Does Writing Have a Future?

by Flusser, Vilem; Roth, Nancy Ann; Poster, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780816670239
• ISBN10: 0816670234
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-02-24
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

InDoes Writing Have a Future?, a remarkably perceptive work first published in German in 1987, Vilem Flusser asks what will happen to thought and communication as written communication gives way, inevitably, to digital expression. In his introduction, Flusser proposes that writing does not, in fact, have a future because everything that is now conveyed in writing--and much that cannot be--can be recorded and transmitted by other means. Confirming Flusser's status as a theorist of new media in the same rank as Marshall McLuhan, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, and Friedrich Kittler, the balance of this book teases out the nuances of these developments. To find a common denominator among texts and practices that span millennia, Flusser looks back to the earliest forms of writing and forward to the digitization of texts now under way. For Flusser, writing--despite its limitations when compared to digital media--underpins historical consciousness, the concept of progress, and the nature of critical inquiry. While the text as a cultural form may ultimately become superfluous, he argues, the art of writing will not so much disappear but rather evolve into new kinds of thought and expression.

Author Biography

Vilm Flusser (1920-1991) was born in Prague; emigrated to Brazil, where he taught philosophy and wrote a daily newspaper column; and later moved to France. Among his books that have been translated into English are The Shape of Things, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, The Freedom of the Migrant, Writings (Minnesota, 2004), and Into the Universe of Technical Images (Minnesota, 2011). Nancy Ann Roth is an arts writer and critic based in the United Kingdom. Mark Poster is professor of history at University of California, Irvine.

Table of Contents

An Introduction to Vilém Flusser's Into the Universe of Technical Images and Does Writing Have a Future?	p. ix
Does Writing Have a Future?
Introduction	p. 3
Superscript	p. 5
Inscriptions	p. 11
Notation	p. 17
Letters of the Alphabet	p. 23
Texts	p. 37
Print	p. 47
Instructions	p. 55
Spoken Languages	p. 63
Poetry	p. 71
Ways of Reading	p. 79
Deciphering	p. 87
Books	p. 95
Letters	p. 103
Newspapers	p. 111
Stationeries	p. 119
Desks	p. 125
Scripts	p. 133
The Digital	p. 141
Recoding	p. 149
Subscript	p. 157
Afterword to the Second Edition	p. 163
Translator's Afterword and Acknowledgments	p. 165
Translator's Notes	p. 169
Index	p. 171
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.