User:Clàudia/methods-Flusser

28-09-2016, Vilém Flusser

Summary of the concepts from Flusser interview in 1988.

Humans have shifted from understanding the world through words, to mesure it with numbers, and next, to make machinery that do calculations and creates synthetic images. According to Flusser, words are not sufficient to describe our actual history and model of thought anymore. Nowadays, we need to communicate these concepts and models trough new codes. However, people is not used to it yet.

Prior to the alphabet, people constructed and represented reality around traditional images. It made people see the world mythically. After the alphabet was created, people started seeing the world in a linear way, and started thinking in a critical and historical manner. At the present moment, this linearity has been fragmented into points. According to Flusser, it gives birth to a systemic and structural way of understanding reality. This change in the way of thinking is as revolutionary as when humans started thinking linearly due to the creation of the alphabet.

Next, Flusser analyses the complexity of structure and functionality of the new systems. When the functionality of a system is complex, it challenges creative thought, whereas when it is simple, it makes the user to act and think passively. According to him, because most of these systems have a simple functionality, intellectuality of population has been lowering. Nonetheless, it is the responsibility of the user the way in which these systems are used.

In the past there was a prejudice about images. Those were seen as a representation of reality, therefore, not as valid as reality. Now images do not try to represent the world anymore. Those have shifted to represent ideas, concepts, projects and models.

To conclude, the difference between all the other revolutions and this one is that “the others were representing the body, and this one is representing the nervous system”. Whereas the other revolutions were in regard of the physical world, this one is more about ideas, it is an immaterial revolution.

Main stated points

• Our present model of thought needs to be communicated with synthetic images rather than with words or calculations.
• The way humankind have to collect and remember history, shapes the way of thought on each period of time. He specifies three ways of thought: “pre-historical, historical, and post-historical”
• He analyses the structure and functionality, in terms of complexity, of the current systems which shape the way we think. He says that it has an impact on the creative and critical thought, improving it or lowering it. And that it is up to the user, using it in a profitable way or not.
• Images have changed from representing reality, to represent models and concepts. This is why we need a new attitude towards images.
• All the historical revolutions are technical. But the difference between all the others and this one, is that this one is based around something intangible (“immaterial and spiritual”).

More intellectuals who reflect on the same topic

• Walter Benjamin
• Roland Barthes
• Marshall McLuhan
• Abraham Moles