For class on Wednesday, please read Vilem Flusser’s “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2”. This reading is going to be a little different from anything else we’ve read this semester: keep in mind that Vilem Flusser is a philosopher, and as such, he is more concerned with describing a theory of the world than presenting an evidence-based argument. He also wrote these essays sometime between 1970 and 1991 (the year he died)–long before computers were facts of day-to-day life.
In your reading response, first articulate what you understand Flusser’s project to be. What phenomenon is he pointing to? Make sure to incorporate quotes from the text. Once you’ve done that, please put his ideas in conversation with one of the other essays we have read so far this semester–Braindead Megaphone, In Persuasion Nation, Is Google Making Us Stupid, Ways of Seeing, or even Black Mirror. Keep your response to around 300 words.
In “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2” by Vilem Flusser, Flusser focuses on how humans rely on technology in their daily lives and by doing so, become less productive. He also explains how in the long-run, humans will be able to have information at their fingertips due to smart technology as opposed to getting it from other people.
One idea that Flusser points to is that in the future, humans will no longer question themselves or the ideas of the world. For example, Flusser describes how a new generation of human beings do not try new things: “He does not handle things anymore, so in his case one cannot speak of actions anymore. Nor of practice, nor of work for that matter.” (Flusser 89). Flusser is showing how this new group of humans has lost their curiosity and do not understand the value of work because they have access to everything on a smartphone or computer. Also, Flusser stresses how they cannot be critiqued by anyone since they do not offer new ideas.
The idea present in Flusser’s work is very similar to the one in Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. In the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”, Carr claims that anyone can receive a ton of information from Google within a couple of searches. Since we can get information from Google in a short amount of time, we do not feel the need to research our question more deeply and therefore, lose our ability to critically think and process information like machines. This is similar to Flusser’s idea in which that now, people think that there’s only one solution to every problem instead of multiple solutions. When we think this way, we limit ourselves as humans because we do not accept the ideas of others or promote diversity and therefore, become simple-minded.
In the readings “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2”, Vilem Flusser highlights the idea of a shift in our environment from the tangible to the intangible, or “things to information”. According to Flusser, this shift is not only affecting whats around us but is affecting the way in which we function as human beings. As a result, there will be a “Revaluation of all values” and humanity will now be dominated by those groups who have control over information. Although in my perspective this relationship between information and power is nothing new, I understand Flusser’s point about this idea. For example, this new generation of human beings will no longer “wish to do or to have but to experience”, “it is no longer a question of action but of sensation”. Along with this shift in our environment, their will be a shift in humanity’s lifestyle. As a people, we will begin to think differently, act differently, and progress differently towards our future. Similar to the show Black Mirror, Flusser speaks about an age where we are no longer required to think and act for ourselves because we will have “artificial machines and robots” to do it for us. In an episode of Black Mirror, the people live in a technological environment constantly begin monitored, told what to watch, and instructed on how to live by machines. Similar to the reading, this technological environment gives the idea of a false freedom based on the amount off points a person has, however regardless of what you choose to do in this environment all options are pre-programmed. Both the reading and Black Mirror suggest that in our future life and experience will be feed into our minds through information, rather than physically felt and lived for ourselves. However, Flusser makes it unclear of whether humanity should fear such a future or just accept and adapt to this new way of life. Furthermore, this idea is similar to the way Black Mirror simply portrays a possible scenario of a technology filled future, without any input on how we should view this outcome.
In “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2” by Vilem Flusser he was able to predict how humans of the future will change. Surprisingly his vision of the future does resemble today’s society. Flusser writes his two essays to express his worries on how people have changed from knowing what to hold onto in life which he calls “things” to becoming too interested in “non-things”. He clearly defines these “non-things” saying, “These nonthings are called ‘information’. “ He talks about how humans have forgotten to use our hands to grasp things showing us how outdated we are, but also using it as a means to connect our reliance on using only our fingertips to control our flow of non-things. I like how he seemingly predicted how in the 21st century everyone will use their phones and computers, and it holds true that we use our devices by using our fingertips and not our hands. He implies and predicts that in the future we will forget what is important to us and focus on useless information. This relates to the online article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr and how he complains about how his attention span has been shorted and replaced by information that isn’t all that important, yet is everywhere. Carr and Flusser both agree that we are now flooded by too much information. Everywhere we look there are advertisements, newspapers, cellphones, radios, emails, televisions, and much more. Information is inescapable and ultimately draining us of our values and extracurricular activities, making us lazy and predictable. Carr says that the omnipresence of information in the modern age is scattering our attention and diffusing our concentration. This is a scary thought because Flusser has predicted that in the future humans will be split into two categories: those that program and those that are programmed. Even those that program are programmed to program. If what Flusser predicts comes true, then is Carr’s point about how our attention and concentration is being lowered a systematic way to program us?
