{"title":"Vilém Flusser","description":"\u003cp\u003eExplore the thought-provoking essays and philosophical inquiries of Vilém Flusser. Delve into media theory, communication, and the future of technology through his unique lens. A stimulating collection for curious minds.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"does-writing-have-a-future-book-vilm-flusser-9780816670239","title":"Does Writing Have a Future?","description":"A prescient exploration of the fate of the book in the digital age.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49633721385233,"sku":"GOR013619409","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730130575633,"sku":"NGR9780816670239","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49783894147345,"sku":"GOR009471859","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0816670234.jpg?v=1752316018"},{"product_id":"into-the-universe-of-technical-images-book-vilm-flusser-9780816670215","title":"Into the Universe of Technical Images","description":"An examination of the promise and peril of digital communication technologies.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730107736337,"sku":"NGR9780816670215","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51416470454545,"sku":"CIN0816670218VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51716286710033,"sku":"CIN0816670218G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0816670218.jpg?v=1764843175"},{"product_id":"gestures-book-vilm-flusser-9780816691289","title":"Gestures","description":"Throughout his career, the influential new media theorist VilÉm Flusser kept the idea of gesture in mind: that people express their being in the world through a sweeping range of movements. He reconsiders familiar actions-from speaking and painting to smoking and telephoning-in terms of particular movement, opening a surprising new perspective on the ways we share and preserve meaning. A gesture may or may not be linked to specialized apparatus, though its form crucially affects the person who makes it.   These essays, published here as a collection in English for the first time, were written over roughly a half century and reflect both an eclectic array of interests and a durable commitment to phenomenological thought. Defining gesture as “a movement of the body or of a tool attached to the body for which there is no satisfactory causal explanation,” Flusser moves around the topic from diverse points of view, angles, and distances: at times he zooms in on a modest, ordinary movement such as taking a photograph, shaving, or listening to music; at others, he pulls back to look at something as vast and varied as human “making,” embracing everything from the fashioning of simple tools to mass manufacturing. But whatever the gesture, Flusser analyzes it as the expression of a particular form of consciousness, that is, as a particular relationship between the world and the one who gestures.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49731484451089,"sku":"NGR9780816691289","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50332363391249,"sku":"GOR011470006","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51327396839697,"sku":"CIN0816691282G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51726108623121,"sku":"GOR008084194","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0816691282.jpg?v=1764928715"},{"product_id":"language-and-reality-book-vilm-flusser-9781517904289","title":"Language and Reality","description":"In Language and Reality, originally published in SÃo Paulo, Brazil, in 1964, VilÉm Flusser continues his philosophical and theoretical exploration into language. He begins to postulate that language is not simply a map of the world but also the driving force for projecting worlds and enters then into a feedback with what is projected.  Flusser’s thesis leads him to claim, in a seemingly missed encounter of a dialogue with Wittgenstein, that language is not limited to its ontological and epistemological aspects but rather is at the service of its aesthetic. Traversing a diverse area of research and ruminations on cybernetics to poetry, music, the visual arts, religion, and mysticism, Language and Reality can be viewed as a vital transitional work in Flusser’s emerging thought that will eventually lead to his works in the 1970s and 1980s concerning what we would later consider media theory, design, and digital culture.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49734327632145,"sku":"NGR9781517904289","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1517904285.jpg?v=1764843213"},{"product_id":"post-history-book-vilm-flusser-9781937561093","title":"Post-History","description":"Is there any room left for freedom in a programmed world? This is the essential question Vilem Flusser asks in Post-History. This first English translation of Post-History brings to an Anglophone readership Flusser's first critique of apparatus as the aesthetic, ethical, and epistemological model of present times.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49736793129233,"sku":"NGR9781937561093","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50395339129105,"sku":"CIN1937561097VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50404020191505,"sku":"CIN1937561097G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51894680387857,"sku":"GOR006688273","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1937561097.jpg?v=1765014993"},{"product_id":"what-if-book-vilm-flusser-9781517913663","title":"What If?","description":"An imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures off-kilter      “Probability is a chimera, its head is true, its tail a suggestion. Futurologists attempt to compel the head to eat the tail (ouroboros). Here, though, we will try to wag the tail.” -VilÉm Flusser   Two years after his Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, the philosopher VilÉm Flusser engaged in another thought experiment: a collection of twenty-two “scenarios for the future” to be produced as computer-generated media, or technical images, that would break the imaginative logjam in conceiving the social, political, and economic future of the universe. What If? is not just an “impossible journey” to which Flusser invites us in the first scenario; it functions also as a distorting mirror held up to humanity.   