Communicology is the term Vilém Flusser coined for the theory of human communication, the process by which acquired information is stored, processed, and passed on (Kommunikologie weiter denken, 2009, p. 35). It embraces various disciplines, for example, physiology, sociology, gestalt and social psychology, game theory, cybernetics, information theory, art and literary criticism, logic, and economics, and makes use of the methods of each of these (Bodenlos, 1992, pp. 225–227).

The so-called second industrial revolution, which was triggered by the invention of photography and telegraphy, is held to have influenced our present culture in profound ways: an “overthrow of the codes which was triggered by nerve simulations such as television, computers, and video,” and is “at least as massive as the one caused by the steam engine” (Kommunikologie, 1996, p. 236; translated from the German). Because “the codes by which people communicate in order to give meaning to the world and to life are changing” and a “new form of society […] based not on the division of labor but rather on the division of messages,” a communicology is “necessary and is indeed in the process of being formulated” (ibid., pp. 235–236; translated from the German). What technology was to the rst industrial revolution, “communicology is to the second” (ibid., p. 236; translated from the German). In addition to technical universities, there are now schools of communication, like the rst one of its kind in Brazil, founded by Vilém Flusser and Miguel Reale in 1967. The School of Communication and Humanities at the private university Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado in São Paulo still exists today, in an altered form (ibid., p. 238). Their ambiguous character makes communication schools of this kind places of education as well as places of critical study of the future (ibid., p. 243).

Original article by Michael Hanke in Flusseriana