Vilem Flusser’s, “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2,” seems to discuss a paradox of what we describe as freedom. We have the freedom to perform certain actions all within the realms of something already pre programmed, but in those pre programed actions, there was already programing present. Basically, there seems to be a non ending chain of programming. For example, when discussing the idea of freedom with the example of the revolver, Flusser states, “I am able to free myself from any predicament by pulling the trigger. But in reality, with this pulling of the trigger I set in motion a process that is pre-programmed in the revolver.” This example shows us that we may feel freedom in pulling the trigger of a revolver, but it’s not an entire freedom, because the revolver has been preprogrammed to perform that action, and pulling the trigger is basically within the confines of what the revolver is programmed to do. If you look back further, the person who programmed the revolver may seen to have the power, but the person who programed the revolver is also exposed to a series of preprogramming that leaves him in the confines of what that revolver is supposed to do. Flusser hints that we may be able to escape this train of programming if we are able to create a long chain of information and memory, that rather than cyclical, is a linear chain. This is the understanding I was able to grasp from the text, but honestly it was very confusing. I’m sure Flusser’s ideas are along these lines, but I’m not entirely sure how he intends to create this long string of data and the ending idea that seems to state the possibility that humans are a form of obsolete software. This idea that we should be attempting to free ourselves from the cyclical fashion of programming reminds me of the writing of Nicholas Carr in, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Both writers seem to introduce ideas, then introduce parallels to the ideas stating that their idea may not be right and pointing out the other side. Both also seem to point out the faults in technological revolutions as they relate to a person’s ability to “grasp” things, whether it be Carr’s idea of maintaining an attention span or Flusser’s idea that we’re unable to grasp “things” anymore whatsoever. Both passages seem to point out faults in technology as a whole and how they may be detrimental to our being.
In Vilem Flusser’s “The Non-thing” and “The non-thing 2” talked about how the technology has replaced lots of important things in our life into some meaningless things. Most of the people love to fallow the trend, what is the hottest thing that is on the internet nowadays, they need to get their hands on them, too. Just as the machines Flusser’s talked about, there’s more and more new technology things that are being produce every day and people just want to fallow the norm and get their hands on them as soon as possible. “We are closer to a worker or citizen of the time of the French Revolution than to our children – yes, those children playing with electronic gadgets.” Technology is growing so fast that what you are playing with or using with will be totally different than what your kid will be playing. We are pretty much the last generation that lived with a society with no smartphone during our childhood. Back then, all we had for fun back was just reading books, going to parks, or hanging out with friends. We wouldn’t think that our life is boring, though now if we try to go a day without technology just seems impossible. We would always have the urge to check our phones, watch videos, and play games. However, he mentioned in the reading that “‘modern’ life, life surrounded by things, is not the absolute paradise our ancestors perhaps thought it might be.” And we should reject it. Just as Bing from Black Mirror which he refused to live his life like others riding bikes all day and escaped from make his way to the top of the biking cycle. If we can stop letting technology take over our daily life, would we reach to the top of the cycles, too?
My initial thought on The Shape of Things was that it was a very dense, difficult to grasp text. Realizing that it was a translation from someone who died in 1991 made sense – it is a very primitive rumination on technology from someone who died before the invention of laptop computers. Keeping this in mind, he got a lot of things right. His project appears to be that he wants to predict and contemplate the future of technology by baring everything down to basics.
For example, he pretty much predicted that we would be interacting almost exclusively with our fingertips when using a number of now-common technologies such as smartphones in laptops. When I first read the essays, they seemed overly-cynical. Since he wrote this no later than 1991, however, he was clearly more interested in exploring the morality and results of this technology.
