Apocalypse
An apocalypse is more than the articulation of
pessimistic forebodings, more than the imagined
end of the world, for after the catastrophe liberation
and a phase of renewal begins; seen from
this perspective, it is a paradise that transcends
history. Apocalyptic authors usually imagine
themselves to be on the brink of this great catastrophe,
when unmistakeable signs begin to
presage imminent disaster, but the chain reaction
of fateful occurrences has not yet been triggered
– it is the radical awareness of the end of
time that expects imminent deliverance.
With the growing importance of the new media,
critical thinkers invoke vague and terrifying
prospects, which are already familiar from the
debates on the “old” media of mass communication.
On the one hand, they have become wary of
the loss of meaning in electronic images, which
are all surface, to the point where the survival of
humanity itself is in question. On the other hand,debates about the great “revelation” of the new
media in the global village continue to be conducted
with equal intensity: in this miraculous
light, computers and the Internet become the
key to world peace and the heralds of salvation
and hope. It is in this context that Vilém Flusser
points to the fact that the escalation of technical
and scientific progress follows a logic of inexorable
abstraction of matter. This process of
change is taking place to such an extent that objects
and devices increasingly interpose themselves
between human beings and the world, and
reality is reduced to a mere medium. Technology
must therefore correspond to “communicology”:
humankind can avail itself of media and networking
as though they are the means of salvation
from the absurdity of the end of existence and
of the world.
Although Vilém Flusser’s thinking is not entirely devoid of contradictions or idiosyncratic and controversial aspects, its great merit lies in his search for new categories, for concepts appropriate to a human, constructive future that are not based on preserving obsolete structures, but on building a new society: within an ethics of concern for the others, with philosophical fictions, and inspired above all by thought-provoking stimuli that seek a direction in which theory and art, science and politics can all advance together.
Original article by Paola Bozzi in Flusseriana