Vilém Flusser: Does Writing Have a Future? (1987/2011)

“In Does Writing Have a Future?, a remarkably perceptive work first published in German in 1987, Vilém 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.”

Originally published in German in 1987 as Die Schrift. Hat Schreiben Zukunft?, Göttingen.
Translated by Nancy Ann Roth
Introduction by Mark Poster
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2011
Volume 33 of Electronic Mediations
ISBN 0816670234, 9780816670239
208 pages

Review: Bob Hanke (Int’l J of Communication)

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2020-2-29)

I Read Where I Am: Exploring New Information Cultures (2011)

“”I Read Where I Am” contains visionary texts about the future of reading and the status of the word. We read at any time and anywhere. We read from screens, we read out on the streets, we read in the office but we spend less and less time reading a book at home on the couch. We are, or are becoming, a different type of reader. Reading is becoming a different experience. Different from what it once was.

We have access to almost all information at any given time. We carry complete libraries in our pockets. Books have become part of the multi-media world, the can be shared between platforms.

Do all these extra possibilities add value or are they a mere distraction? We read the text as much as we read the interface. With similar ease, we read newspaper articles as well as search engines, databases, and navigational structures. Texts and images become interchangeable, creating new forms of information. Differences in content and between readers require different shapes and experiences. The question remains: which shape will it take and what experience does one want?

To answer to all these (and other) questions, we have asked people from different backgrounds, to think about these issues in the light of these changes. “I Read Where I Am” is a varied collection of 82 observations, inspirations, and critical notes by journalists, designers, researchers, politicians, philosophers, and many others.” (from book launch announcement)

Concept: Graphic Design Museum/Institute of Network Cultures
Editors: Mieke Gerritzen, Geert Lovink, Minke Kampman
Editorial assistance: Morgan Currie
Translation Dutch-English: Jonathan Ellis
Design: LUST
Production: Valiz
Publisher: Valiz with Graphic Design Museum, May 2011
ISBN 978-90-78088-55-4

authors
via The Unbound Book conference

PDF (EPUB; added on 2012-7-17)
View online (HTML)

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum: Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (2008)

“In Mechanisms, Matthew Kirschenbaum examines new media and electronic writing against the textual and technological primitives that govern writing, inscription, and textual transmission in all media: erasure, variability, repeatability, and survivability. Mechanisms is the first book in its field to devote significant attention to storage—the hard drive in particular—arguing that understanding the affordances of storage devices is essential to understanding new media. Drawing a distinction between ‘forensic materiality’ and ‘formal materiality,’ Kirschenbaum uses applied computer forensics techniques in his study of new media works. Just as the humanities discipline of textual studies examines books as physical objects and traces different variants of texts, computer forensics encourage us to perceive new media in terms of specific versions, platforms, systems, and devices. Kirschenbaum demonstrates these techniques in media-specific readings of three landmark works of new media and electronic literature, all from the formative era of personal computing: the interactive fiction game Mystery House, Michael Joyce’s Afternoon: A Story, and William Gibson’s electronic poem ‘Agrippa.’

Drawing on newly available archival resources for these works, Kirschenbaum uses a hex editor and disk image of Mystery House to conduct a “forensic walkthrough” to explore critical reading strategies linked to technical praxis; examines the multiple versions and revisions of Afternoon in order to address the diachronic dimension of electronic textuality; and documents the volatile publication and transmission history of ‘Agrippa’ as an illustration of the social aspect of transmission and preservation.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262113112, 9780262113113
296 pages

Online companion
Publisher

PDF (no OCR; some pages missing; updated on 2014-3-5)
EPUB (added on 2018-7-30)