According to Flusser, “all things will be transformed into the same kind of junk, even houses and pictures”. I think that his vision of a society in which we no longer worry about problems, but instead concern ourselves with non-things and information, is very optimistic – even in our programs, we find things to stress and worry about. In the Black Mirror episode we started watching, we saw a similar vision of a world dominated by non-things; information, technology, and inputs. The major missing component of this essay is that of the Internet – we aren’t simply enjoying and toying with machines, but shifting our interactions onto them. Flusser also believed that in our future “nothing in it is capable of being grasped, and nothing can be handled” I think that he underestimated the relevance of personal connections and, generally, that there will remain many things which will be nearly impossible to replace with technology. This can still change, however.
According to Vilem Flusser’s “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2”, society is changing from, formerly, processing objects to a society that desires information without much processing involved. Individuals no longer need to use their hands in other to “decode” the information hidden in “things” however, in this day in age, they only need “the tips of [their] fingers” to type on keys to gain understanding. This information that the new generations are learning is through “non-things” instead of “things” such as books, which the older generations are familiar to. Flusser continues to illustrate, that “things” are becoming cheaper and less used by the public while, the “non-things” are becoming popular in society and growing for the reason being that they are accessible to consumers yet, they are not materialistic in a sense, that our minds do not need to do grasp the information for long in order to understand it. The capability of our minds, or our “hands” in this case, to grasp and handle solid information is being terminated and “artificial intelligences” are being implicated by “non-things” pre-processing information for us. This phenomenon that is addressed by Vilem Flusser corresponds to the idea presented in the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” by Nicholas Carr because Carr asserts that convenience of the Internet has impacted the way of thinking. With the use of “non-things” such as the Internet, individuals have adapted to short, straightforward information that is comprehensible where, if they were faced with a reading that is more complex and requires deep reading to understand, they are simply not able to do so. Therefore, I believe that Vilem would agree with Carr’s idea because the way people retain information is through “non-things” which does not allow individuals to advance and think on their own about the topic being displayed. In other words, our minds feed on the given information without fully examining what is being presented.
Vilum Flusser’s, “The Non-Thing,” and “The Non-Thing Two,” address the ethical problems with the latest technology of his time. Since he lived in an era without iPhones and other smartphones, his perception on technology varies greatly to today’s views. Essentially, his definition of a “non-thing” is technology itself. For Flusser, the latest and greatest technology included, “the construction of atomic power stations and weapons, aeroplanes and motor vehicles, or genetic engineering and management systems” (88). Basically, he believes that humanity is beginning to rely too much on technology that we are losing our sense of ability to complete tasks on our own. He continues to argue that technology will soon consume every aspect of our lives, even taking away some of our freedoms. For example, Flusser wrote, “The freedom of decision of pressing a key with one’s fingertips turns out to be a programmed freedom” (93). In other words, he is saying that humans will eventually become so accustomed to typing instead of writing manually, that the keyboard, or in his case the typewriter, does the writing for us and therefore strips us of the freedom to write. This ties into his argument that we will begin to lose our capacity of accomplishing basic tasks because we will become so reliant on the technology to do it for us, and therefore we will exist only with the help of technology.
Flusser’s point of view on technology is reflected very heavily with the concepts articulated in the show Black Mirror. In the show, every human relies on technology for every task; whether it is to brush their teeth, or even to sleep. Essentially, Black Mirror is Flusser’s beliefs turned to reality. The characters on the show basically cannot exist without the “points” they gain from working all day long on a bicycle machine, like Flusser argued, “The human being in the future without things will exist by means of his fingertips” (92). In the show, Flusser’s idea is one hundred percent accurate because all the technology present in Black Mirror is accessible to the characters, literally, at their fingertips.
Vilem Flusser’s The Non-Thing and The Non-Thing 2 describe the direction society as a whole is headed and makes predictions on the future. Although written between 1970 and 1991 he accurately predicts the major shift to a more technological dependent society.
He also explains the need for more information. Flusser says, “We are less and less concerned with possessing things and more and more concerned with consuming information.” This information can be interpreted as the social media age. Where everyone is awaiting the next big news story on his or her twitter, Facebook, and instagram.
“The freedom of decision of pressing a key with one’s fingertips turns out to be a programmed freedom. A choice of prescribed possibilities.”
This quote stood out to me the most. He explains how every time someone does press a button its almost assumed as the persons free choice. When really you are just doing what the program allows you to do. It’s a pretty scary thought to me when computers are becoming more relied on. This just makes the manipulation of the masses easier.
