Flusser VS McLuhan
Flusser VS McLuhan by Irma Oldenburg
Vilém Flusser - 1988 interview about technical revolution (intellectual level is lowering)
Flusser makes the statement that spoken and written words are no longer capable of transmitting the information to the world. The form of communication has changed and therefore you have to change your way of storytelling to keep on transmitting your concept into this new world. This changes the way of thinking of the person who wants to give information, he needs to learn a new way of communicating. In the opinion of Flusser, this new language is based on codes and numbers to create synthetic images. If you want to communicate you have to calculate the words, for example, number 2 represents words as couple or pair.
Flusser divides the time into three different periods.
Pre-historical period :
The period before the invention of the alphabet where people communicate by drawings, mythologies. This gives a mythical way of thinking and interpretation.
Historical period :
When the alphabet was invented it gave the structure of sharing information was linear based, line by line, first the cause and then the effect. This gave a more critical way of communication and thinking.
Post-historical period
The period where the audience gets their information by coded language, based on images. This gives more a structural way of thinking.
Flusser sees the problem of this recent technical revolution and thinks that people need to find a new way of dealing with this structure of storytelling. He divides the complex of systems in two different forms:
- Structural complexity: For example, a television is a very complex made system, although using this system is extremely simple.
- Functional complexity : a chessboard is made in a very simple matter but using a chessboard is very complex. This influences the manipulation. This process could be interesting and challenging for the creative way of thinking.
At this moment the new complex made systems that are used for simple uses, but we should use it to communicate more complex subjects wich challenge a creative way of thinking. It’s the responsibility of the users of to use every system in the function to communicate the complexity.
Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977 part 1 v 3n
McLuhan’s statement is that technology is an extension of men. The meaning of the message is influenced by medium and the technology of the storytelling. The way the information is interpreted is affected by the form of communicating. Mc Luhan statement is that TV is communicating in a figurative form, whereby the audience is manipulated by the structure being used by the medium. Literature is a literary form of communication, it needs to be taken in a linear way, therefore it is more factual and the reader can observe the information more objectively. Television creates an other form of awareness, a subjective point of view and what is been communicated has less meaning then trough the written way of storytelling.