Flusser’s disarming scenarios of an Anthropocene fraught with nightmares offer new visions that range from the scientific to the fantastic to the playful and whimsical. Each essay reflects our present sense of understanding the world, considering the exploitation of nature and the dangers of global warming, overpopulation, and blind reliance on the promises of scientific knowledge and invention. What If? offers insight into the radical futures of a slipstream Anthropocene that have much to do with speculative fiction, with Flusser’s concept of design as “crafty” or slippery, and with art and the immense creative potential of failure versus reasonable, “good” computing or calculability. As such, the book is both a warning and a nudge to imagine what we may yet become and be.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742811332881,"sku":"NGR9781517913663","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1517913667.jpg?v=1763478250"},{"product_id":"what-if-book-vilm-flusser-9781517913656","title":"What If?","description":"An imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures off-kilter      “Probability is a chimera, its head is true, its tail a suggestion. Futurologists attempt to compel the head to eat the tail (ouroboros). Here, though, we will try to wag the tail.” -VilÉm Flusser   Two years after his Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, the philosopher VilÉm Flusser engaged in another thought experiment: a collection of twenty-two “scenarios for the future” to be produced as computer-generated media, or technical images, that would break the imaginative logjam in conceiving the social, political, and economic future of the universe. What If? is not just an “impossible journey” to which Flusser invites us in the first scenario; it functions also as a distorting mirror held up to humanity.   Flusser’s disarming scenarios of an Anthropocene fraught with nightmares offer new visions that range from the scientific to the fantastic to the playful and whimsical. Each essay reflects our present sense of understanding the world, considering the exploitation of nature and the dangers of global warming, overpopulation, and blind reliance on the promises of scientific knowledge and invention. What If? offers insight into the radical futures of a slipstream Anthropocene that have much to do with speculative fiction, with Flusser’s concept of design as “crafty” or slippery, and with art and the immense creative potential of failure versus reasonable, “good” computing or calculability. As such, the book is both a warning and a nudge to imagine what we may yet become and be.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742862057745,"sku":"NGR9781517913656","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1517913659.jpg?v=1752315838"},{"product_id":"communicology-book-vilm-flusser-9781503634480","title":"Communicology","description":"Communicology is Vilém Flusser's first thesis on his concepts of technical images and technical imagination. In this foundational text he lays the groundwork for later work, offering a philosophical approach to communication as a phenomenon that permeates every aspect of human existence. Clearly organized around questions such as \"What is Communication?,\" \"What are Codes?,\" and \"What is Technical Imagination?,\" the work touches on theater, photography, film, television, and more. Originally written in 1978, but only posthumously published in German, the book is one of the clearest statements of Flusser's theory of communication as involving a variably mediated relation between humans and the world. Although Flusser was writing in the 1970s, his work demonstrates a prescience that makes it of significant contemporary interest to scholars in visual culture, art history, media studies, and philosophy.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49744980803857,"sku":"NGR9781503634480","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51031283335441,"sku":"NIN9781503634480","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52082022482193,"sku":"GOR014482016","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53371116618001,"sku":"CIN1503634485G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1503634485.jpg?v=1757416900"},{"product_id":"vampyroteuthis-infernalis-book-louis-bec-9780816678228","title":"Vampyroteuthis Infernalis","description":"Science is interesting precisely because it relates to me. It is a human function just as much as breathing is: it is an existential interest. And an entirely objective science would be uninteresting, inhuman. The search for scientific objectivity is revealing itself in its continual advancement not as a search for purity, but as pernicious madness. The present essay demands that we give up the ideal of objectivity in favour of other intersubjective scientific methods. ---- De te fabula narratur. Thus starts this paranaturalist treatise by Vilem Flusser. Author of the seminal Towards a Philosophy of Photography (1984) and Ins Universum der Technischen Bilder (1985), Flusser introduces us here to an infernal creature from the oceanic abysses, our long lost relative, who slowly emerges, not from the oceans, but from our own depths to gaze spitefully into our eyes and reflect back at us our own existence. ---- Originally published only in German in 1987, this version has been edited and translated by Rodrigo Maltez Novaes, Ph.D. candidate at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Siegfried Zielinski, from the original, unpublished and extended Brazilian-Portuguese version of the manuscript recently found at the Vilem Flusser Archive at the Universitat der Kunst, Berlin. This edition is also accompanied by a selection of previously unpublished excerpts from Flusser's correspondence with Milton Vargas and Dora Ferreira da Silva, with whom he discussed the development of the present text.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49786663108881,"sku":"NGR9780816678228","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50270526046481,"sku":"CIN0816678227G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50278275350801,"sku":"CIN0816678227VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51607301685521,"sku":"GOR012731854","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52131850518801,"sku":"NLS9780816678228","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ LIKE_NEW \/ SBYB","offer_id":52888898240785,"sku":"CIN0816678227LN","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0816678227.jpg?v=1764845669"},{"product_id":"writings-book-vilem-flusser-9780816635658","title":"Writings","description":"Ten years after his death, Vilem Flusser's reputation as one of Europe's most original modern philosophers continues to grow. Increasingly influential in Europe and Latin America, the Prague-born intellectual's thought has until now remained largely unknown in the English-speaking world. His innovative writings theorize--and ultimately embrace--the epochal shift that humanity is undergoing from what he termed linear thinking (based on