The last two paragraphs remind me of the episode of black mirror we watched. From the small glimpse into that world it seems like the government would be totalitarian. The characters in that show are very similar to the predictions Flusser made. The reliance on technology is heavy and it seems like a future where technology does everything, leading to human unemployment. It also backs up the point of programmed freedom. As the main character constantly makes choices with his fingertips but isn’t really free.
Clearly Flusser is discussing the change in culture from products that were once produced by humans, with humans, thought of by humans to our dependency on machines. “And just as we get better and better at learning how to feed information into machines, all things will be transformed into the same kind of junk, even houses and pictures. All things will lose their value” This is my favorite quote because having travelled a lot you become accustomed to seeing the same merchandise from tent to tent, supposed artifacts of that place are no more than mass produced in China. It’s sad! When you want something to remind you of the place but there really isn’t anything that is authentically Mexican (last country I visited) He also targets a very unconventional approach at explaining the flaws in society that they are not necessarily how we live as much as why. When he makes the parallel between the generations and how they are in the same whole just going to it through different ways.
I think this piece has a lot in common with “Is Google Making Us Stupider”. It is very clear that both have a common focus on our ability to perceive the world around us. The real sharp difference that can be made is Flusser has a more philosophical approach, not jumping to conclusions but rather discussing the possibilities that can occur with such a change as the entrance of technology. The real difficulty I have with this approach is exactly its “luke-warm” approach. The piece is primarily one of fluffy rhetoric that is almost poetic yet fails to really present a decision or decisive viewpoint. Flusser similar to Carr uses a conversational writing approach to bring the reader with him throughout his explanation but does not employ the use of data that Carr does. Ironically the thing I enjoy most about Carr’s piece was not his argument but his use of “Non-Things”.
Philosopher Vilem Flusser brings to light how our physical environment is gradually being replaced by non-things. What Flusser means by non-things is technology, information, data, and the like. While these things exist in motherboards and satellites, they are not held in our hands. The lack of tactile interaction worries Flusser; a new revolution is upon us – a revolution that is unprecedented and foreign. We are living in the midst of a technological boom, and new programs are becoming scarily efficient, leading to the decrease of trade workers. The author brings up how our fingertips are becoming the primary physical outlet of the human body, but I could not exactly figure out how that is a bad thing. We are evolving into a more non-material world where information can be accessed via the net. To me, this means we are moving towards efficiency. However, the author has this slippery slope mindset where we will eventually become slaves to programs under a sort of Communist totalitarian state. Since he is a philosopher, Flusser doesn’t exactly provide real-world examples to back up his theory, so I don’t find his viewpoint convincing. He starts his essay stating how people like to categorize things such as “’animate-inanimate’, ‘mine-yours’, ‘useful-useless’, ‘near-far’”, noting how there are grey-areas when it comes to this categorization. But by the end, he is making bold claims such as “It looks, accordingly, as though the society of the future without things would be split into two classes: those programming and those being programmed,” which I find hypocritical. I believe Flusser is being over-dramatic about the technological revolution because he doesn’t fully understand it. He is a philosopher, not a programmer or an engineer, so it’s no wonder that he imagined these outlandish outcomes of society. People tend to fear what they don’t know. Flusser’s view on technology reminded me of the episode of Black Mirror we watched. Both view the future as dystopian and bleak, with humans being under the reigns of technology or those that program the technology. This has made me wonder why we often project the future in a negative light. Is this a sort of internalized-oppression where we want to watch the world burn? Perhaps we conjure up these imaginations to teach us a sort of lesson – a lesson on how to not end up in a world enslaved by programs. Also, in both Flusser and Black Mirror’s cases, I wonder if this dystopian world only exists in developed countries. Are poorer nations that cannot afford technological luxuries the ones that will end up prospering? I doubt that the entire world population will be under control by the same “technological ruler” since we diverge in culture, language, mindset, etc. which makes world domination very difficult to achieve.
Vilem Flusser is describing the different ways that information and technology is changing in the era he lived. Just from his observations of what he is seeing in his day to day life, he predicts the technological dependence that we have seen since the advent of the internet. He seemed to have a more positive idea of our technological dependence though. In his paper “Non- things” he says ,” We are less and less concerned with possessing things and more and more concerned with consuming information.” He expects people to become less materialistic and have a larger desire to consume information and become more knowledgeable. This is in contrast to how Carr viewed the technological dependence in his ” Is Google Making us Stupid?” Carr taught about how we were learning less and learning in different ways because of the internet and how it was detrimental to us as a society, and to him. He was no longer able to read for long periods of time because of the internet. Flusser believed that technology would force us to learn more and absorb more of the information that is available out there. This was an interesting hypothesis to have made before the internet was created and the spread of information fully took off.
