<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">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 experience 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> <hr />