writing) toward a new form of multidimensional, visual thinking embodied by digital culture. For Flusser, these new modes and technologies of communication make possible a society (the telematic society) in which dialogue between people becomes the supreme value.The first English-language anthology of Flusser's work, this volume displays the extraordinary range and subtlety of his intellect. A number of the essays collected here introduce and elaborate his theory of communication, influenced by thinkers as diverse as Martin Buber, Edmund Husserl, and Thomas Kuhn. While taking dystopian, posthuman visions of communication technologies into account, Flusser celebrates their liberatory and humanizing aspects. For Flusser, existence was akin to being thrown into an abyss of absurd experience or bottomlessness; becoming human required creating meaning out of this painful event by consciously connecting with others, in part through such technologies. Other essays present Flusser's thoughts on the future of writing, the revolutionary nature of photography, the relationship between exile and creativity, and his unconventional concept of posthistory. Taken together, these essays confirm Flusser's importance and prescience within contemporary philosophy.Vilem Flusser (1920-1991) was born in Prague and taught philosophy in Brazil. Andreas Strohl is director of the film department at the Goethe-Institut Inter Nationes in Munich. Erik Eisel works for a software technology company in Southern California.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362829406481,"sku":"CIN081663565XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51436666945809,"sku":"GOR014277700","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51869616898321,"sku":"GOR008461158","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/081663565X.jpg?v=1764843607"},{"product_id":"thinking-further-book-vilm-flusser-9781517919207","title":"Thinking Further","description":"The first English-language translation of Vilém Flusser's final series of lectures: the definitive introduction to his methods and ideas in new media theory  In summer 1991, shortly before his death, Vilém Flusser gave a series of lectures as guest professor at Ruhr University Bochum at the invitation of Friedrich Kittler. Flusser intended for these lectures to be the definitive introduction to his \"communicology,\" the study of human communication and the means by which acquired information is saved, processed, and passed on. In Thinking Further, Aaron Jaffe and Michael F. Miller have curated \"fragments\" from these lectures – first published in German in 2008 – to present the most exciting and timely parts of Flusser's foundational contributions to what is now known as media studies.  These fragments capture Flusser's engagements with a wide range of theories, approaches, and interventions, including ecocriticism, posthumanities, game theory, cybernetics, and translinguistic exchanges. Offering sustained engagements with the ideas of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, and Jean Baudrillard, Thinking Further models possibilities for thinking through and clarifying the most obscure and obdurate implications of technology and modernity.  As they demonstrate Flusser's contextual positionality and antiuniversalism, the writings presented here also underscore the pleasures and the power of his aphoristic style. Focusing less on Flusser-as-philosopher and more on his role as wry sage at the end of history, Thinking Further is a comprehensive but approachable introduction to his boundary-transcending exploration of the possibilities for communication, writing, and the human condition.  Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52153181110545,"sku":"NGR9781517919207","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53341327556881,"sku":"CIN1517919207G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781517919207.jpg?v=1769077108"},{"product_id":"thinking-further-book-vilm-flusser-9781517919191","title":"Thinking Further","description":"The first English-language translation of Vilém Flusser's final series of lectures: the definitive introduction to his methods and ideas in new media theory  In summer 1991, shortly before his death, Vilém Flusser gave a series of lectures as guest professor at Ruhr University Bochum at the invitation of Friedrich Kittler. Flusser intended for these lectures to be the definitive introduction to his \"communicology,\" the study of human communication and the means by which acquired information is saved, processed, and passed on. In Thinking Further, Aaron Jaffe and Michael F. Miller have curated \"fragments\" from these lectures – first published in German in 2008 – to present the most exciting and timely parts of Flusser's foundational contributions to what is now known as media studies.  These fragments capture Flusser's engagements with a wide range of theories, approaches, and interventions, including ecocriticism, posthumanities, game theory, cybernetics, and translinguistic exchanges. Offering sustained engagements with the ideas of Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Michel Serres, and Jean Baudrillard, Thinking Further models possibilities for thinking through and clarifying the most obscure and obdurate implications of technology and modernity.  As they demonstrate Flusser's contextual positionality and antiuniversalism, the writings presented here also underscore the pleasures and the power of his aphoristic style. Focusing less on Flusser-as-philosopher and more on his role as wry sage at the end of history, Thinking Further is a comprehensive but approachable introduction to his boundary-transcending exploration of the possibilities for communication, writing, and the human condition.  Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":52153191858449,"sku":"NGR9781517919191","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781517919191.jpg?v=1757619254"},{"product_id":"pictographs-does-writing-still-have-a-future-35937-24418-25991-23383-31995-21015-book-vilm-flusser-9787547324059","title":"Pictographs Does Writing Still Have a Future?\/\u0026#35937;\u0026#24418;\u0026#25991;\u0026#23383;\u0026#31995;\u0026#21015;\u0026#65306;\u0026#20070;\u0026#20889;\u0026#36824;\u0026#26377;\u0026#26410;\u0026#26469;\u0026#21527;\u0026#65311;","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53176866504977,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53176866537745,"sku":"NLS9787547324059","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9787547324059.jpg?v=1773919672"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-vilm-flusser.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}