A New Way of Reading Called Computing (from “Does Writing Have a Future?”
In this short excerpt from “Does Writing have a Future” Flusser narrates a familiar historical-technical moment, the moment when the tradition of thinking based on linear causal arguments becomes supplanted by a mosaic form of synthetic thinking through the assembly of bits. After the world is exposed by rational science to be meaningless and all belief is rendered absurd, computation, (the synthesis of meaning through bits) is invented to re-establish meaning in the gesture of reassembling meaning itself and thereby belief. In other words, where the truth of existence is exposed by science, making criticism obsolete, criticism returns in the subjective reassembly of bits into meaning. Once again on the brink of the abyss, Flusser offers his readers an apocalyptic panacea in a renewed commitment to subjectivity.
Can We Think Computation in Images or Numbers? Critical Remarks on Vilém Flusser’s Philosophy of Digital Technologies
The article questions Flusser’s concept of the computational universe based on technical images. Emphasizing the role of the calculative, formal consciousness the article suggests a non-representational, non-hermeneutical approach to “calculating machines” as machines that allow to mechanize a certain type of thinking (mathematical thinking). At the same time, the article reformulates Flusser’s search for a new philosophy as a critical intervention into the programmed universe, arguing that this philosophy must not follow its technical logic, but find a way to reflect how different techniques and practices shape the numerical, imaginative and textual consciousness.
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