{"id":525,"date":"2013-01-09T13:38:24","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T13:38:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=525"},"modified":"2013-04-20T07:11:44","modified_gmt":"2013-04-20T07:11:44","slug":"alan-shapiro-the-future-of-the-image-part-two","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=525","title":{"rendered":"Alan Shapiro\u2014The Future of the Image (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/?page_id=666\">Return to Issue 2 Table of Contents\u00a0<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-size: 12px;\"><strong>Alan N. Shapiro<\/strong> is the author of &#8220;Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance&#8221; and the editor\/translator of &#8220;The Technological Herbarium&#8221; by Gianna Maria Gatti. His small book &#8220;Software of the Future&#8221; will be published in 2013 by the Walther K\u00f6nig Verlag.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"220\" height=\"165\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: left; width: 220px; height: 165px; border: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/s891v8igocw?rel=0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>In the video to the left Alan provides a transition from the <a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=476\">first part<\/a> of the essay published in Issue #1, February, 2013 to the second part below.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" style=\"margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; float: right; width: 320px; height: 240px; border: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LxHgwaRkmxQ?rel=0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In <i>Into the Universe of Technical Images<\/i>, Flusser also makes a very interesting critique of what he calls \u2018classical sociology\u2019, a critique that is very similar to what I have written about elsewhere in conceptualizing the difference between what I call \u2018classical sociology\u2019 and \u2018quantum physics sociology\u2019. Flusser\u2019s comment about sociology appears to be a <i>non sequitur<\/i>. It seems to come out of nowhere, like a stub, with no threads really connecting it to the book\u2019s context or framing the argument. This appearance of \u201cit does not logically follow\u201d is deceptive. At the beginning of the chapter called \u201cTo Interact\u201d (about two-sevenths of the way through the book), Flusser realizes <i>suddenly<\/i> that his awareness of the importance of technical images has huge implications for the entire way in which we think about the social world. Flusser writes:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c[The way that technical images function] has given rise to a social structure in which people no longer group themselves according to problems but rather according to technical images. Such a social structure requires new social criteria, a new sociological approach. Classical sociology begins with people, their needs, desires, feelings, and knowledge, and divides society by relationships between people, for example, into groups such as families, nationalities, or classes. Classical sociology\u2019s cultural objects are mediations between people, and those objects \u2015 such as tables, houses, and autos \u2015 are therefore to be explained starting with the people. Such an approach and such criteria no longer apply to contemporary social structure. No longer people but rather technical images lie at the center.\u201d (p.51) (Flusser, Vil\u00e9m, 2011, <i>Into the Universe of Technical Images<\/i> (originally published in German in 1985 as <i>Ins Universum der technischen Bilder<\/i>) (translated by Nancy Ann Roth, introduction by Mark Poster); Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: left; width: 320px; height: 240px; border: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/znZLiOi9Xzw?rel=0\"><\/iframe> Flusser astutely notes that, in the cyberspace era, there is no more public space and no more private space. The concepts of public and private \u2015 as far as I can tell still very much in common use by academic sociologists and political scientists \u2015 are obsolete. And old-fashioned \u2018humanists\u2019 who believe they can escape the media culture through abstinence are also very much mistaken: \u201cIt is therefore an optimistic nonsense to claim to be free not to switch the television on, not to order any newspapers, and not to photograph.\u201d [or not to skype, not to e-mail, and not to learn programming languages\u2026] (p.53)<\/p>\n<p>Classical sociologists still base their \u2018scientific sociology\u2019 on a 19th-century scientific paradigm (that of Auguste Comte) which assumes a world of docile objects waiting to be \u2018objectively\u2019 investigated, a classical worldview that assumes the existence of a social world and social problems rationally ordered by the sovereign thinking subject of social science who is in control. A new radical sociology would also be scientific \u2015 it would be based on the 20th-century sciences of quantum physics, special\/general relativity, chaos\/complexity theory, G\u00f6delian incompleteness, Riemannian geometry, cybernetic epistemology, holistic biology, and some others. It would consider much stranger and wily objects in an unmasterable social field governed by relations of radical uncertainty and paradox. The World thinks me; the Inhuman thinks me. Everything is relativistic, enigmatic, and aleatory. Social reality is nearly a total chaos. Countries, nationalities, immigration, religions, hybrid languages, identities, gender, sexuality: it is almost beyond our comprehension, laden with strange effects.