thesis/notes/flusser_linear_writing.md

<h1 id="vilem-flusser-on-technical-images-chance-consciousness-and-the-individual">Vilem Flusser: On technical images, chance, consciousness and the individual</h1>
<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/162190212">Notes from interview with Flusser, 1988</a></p>
<p><a href="https://pad.xpub.nl/p/flusser_interview_notes">Captured on pad</a></p>
<p>2 main turning points in the history of mankind:</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>linear writing</li>
<li>the technical image</li>
</ol>
<p>The invention of writing was a social revolution</p>
<p>Before writing, power was in the hands of magicians, who made decisions in function of ritual and magical volumes</p>
<p>With writing, a new class of literary decision makers came about - the literati - e.g. priests, clerks</p>
<p>With this came a completely different way of experiencing the world</p>
<p>Magicians: the world was space in which time circled, by circling it put all the objects that had left their place into their just place; a world of crime and retribution</p>
<p>Magician knew how to avoid punishment, was capable of manipulating destiny</p>
<p>With writing, this put things back into their place</p>
<p>An historical experieince of the world came about with the literati</p>
<p>Time no longer circulated, but became a univocal stream which flew form the past to the future, with all the objects swimming in the stream</p>
<p>Those with a experience of linear writing think in a discursive, logical, causal way</p>
<p>Causality took the place of destiny since the invention of linear writing</p>
<p>Masters of the code of linear writing could explain the world in causal, proto-scientific and later a scientific way</p>
<p>The greater part of society continued to live magically, in the cycles of the seasons, in the cycles of the feast</p>
<p>The literati lived historically and governed history in function of their consciousness and used society as a tool for achieving historical goals</p>
<p>“the invention of historical writing is a social revolution”, but also a revolution on the level of consicenceness, as it is an emergence of historical from magical vision</p>
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