Vilm Flusser discusses in “The Non-Thing 1,” and, “The Non-Thing 2,” how the advent of innovative technologies eliminates, real and physical things, and our freedom. Some examples that he points to are how mass produced products such as razors or lighters, that are not valued and merely thrown away, leading to the creation of massive amounts of waste. He also mentions technologies that would be more familiar to use such “computer memory,” or “electronic images and holograms,” that will all replace real and physical things.
However, something more prominent to our modern generation is Flosser’s argument that technology is hampering our freedom. He mentions how generally we don’t “handle things anymore, so in his case, one cannot speak of actions.” He also mentions how the hands, or the act of making physical things, is no longer the most important body of our bodies. Rather it’s our fingertips since they can type on keys to program and manipulate the new technology in the age of “being without things.” Since we are using our fingertips to operate these programs we are now stuck with processes that are already existing in the program. Thus, Flusser states that if we were to use a program then a free choice would not have been made but rather “a decision within the limits,” of the program would have been made.
The themes covered in Flusser’s “The Non-Thing 1,” and “The Non-Thing 2,” are very similar the themes brought up in Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” In Carr’s piece, the themes of technology altering the way in which we absorb information and thus think are prevalent. While in Flusser’s pieces, he brings up the idea of our environment becoming filled with “non things,” our loss of free will, and of humans losing their need for their “hand.” These two themes work well together as they both highlight humanities growing dependence on technology and also the pit falls behind the growing dependence on technology.
In the passages, “The Non-Thing 1” and “The Non-Thing 2” by Vilem Flusser, Flusser predicts that as technology becomes more prominent in our lives we will start to rely on it and become obsessed with non-things or information that is “impossible to get a hold of.” He claims that the excessive use of these non-things and this new type of information will take away the value of everything we know and will lead to new artificial world that has unforeseen consequences. “All things will lose their value, and all values will be transformed into information. ‘Revaluation of all values’”. Flusser is warning us that technology will overtake what is important to us and everything will become meaningless.
Flusser’s beliefs are similar to those shown in Nicholas Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Flusser shows concern for the future of our society since he believes that this new need for information will inhibit people from understanding and absorbing the information. Likewise, Carr argues that the abundance of technology has caused people to be dependent on our devices and are now unable to analyze and comprehend the information they are reading. Flusser and Carr both acknowledge the impact that technology will have on our ability to function and learn on our own. They feel that technology manipulates the way we think and act so that we lose the capability to figure things out and take in what they mean. I find it interesting that these articles were written at two different points in time but their ideas mirror one another, not to mention that Flusser even predicted his ideas before the internet and phones were a part of people’s daily lives. The claims made by Flusser and Carr show us that it is important for people to evaluate and question what they are seeing rather than blindly looking at it. Hopefully, by making more people aware through these articles of the effects technology has on our brain, we can limit its control on us.
In the essays “The Non-Thing 1” and “The Non-Thing 2” by Vilem Flusser, Flusser writes about the gradual transformation that has happened to people as the world has changed on a very general basis. He at first talks about the transformation of what humans valued in their lifetimes. He also writes about the advent of technology and the impact it had on human nature. At the beginning, the one “thing” that every human has in common is how everybody dies. Overtime, that “thing” was added to and people began living their lives to attempt to resolve problems before dying. Nowadays, due to the advent of technology, people start to care less about these problems d e to being put on a lower priority. We also have gone from a physically society to a digitalized society. In the past, people used to work towards achieving materials and objects that signified the amount of work that they had put into receiving that specific object. However, that has changed along with many things in our society. This is due to the technology throwing all these new “non-things” or information at our faces which distracts us from what we previously sought. The only difference now is the fact that there is so much information that we don’t manage to process it all. “We are less and less concerned with possessing things and more concerned with consuming information.” This is similar to what the Nicholas Carr wrote about in his article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” The parallel between the two pieces is the fact that both question the negative effects that the advancing technology has on society. This technology that brings forth waves and waves of information that we as singular human beings, can’t possibly begin to completely process which in turn makes the information worthless to us. This is what we have in our lives today, a life dominated by the digital world, where people don’t necessarily view physical objects in the same importance as people from the past as a people of the digital age.
