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Vilem Flusser: On technical images, chance, consciousness and the individual
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Vilém Flusser - Interview by Miklós Peternák in München, 17th October,
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1991 (38')[Vimeo link](https://vimeo.com/162190212)
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[Captured on pad](https://pad.xpub.nl/p/flusser_interview_notes)
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2 main turning points in the history of mankind:
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1) linear writing
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2) the technical image
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**The invention of writing was a social revolution**
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Before writing, power was in the hands of magicians, who made decisions
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in function of ritual and magical volumes
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With writing, a new class of literary decision makers - the literati -
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came about e.g. priests, clerks
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With this came a completely different way of experiencing the world
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Magicians: the world was space in which time circled, by circling it put
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all the objects that had left their place into their just place; a world
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of crime and retribution
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Magician knew how to avoid punishment, was capable of manipulating
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destiny
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With writing, this put things back into their place
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An historical experience of the world came about with the literati
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Time no longer circulated, but became a univocal stream which flew form
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the past to the future, with all the objects swimming in the stream
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Those with a experience of linear writing think in a discursive,
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logical, causal way
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Causality took the place of destiny since the invention of linear
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writing
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Masters of the code of linear writing could explain the world in causal,
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proto-scientific and later a scientific way
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The greater part of society continued to live magically, in the cycles
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of the seasons, in the cycles of the feast
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The literati lived historically and governed history in function of
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their consciousness and used society as a tool for achieving historical
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goals
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"the invention of historical writing is a social revolution", but also a
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revolution on the level of consicenceness, as it is an emergence of
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historical from magical vision
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