Flusser: We may yet succeed in changing our culture before it changes us.

"We are frustrated by our culture, whether we participate [rather, have the opportunity to attempt to participate] in elite culture.  The frustration of the elite is due to its growing feeling of isolation...  We cannot 'realise' ourselves in such a situation, unless we become specialists, which means no longer fully human.  Of course, our situation may come to transform us into something no longer human...

"We may yet succeed in changing our culture before it changes us."  -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: Our cultural system has become far simpler, and it works incomparably better. Thus, it has become more impoverished

"Our cultural system has become far simpler, and it works incomparably better.  Thus, it has become more impoverished."  -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: The Western universal level became thus truly 'universal,' although in a tyrannical sense of the term

"The Western cultural system is the result of the revolution caused by the invention of printing, which disrupted Catholicism's cultural system, with relatively little feedback from other contemporary systems, although of course some Eastern and African elements did penetrate the West.  But the West's discursive dynamism, especially as far as scientific models are concerned, was responsible, in its later stages, for what is called 'Western Imperialism.'  During the nineteenth century, the Western cultural system dominated the Earth and disrupted all other cultural systems, without being itself very much informed by them.  The Western universal level became thus truly 'universal,' although in a tyrannical sense of the term, and at the same time the popular level of Western Civilization became slowly disrupted[...] and degraded into folklore." -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: We must become, all of us, 'systems analysts,' rather than trying to become second-rate computers..

"We must become, all of us, 'systems analysts,' rather than trying to become second-rate computers..."

"we must learn structures:  empty, formal disciplines, like logics, mathematics, computer languages; theories like the theory of information, decision-making, and cybernetics.  In sum, we must abandon the model 'what to know,' and shift to the model 'how to know.'" -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: [T]here is still hope for those who believe that humans may recognize themselves in others

"If present tendencies continue, we shall all be inserted, very shortly, into a cosmic circus of demagogic broadcast, 'panem et circenses' [...] But there is still hope for those who believe that humans may recognize themselves in others."  -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: "Those who pay for technology have no interest to provoke responsible, namely political, answers to the messages that the established power broadcasts

"Those who pay for technology have no interest to provoke responsible, namely political, answers to the messages that the established power broadcasts."  -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: There is no technological reason why our dialogic systems should not be as technically advanced as our discursive systems

"There is no technological reason why our dialogic systems should not be as technically advanced as our discursive systems."  -- Vilem Flusser, nearly fifty years ago

Flusser: Symbolic communication is what gives us the illusion of dignity in the world

"[C]ommunication is not really subject to the second principle of thermodynamics, because since it is not real, it is not really natural;  it is artificial; it goes against nature, though not really.  Symbolic communication is what gives us the illusion of dignity in the world."  -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: [W]hat is clear and distinct about humans is their surface, and that the deeper we delve into them, the more complicated they get

"We no longer believe that humans are complicated on the surface but reasonably 'clear and distinct' i essence.  Today, we tend to believe, on the contrary, that what is clear and distinct about humans is their surface, and that the deeper we delve into them, the more complicated they get."  -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: Unwittingly, the specialists have become servants to the establishment that manipulates society by manipulating ever more efficiently the obvious and not so obvious communication media.

"The more objects we accumulate, the lonelier we are, because they fence us in.  On the other hand, however, any object whatsoever may become a means to reach the other person:  a medium for communication.  The walls of prison cells are meant to be, and are in fact, objects that isolate those who find themselves between them.  But if one taps a codified message against them they become the communication medium of prisons... The other side of that dialectic is that objects meant to be media may obstruct communication.  The TV set stands as an obstacle between family members.  Thus, the field of research in which communicologists work, should include all objects.  In fact, however, the specialists' interests have so far been focused only upon objects that are meant to be media, those who own them, and those who manipulate them:  TV, the press, posters and so forth.  Unwittingly, the specialists have become servants to the establishment that manipulates society by manipulating ever more efficiently the obvious and not so obvious communication media."  -- Vilem Flusser

Flusser: Communication is the process that liberates us from the flux of time by making us ever more competent for decisions against time

"Communication is the process that liberates us from the flux of time by making us ever more competent for decisions against time." --Vilem Flusser

Communication and information are the inverse of each other

"Communication and information are the inverse of each other:  the better one communicates the less one informs, and the more one informs the more difficult it is to communicate. 

"The strategy for communication is to find an optimum:  a maximum of information, within a minimum of redundancy necessary for communication."  --Vilem Flusser 

Flusser: Society is a net that connects memories of different structures.

"[The rings in the trunks of] trees are one type of memory structure, libraries are another type, and what is called 'the mind' is yet another.  Society is a net that connects memories of different structures." -- Vilem Flusser

Vilem Flusser on Mortality and Comunication

"I believe that this is the true motive of our commitment to communication:  to become immortal within others -- because it is a fact that we know we shall die, and yet we cannot, and indeed must not, accept such knowledge.  Our rebellion against death [which is our rebellion against the human condition] has always taken, is taking, and will probably always take the form, the incredibly surprising form, of human communication."-- Vilem Flusser

Elizabeth Parks on Listening

Flusser on Communication

"We are committed to communication despite what may be called our 'nature' as mortals and despite what may be called the 'nature' of communication. Our commitment to communication is antinatural in several senses of the term, because communication is society, and society is not natural to the human animal. Communication is that situation which causes neuroses and psychoses, and it is antinatural because communication is culture, and culture is anti-nature, since it changes nature and fights against it. Communication is antinatural, because it is history, and history is a negation of natural determination, since it is a quest for freedom. But most of all, our commitment to communication is antinatural because the process of communication is opposed in its very tendency to the process of nature. Nature as a whole is a process that tends toward entropy, towards progressive loss of information and ever-greater chaos. Human communication as a whole tends toward the progressive increase of information, towards increasingly complex organization." --Vilem Flusser