Thinking Further

Vilém Flusser (1920–1991) was a Czech-born Brazilian philosopher, writer, and journalist. The University of Minnesota Press has published translations of a dozen of his works, including Into the Universe of Technical Images, Does Writing Have a Future?, Gestures, and What If?Silvia Wagnermaier is cocreator, with Siegfried Zielinski, of the Vilém Flusser archive at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She lives and works as a motoring journalist in Austria.Siegfried Zielinski is Michel Foucault Professor for Techno-Culture and Media Archaeology at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee and visiting professor at Tongji University Shanghai.Friedrich A. Kittler (1943–2011) was professor and chair of aesthetics and media history at Humboldt University, Berlin and author of Discourse Networks 1800/1900 and Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.Aaron Jaffe is Frances Cushing Ervin Professor of American Literature at Florida State University.Michael F. Miller teaches literature and literary theory in the Department of English Language and Culture at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.Andrew Battaglia is a translator and independent scholar. He has taught at Rice University, the University of Montana, and Seattle University.Daniel Raschke is assistant professor of English at Bethel College, Kansas.

• ContentsNote on the TranslationPreface — Friedrich A. KittlerEditorial Preface: Toward VilÉm Flusser’s Bochum Lectures — Silvia Wagnermaier and Siegfried ZielinskiInaugural Lecture: Before the Board of Trustees Motives/Motifs Natural and Human Sciences Communication Theory Lecture 1: On the Communicological Art of Definition Kultur/Kritik Processing: DialogueTransmitting: Discourse Saving Mythical: Oral CultureMagical: Material Culture Standpoints PhenomenologicalInformaticalScientific-Critical Cultural Revolutions From Work to WasteAfter the Communication Revolution: Bundling versus Networking Lecture 2: Of Spaces and Order Publicizing IPublicizing III Virtual SpaceAlternate Worlds Calculable Freedom, Intersubjective CreativityProxemicsResponsibility Lecture 3: Abstractions and Feedback Numerical Code From Culling to Counting ArithmeticGeometry Antirationalism: Intuition and Nazism Programming Lecture 4: On Science, Art, Politics, and Technology On the Decline of the Aura and the Death of the Author Work II: Soft and HardThe Practice of WritingFrom Homo universale to TeamworkThe Unemployed as Avant-GardeThe End of Politics I Lecture 5. On the Death of Images and the End of History Video: Instant Philosophy Mirrors: Reflection and SpeculationBundling Instead of Networking—At the End of All StructuresNetworking Games and Art Spiele, Jogos, Games Lecture 6: About Chance and the Freedom to Play with and against It CoincidenceOn Freedom I: Refraining FromOn Freedom II: AnticipatingConcerning Lost Freedom I: SinConcerning Lost Freedom II: Technics and WillConcerning Lost Freedom III: To Accept Lecture 7: On Leisure Unemployment and Interface On the Suffix “-matic”On the Prefix “Tele-” Pathos Epilogue: Flusser’s Planet — Aaron Jaffe and Michael F. MillerNotes

"Vilem Flusser was among the first to understand that the shift toward a digital world would not only change the way we communicate but alter our fundamental understanding of what communication is. This elegantly curated collection of some of Flusser's last lectures are an ideal introduction to one of the most seductive, stimulating, omnivorous, and incandescent minds of the second half of the twentieth century."—Dominic Pettman, coauthor of Metagestures"In these selections from his final lectures of 1991, in which he pulls out the implications of the 'communicology' toward which he had been working all his writing life, Vilém Flusser shows no sign of coming sedately to rest. Exhibiting all his signature fluency and audacity, and oscillating restlessly between a view of the 'general stupefaction' arising from a world of 'cretinized information' and the freedom of play made available through technology, Flusser offers a new image of the human, whirled out of the 'hurricane that is the communication revolution.'"—Steven Connor, King's College London