Engineer
For Vilém Flusser, the figure of the engineer is
subliminally ambiguous. Engineers stand with
one foot in the old mechanical-causal-historical
view of the world and with the other in the
new programmatic-modal-calculatory worldview.
As homo faber, the engineer belongs to
the bygone industrial era. At the same time, it is
the engineers who advance the development of
technology, especially of computers, and help to
bring about the transition to post-history. Since
Flusser is less interested in how this transition
actually came about than in how one can best
make oneself at home in the new world, he does
not specifically address the role played by the
engineer.
Homo faber represents comprehensible social
relations; he is the one who builds the machines,
the one to whose rhythms the factory workers
must conform. He symbolizes the practical side
of the Enlightenment. In the mechanical-causal
worldview, his machines channel the forces of
nature in accordance with our wishes. This intentional
metabolic exchange with nature follows a
precise construction plan, which is realized by
the machines. In a special way, the engineer embodies
the optimism of being able to shape the
world according to one’s own desires without
significant incident. If we contrast homo faber
with the calculatory form of existence, he is revealed
as someone who works with his hands,
who is embroiled in the material, physical side
of the world, quite unlike the figure of the symbol-
manipulating “player” of post-history, who is
represented by the type of the artist-computer
scientist.
It is worth considering how much of the homo faber mythos Flusser allows to ow into his utopia of the telematic society. Are the post-historical projects in which alternative worlds are communally processed not variants of the nature-dominating homo faber, one step further idealized? But this time with an intersubjective orientation, and articulated in the register of communication rather than that of work.
Original article by Suzana Alpsancar in Flusseriana