of course, used his computer—without knowing a keylogger was installed. END TELL is as much an empirical documentation of Palacz’s most private communication as it is a textual narration of a user’s computer-interactions. The documentation of all keyboard strokes is introduced with the heading: “Traces of birds in the snow.”

The book has been published in three editions: a blue hardcover version in 2010, a second edition in the same year, and finally a white cover paperback version in 2014. Changes made to these republished versions are not listed.