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: left; width: 320px; height: 240px; border: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a-As0pl_ga4?rel=0\"><\/iframe> For many traditional humanist intellectuals and art experts, television is just the idiot box. It is the very last place that these guardians of \u2018high culture\u2019 would think to look for the liminal appearance of ideas, sublime forms, cognitive and conceptual breakthroughs, the \u2018new real\u2019, or the making of history. For the previous generation of \u2018old media\u2019 theorists \u2015 with its classic position that \u2018the medium is the message\u2019 \u2015 the content of TV programs was secondary to the extensive restructuring and \u2018patterning of human relationships\u2019 (Marshall McLuhan) or to the undirectionally encoded \u2018speech without response\u2019 (Jean Baudrillard) operationally instituted by a primarily process-oriented communications technology. One can transcend this downplaying of the message through cultivation of the very sensitivity to the medium as \u2018culturally framing technological-literary form\u2019 that one learns from these two thinkers. Science fiction, fantasy, and crime investigation TV shows are the literature of today. They can tell us more about what is going on in the world than any other genre of artistic expression. The real-time phenomenological details of these hyper-modern virtual narrative paintings are to be treated as the object-oriented fractal micro-constituents or graphic brush strokes of an intensively signifying language.<\/p>\n<p>Reversing McLuhan\u2019s designation of it as \u2018cool\u2019 (in <i>Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man<\/i>), television must henceforth be seen as a hot medium. One passes from the negative analysis of the electronic media as externalized mediations of the human body, senses, and psyche (McLuhan) or \u201csemiological reduction\u201d of symbolic relations (Baudrillard) to the affirmative mindfulness of a much more personally involved moment-to-moment immersion in the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions of the posthuman avatar bodies whose VR experiences are the outriding vehicle for ascending to an orbital writing space. To the dramaturgical enactment carried out by the scriptwriters, actors, and directors of <i>Star<\/i> <i>Trek<\/i>, <i>Lost<\/i>, <i>The Prisoner<\/i>, <i>The Wire<\/i>, <i>Mad Men<\/i>, <i>CSI<\/i>, <i>24<\/i>, <i>The Sopranos<\/i>, or <i>Six Feet Under<\/i> is added the act of writing by the media philosopher. Television is a hot medium now because it is suspenseful, which for the Greeks was the highest form of art; and because the &#8220;spirit of the times&#8221; in Hegel&#8217;s sense is embedded in a TV show like <i>Lost<\/i>; and because the form, format, or media is constantly present in micro-particle ways in the content, meaning, story.<\/p>\n<p>The field of television studies needs to be set on a completely new footing. The perspective of Stuart Hall, for example, which has been very influential in the field, is too limiting. It is OK to be a Marxist of sorts in the sense of being against \u2018alienated labor\u2019 (see my essay \u201cPlay Don\u2019t Work in a Pragmatic-Utopian High-Tech Enterprise\u201d). But all this stuff about race and gender analysis, the hegemonic code, power, institutions, reception theory, Barthes, Eco, a little semiotics thrown in\u2026 This stuff is old, outdated, tired. The Stuart Hall paradigm seems to be the dominant paradigm in television studies. The song goes like this: \u201cTelevision is a media of manipulation by means of which the ruling class exercises its hegemony over the oppressed&#8230;\u201d No, it is not really like that.<\/p>\n<p>As Flusser writes in <i>Towards a Philosophy of Photography<\/i>: \u201cFirst, the practice of photographing is hostile to any ideology. Ideology is the assumption of a single point of view as preferential to all others. The photographer acts in a post-ideological way, even if some photographers believe that they are committed to a particular ideology. Second, the practice of photography is bound to a program. The photographer can only act within the program of his technology, even if she believes herself to be acting against this program. This obtains for every kind of post-industrial act. It is both \u2018phenomenological,\u2019 in the sense of its being anti-ideological, and it is a programmed action. This is the reason why it is a mistake to speak of ideology in the case of mass culture (for example, in the case of mass photography). Programming is a post-industrial manipulation.