thesis/notes/flusser_linear_writing.md

Vilem Flusser: On technical images, chance, consciousness and the individual

Notes from interview with Flusser, 1988

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 came about - 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

Magicians knew how to avoid punishment, was capable of manipulating destiny

With writing, this put things back into their place

An histroical experieince 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

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