Vilém Flusser vs Marshall McLuhan

Main Theme: Structuralism, Orality & Literacy

Task:

• Take notes listening to the two interviews.

• Identify and articulate the arguments at the heart of the texts.

• Write a synopsis of the two interviews based on your notes. What are they talking about? How are their arguments developing?

Vilém Flusser - 1988 interview about technical revolution

Marshall Mcluhan Full lecture: The medium is the message - 1977 part 1 v 3

Flusser 1988 interview about technical revolution in Osnabrück

Flusser states that linguistic communication can no longer transmit our concepts of the world. Images are now needed to do so. He believes that this is a revolution in thinking.

Being asked about his book Die Schrift, Flusser talks about how a total transformation happened when the alphabet was invented. He states that before the invention of the alphabet, images were looked at as maps of the world in a mythical way. And he describes they way people thought as the prehistoric way. According to him a historical consciousness evolved with the invention of the alphabet because of the linear structure of writing. Through this linear structure of writing a linear way of thinking followed. He calls it the systemic or structural way of thinking. In the current cultural revolution we are now in the process of elaborating a post historic / structural way of thinking. He states that all previous revolutions were technical ones, so is this one. But there is a major difference: Previous revolutions have simulated the body whereas the current revolution now for the first time simulates the nervous system. For this reason Flusser calls it an immaterial or spiritual revolution. He also states that due to the change in the way of thinking that is triggered, we are now witnessing a revolution that is comparable to the one there was that gave origin to history - the invention of the alphabet.

Talking about complexity, Flusser states that systems can be complex either structurally or functionally. A structural complex system like for example a TV can be used very easily. Whereas a functionally complex system like a chess game is a challenge to creative thought. The evolving new systems will be structurally complex and the use depends on the people. Currently the systems are being used for simple uses which results in a reduction of ethics. His aim is to promote a functional complexity.

Being asked about a philosophy of images, Flusser declares that images are no longer representation of the world but articulations of thought. Therefore a new attitude towards images is necessary (like Walter Benjamin already articulated). Influences for Flusser are Roland Barthes, McLuhen and Abraham Moles, although he disagrees with their ideas.

Marshall McLuhan „The medium is the message“ 1977 part 1v3

McLuhan is introduced as someone who sees new media (radio and TV at the time) as a way of understanding society and as an extension of our central nervous system (he doesn't elaborate on that).

McLuhan states that the medium sets up an environment that effects the individual substantially, whereas the content effects only very few. He takes the phone as an example: the extend of the the invention of the phone effects everybody drastically but what is said on the phone effects only a few people. In his opinion the medium rather creates a structure of awareness. He also calls literacy a form of awareness. A form that is in his eyes objective, whereas TV is subjective. McLuhan states that a highly literate person is a good executive because s/he is used to quick decision making through reading. He regards reading is an activity of rapid guessing because words have various meanings.

McLuhan sees advertising as a folk art form because it’s concern is to make an effect. In his view the nature of art is to set traps for attention. The criteria for measuring the greatness of (pop) art only comes later because at it’s time being there is no criteria for measuring it. As an example he talks about Shakespeare who was a popular artist in his times.

Notes during the course:

DISCOURSE is a material practice. It's more than text. It's the system in action, it could for example be a courtroom with all its peculiarities. It goes on and feeds into other systems.

Orality / Literacy

Orality was broken by the invention of the alphabet (new technology!).

Writing is a storage system to story memory.

History is what people write - linear vision - cause and effect.

Different relation to memory / storytelling

By writing we are producing readers

Books

The savage mind (Claude Levi-Strauss)

Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Walter J. Ong)

The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Marshall McLuhan)