\u201d (Flusser 1996: pp.50-51) (my translation of the French translation of the original German, with input from the published English translation)<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; float: left; width: 320px; height: 240px; border: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/X_OHyiVlYis?rel=0\"><\/iframe>The Marxist notions of work, ideology, industrial society, and the alleged instrumental use of a media techology or cultural artefact for purposes of class hegemony or domination are no longer relevant. \u201cThe photographic apparatus is not a tool, but rather a toy. The photographer is not a worker, but rather a player: not <i>homo faber<\/i>, but <i>homo ludens<\/i>.\u201d (Flusser 1996: p.35) (my translation of the French translation of \u2026) To paraphrase Flusser in <i>Towards a Philosophy of Photography<\/i>, media technologies do no work and they don\u2019t transform the world. They transform the meaning of the world, its symbolic dimension. Marxist theories of technology-slash-media tend to be wrong (even when the \u2018cultural sun tan\u2019 of a little semiotics or a little \u2018Heidegger\u2019 is appended) because they project onto the specific technology or media under discussion the fundamental Marxist prejudice-slash-philosophical-category of work-slash-production. We are no longer in the era of industry and production (of tools and machines), and the imaging technology \u2018apparatuses\u2019, as Flusser calls them, <i>do no<\/i> <i>work<\/i>. The actor known as the photographer (who is an embodied-metaphorical stand-in for all technology \u2018programmers\u2019) is not a proletarian.<\/p>\n<p>This analysis could be extended to mostly all media technologies, for example, to television. The term \u2018photography\u2019 for Flusser is an embodied-metaphorical stand-in for all contemporary media. The dominant Marxist (or feminist or post-colonialist) paradigm in television studies undermines the complex, paradoxical aspects (alluded to by Flusser) that go into the production and dissemination of the message or code. The structure of the gesture of photography is quantum. It is a gesture of doubt composed of point-like hesitations and point-like decisions. It is a typically post-industrial gesture: it is post-ideological and programmed, and it takes information to be \u2018real\u2019 in itself, not seeking to \u2018decode\u2019 the meaning of that information, as Stuart Hall would have us do.<\/p>\n<p>From the perspective of today, from the vantage point of the culture of intensified zapping of omnipresent hypertext links \u2015 we now see more clearly (by contrast with hyper-zapping) the unity of the scientific and literary cultures (\u201cof the past\u201d). The scientific and literary cultures no longer stand in opposition to each other. They are both cultures of the text. In 2013, we are now entering into a post-\u2018Science Wars\u2019 discourse where, more than ever, there is a desire to develop what Charles P. Snow termed an in-between \u2018Third Culture\u2019, one that would reconcile the formerly divided two separate cultures. In the 1963 revised edition of his book <i>The Two Cultures, and A Second Look<\/i>, Snow modified somewhat the views that he had previously expressed in the 1959 original edition of the book <i>The<\/i> <i>Two Cultures<\/i>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The invention of linear writing and the invention of technical images are the two crucial historical moments in Flusser\u2019s genealogy. But there is no epistemological break between the two events, as there is for McLuhan. There is, on the contrary, a continuity. At the beginning of <i>Towards a Philosophy<\/i> <i>of Photography<\/i>, Flusser writes: \u201cThe technical image is an image produced by technologies. Technologies, in turn, are products of the application of scientific texts, which makes technical images indirect products of scientific texts. The historical and ontological situation of technical images is different from the one occupied by traditional images \u2015 precisely because they are the indirect results of scientific texts. Historically, traditional images preceded texts by tens of thousands of years, and technical images succeed texts\u2026 Ontologically, traditional images are first-degree abstractions, since they were abstracted from the concrete world. Technical images, for their part, are third-degree abstractions: they are abstracted from texts, which in turn are abstracted from traditional images, which were themselves abstracted from the concrete world. Historically, traditional images may be called \u2018pre-historical,\u2019 while technical images may be called \u2018post-historical\u2019\u2026 Ontologically, traditional images mean phenomena, while technical images mean concepts.\u201d (Flusser 1996: pp.17-18) (my translation of the French translation of the original German, with input from the published English translation)<\/p>\n<p>At present, the media culture of images is practicing the manipulation of images and \u201cpornography of images\u201d (Baudrillard) in an extreme way. Flusser inspires us to create an alternative to this. He offers the basis for action. The television series mentioned above (combined with the act of writing about them) are examples of this action towards the conscious awakening of a \u2018revolutionary popular culture\u2019 \u2015 a radicalization-yet-going-mainstream of \u2018fan culture\u2019 \u2015 in Antonio Gramsci\u2019s sense. It would be futile to offer more examples of Flusser-inspired-action right now, because his work is perhaps the basis for an entire reinvention of media theory, media studies, and social-political-activism-slash-change.