Vilem Flusser: On technical images, chance, consciousness and the individual
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Vilém Flusser - Interview by Miklós Peternák in München, 17th October,
1991 (38') [Vimeo link](https://vimeo.com/162190212)

[Captured on pad](https://pad.xpub.nl/p/flusser_interview_notes)

2 main turning points in the history of mankind:

1)  linear writing
2)  the technical image

**The invention of writing was a social revolution**

Before writing, power was in the hands of magicians, who made decisions
in function of ritual and magical volumes

With writing, a new class of literary decision makers - the literati -
came about e.g. priests, clerks

With this came a completely different way of experiencing the world

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

The magician knew how to avoid punishment, was capable of manipulating
destiny

With the invention of writing, this put things back into their place

An historical experience of the world came about with the literati

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

Those with a experience of linear writing think in a discursive,
logical, causal way

Causality took the place of destiny since the invention of linear
writing

Masters of the code of linear writing could explain the world in causal,
proto-scientific and later a scientific way

The greater part of society continued to live magically, in the cycles
of the seasons, in the cycles of the feast

The literati lived historically and governed history in function of
their consciousness and used society as a tool for achieving historical
goals

"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