Flashback

Having just taught Flusser again in relation to remix, magical keyboard gestures, and the ruling layers of apparatus that attempt to predetermine our behaviors for us, I was reminded of this interview in Word Riot:

DH: What book are you reading now?

MA: Vilem Flusser's "Toward A Philosophy of Photography" (for the fourth time). It's a pre-Internet inquiry into the way humans are turning to "ritual magic" in a post-historical context. According to Flusser, images are taking over the world and are controlled by apparatuses that challenge humans to remain human. He envisions a world where writing disappears and the robots take over. At first, the robots are external to human experience. Even though we are the ones responsible for creating them, it's as if we don't see them coming. Slowly but surely, things "progress." Humans program the robots to do things. The robots get better and better at doing them and soon are able to begin programming the humans. The humans start losing their will-to-aestheticize, their innate need to do things intentionally, and eventually become robots themselves. Apparently, Flusser considered his speculations a kind of anti-philosophy and privately referred to them as science-fiction.

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Metadata: Flusser, photography, remix, apparatus