<b> <\/b><\/p>\n<p>We need a new conscious practice of images \u2015 images related to concepts, images related to the awareness and defense of \u2018basic culture\u2019, images related to the reinvigoration of the hybrid scientific-literary culture that is the legacy of the West.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" style=\"margin-right: 20px; margin-bottom: 5px; width: 320px; height: 240px; border: none;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f_ARXKFKO48?rel=0\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=476\">Part One<\/a> of this essay appeared in Issue 1 of VJIC<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<i><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/?page_id=666\">Return to Issue 2 Table of Contents<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>(You are invited to add to the conversation below.)<\/i>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" \/>\n<p><strong>References<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Baudrillard, Jean, 1981. &#8220;The Semiological Reduction&#8221; and &#8220;Requiem for the Media&#8221; in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (originally published in French in 1972 as Pour une critique de l&#8217;\u00e9conomie politique du signe) (translated with an introduction by Charles Levin); St.Louis: Telos Press.<\/p>\n<p> Buber, Martin, <i>I and Thou <\/i>(many editions). German: <i>Ich und Du<\/i> (many editions, originally published in 1923).<\/p>\n<p>Flusser, Vil\u00e9m, 2011, <i>Into the Universe of Technical Images<\/i> (originally published in German in 1985 as <i>Ins Universum der technischen Bilder<\/i>) (translated by Nancy Ann Roth, introduction by Mark Poster); Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\n<p>Flusser, Vil\u00e9m, 1996, <i>Pour une philosophie de la photographie<\/i> (originally published in German in 1983 as <i>F\u00fcr eine Philosophie der Fotographie<\/i>) (English translation by Anthony Mathews online at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/49129765\/Flusser-Towards-a-Philosophy-of-Photography\">http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/49129765\/Flusser-Towards-a-Philosophy-of-Photography<\/a>) (traduit de l\u2019allemand par Jean Mouchard); Bulgarie: les \u00e9ditions Circ\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>Foucault, Michel, 1997, \u201cThe Ethics of Care for the Self as the Practice of Freedom\u201d in <i>Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth<\/i> (edited by Paul Rabinow) (translated by Robert Hurley et al.); New York: The New Press, pp. 281-301.<\/p>\n<p>Huizinga, Johan, 1971, <i>Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture<\/i> (translated by R.F.C. Hull) (originally published in Dutch in 1938); Boston: Beacon Press.<\/p>\n<p>McLuhan, Marshall, 1962, <i>The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man<\/i>; Toronto: University of Toronto Press.<\/p>\n<p> McLuhan, Marshall, 1964, <i>Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man<\/i>; New York: McGraw-Hill.<\/p>\n<p>McLuhan, Marshall and Powers, Bruce R., 1989, <i>The<\/i> <i>Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century<\/i>; New York: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n<p> Molinaro, Matie, McLuhan, Corinne &amp; Toye, William (eds.), 1987, <i>Letters of Marshall McLuhan<\/i>;<i> <\/i>New York: Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n<p>Murray, Janet, 1997, <i>Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace<\/i>; Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.<\/p>\n<p> Shapiro, Alan N., 2004, <i>Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance<\/i>; Berlin: AVINUS Verlag.<\/p>\n<p>Snow, Charles P., 1959, <i>The Two Cultures<\/i>; London: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n<p>Snow, Charles P., 1963, <i>The<\/i> <i>Two Cultures, and a Second Look<\/i>; London: Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n<p>Voss, Vanessa A., 2006. The Useless Perfection of Pornography: Baudrillard\u2019s Critique of Sexual Reason; Houston: University of Houston Press.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=476\">Part One<\/a> of this essay appeared in Issue 1 of VJIC<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<i><a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/?page_id=666\">Return to Issue 2 Table of Contents<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>(You are invited to add to the conversation below.)<\/i>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Return to Issue 2 Table of Contents\u00a0 Alan N. Shapiro is the author of &#8220;Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance&#8221; and the editor\/translator of &#8220;The Technological Herbarium&#8221; by Gianna Maria Gatti. His small book &#8220;Software of the Future&#8221; will be published &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/?page_id=525\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88893,"featured_media":223,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-525","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2KsSU-8t","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/525\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vjic.org\/vjic2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}