Vilem Flusser discusses how society as whole is becoming severly materialistic. We act upon emotion and are fed a plethora of information daily. We are slowly lacking the ability to commuincate. Machines are now sadly replacing everyday processes that we used to do ourselves. Moreover, self-esteem and attitudes of people are slowly dimishing. A culture without things, Fluser discusses, is something that would have to be re-created. It seems like he was somewhat discouraged in his ability to convey a “postive” message. Anything he mentioned seemed hard to change. The comment regarding our ancestors was particularly interesting. He said the way society is set up now with these various “things” is not what our ancestors considered paradise. Unless I misread this, our ancestors had a postive vison for our future, and they would be surely dissapointed if they knew the end result. Furthermore, they may be ashamed. This artilce was very similar to “Is Google Making Us Stupid” in the sense that the constant influx of technology is ruining our minds and leading us down a scary and dangerous road. The current state of technology is one that will be difficult to undo. The idea of materialsitc and non-materialistic items is of signifance. The internet, the actual television, and any app on our iphones, are all programs and non-concreate. We can not actually touch them( we can but we can not, if that makes sense). These non-material processes/programs are the sole reasons why we are slowly becoming like computer programs. We see, we feel, we act. A large majority of the time, it is a bad decision. With a decrease in the amount of media we see, as a whole, our society would improve. These positive changes in our minds would be monumental.
Vilem Flusser makes some outrageous but coincidently accurate claims in his two pieces “The non-thing” and “The non-thing 2.” He managed to accurately predict the kind of society that will be around without having any exposure to a laptop computer let alone the internet. He seems to be going towards the notion that as we are transitioning to a more technological society or as he puts it from things to information we seem to be losing our freedom of choice. He talks about how we are given the illusion of choice but no such thing exists. “The keys at my disposal are so numerous that my fingertips can never touch all of them. Hence I get the impression that I am making completely free decisions.” The whole idea that Flusser is embracing is that we are being “programmed.” Even as I am typing this right now I am being made to not think on my own and more so think how I am being told to think. This concept really connects to the Black Mirror episode we viewed in class. These people live in a dystopian society where they pedal to earn points that they can use for unconventional things, but nothing really significant. The scene that stood out to me the most is when an advertisement came on and Bing covered his eyes. After the screen detected that it continued to emit a really loud noise until he uncovered his eyes. Here it clearly details how he is being forced to watch the commercial. He is technically given the choice to skip the commercial in exchange for some points but, even then he has to give in some time. This goes back to the whole idea of having an illusion of choice. Technically, they can save up enough money and audition to become a star, but realistically they are still the same slaves they were before, just with a slightly higher status. Another idea explored in the two pieces by Flusser is when he says life is less about material things and more about information. A better example of this is when the woman makes an origami penguin each day, and each day it is thrown out. This shows how they aren’t really allowed to retain anything no matter how small it is. Overall, Flusser’s predictions seem a bit too extreme for where our society is right now but happen to be spot on for the fictional society in Black Mirror.
In the given passage, Flusser describes the shift he has noticed within the world. A shift in which the world goes from being filled with “things” to being filled with “non-things”. In essence, physical objects are becoming less of a necessity in comparison to electronics. Physical objects or, “things”, are decreasing in value, according to Flusser. He states, “ Evidence in support of this is the fact that hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper and software more and more expensive”. It is his belief that the physical, non electronic objects, will lose value and over the course of time will be less desirable by consumers. As a result of the surge in technological advancements made during his time, Flusser believes more advancements will be made in the future which will make the human way of life Flusser is accustomed to, become redundant. Flusser negatively views technological advancements. Due to these advancements, “ the human being has been emancipated from grasping and productive work”. He credits “non-things” as being a major cause for unemployment since machines are taking over jobs usually held by humans.
Several connections can be made between Flusser’s passage and Black Mirror. Flusser writes, “The hands have become redundant and can atrophy. This is not true, however, of the fingertips…The hands have become redundant and can atrophy. This is not true, however, of the fingertips”. Essentially, Flusser believes that although electronics consume much of, it is the human touch, more specifically the fingertip, that controls much of modern devices. This is witnessed in Black Mirror since the character control much of their lives through their fingertips and electronics. They can control what they eat and what ads they see through the wave of a hand. There is a mutual codependence. Technology would fail to work without humans and efficiently acquiring a source would be substantially more difficult without technology.
