Name: What If?: Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images
Price: 2173.00 TWD
Availability: InStock
Author: Vilém Flusser
ISBN: 9781517913656

portada What If?: Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images

What If?: Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images

Type

Physical Book

Author

Vilém Flusser

Translated by

Kenneth Kronenberg

Anke Finger

Publisher

University of Minnesota Press

Language

English

Pages

120

Format

Hardcover

Dimensions

21.6 x 14.0 x 2.5 cm

ISBN13

9781517913656

Synopsis "What If?: Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images"

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.

Vilém Flusser

(Author)

View Author's Page

Vilém Flusser (Prague, May 12, 1920 – November 27, 1991) was a Czech-Brazilian philosopher, writer, and journalist, known for his reflections on technology, communication, and the image in the post-industrial era
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born into an intellectual Jewish family, Flusser began studying philosophy at Charles University in Prague in 1938. Following the Nazi occupation, he emigrated to London in 1939 and, the following year, moved to Brazil, where he lived until his death. In Brazil, he worked in various companies and began to develop his philosophical thought, publishing articles and books in Portuguese, German, English, and French.

Among his most notable works are Language and Reality (1963), Towards a Philosophy of Photography (1983), and Vampyroteuthis infernalis (1987), a philosophical fable that explores the relationship between humans and the world. In Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Flusser analyzes photography as a transcendental act and its impact on the perception of reality.

Flusser died in 1991 in a car accident on the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia, the country he had left in his youth. His legacy continues to be an essential reference in studies on technology, communication, and contemporary philosophy.

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