In Vilem Flusser’s “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2”, Flusser speaks philosophically about his view on the direction that valuable “things” are moving in. He says how in the past, the word things usually referred to physical objects, while in the recent past, it has more to do with information. He says, “Evidence in support of this is the fact that hard-ware is getting cheaper and cheaper and software more and more expensive.” (Page 87) This is actually a very interesting thought, since in the past, the materials and workmanship necessary to create a computer, television set, or cell phone would be the most expensive part of the item. However, nowadays people are more concerned with the programs that allow their machines to function, and those programs are expensive even though they are not tangible. Therefore, a greater percentage of the collection of “objects” that make up our world are software and information rather than tangible things. Another point that Flusser was making in his article was that along with the increasing frequency of information as a thing in our environment comes the increasing frequency of misinformation/”garbage”. A quote that shows this point of view is, “One can object to this picture of change on the grounds that it does not take into account the mountain of junk accompanying the advent of non-things.” (Page 87) This idea actually ties into George Saunders’s “The Braindead Megaphone,” because Saunders discusses the idea that when information is in front of people and is shoved in their face, people begin to listen and believe this information. Similarly, Flusser says how people now put so much importance on information, even though a lot of it is “junk”.
In “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2” by Vilem Flusser, Flusser discusses how our world has moved on from material objects to intangible objects. Our environment was modeled around us and we had access to as many tangible objects that made up said environment. However, as the human race progressed and technology advanced, the human race is moving away from these same objects that make up our environment to things we cannot grasp: information. According to Flusser, humans would rather be informed than experience the true object. It maybe because it is simple to access because “One has to read in order to ‘decode’ them.” Most of this information comes from technology, like television, pictures, computers, and other information recipients. Flusser even says, “These non-things are, in true sense of the expression, ‘impossible to get ahold of.’” We do not feel the things around us anymore.
Some of these ideas mentioned by Flusser’s articles are similar to those in Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr mentions how people use the internet to find important information in order to save time and to be more efficient. People have become dependent on technology for their information now. We used to look for information by going through books and asking other people, but now we basically have all the information in the world by our fingertips. Carr’s argument supports what Flusser was saying about how we only crave information. In a way it is to be more efficient, but it might be a way to learn more. Some people do not have the capacity to go out in the world to experience new things and gain knowledge that way. If we continued like that, some of us would be at a disadvantage. However, by finding a quicker way to access information, we can learn more. The change Flusser mentions is evident, but not at all a bad thing. It may hinders us in some ways, but benefits us in more.
In Vilem Flusser’s “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2,” Flusser describes the change in society that takes place with the evolution of technology. How we go from being hands to just fingertips and how we once were surrounded by “things” to now, “non-things”. We no longer hold onto or care about things but create junk. Junk that is easily discarded once the value is lost. As Flusser states, “the new human being does not wish to do or to have but to experience.” We only need fleeting experiences not concrete possessions. We only need the information and only in the moment to play with. And without the hand, the work, we are free to do what we want to do and choose what we contribute to all the information as, “the human being is emancipated from work in order to be able to choose and decide.” However, all in all, we are still only playing the program and therefore, have to play to the program’s rules. While it seems that we have so much freedom to do whatever we want, the information and those controlling can easily influence and shape us. In reality, we do not have this freedom at all as we consume all whatever information so readily and quick.
In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr also presents the idea of fast consumption. How we do not spend time thinking about what we read and instead flip through as many as possible. We do not really need anything to stay with us, but just the experience, the information for the moment and then we can toss it once the value is lost. And we really do seem to have become robotic. Flusser states that we are a society of programmers who are being programmed. We are dictated by this “programmed totalitarianism” and do not make our own decisions.
Vilem Flusser’s “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2” by Vilem flusser discusses the existential presence that us humans have and what are our limitations and focuses are. He elaborates about the uselessness of information within books,computers,images, or anything “nonliving.” What I found interesting was that he pointed out our limitations when our fingertips have almost unlimited amount of power. He points out that freedom was our death’s. He gives an example of pulling a trigger of a revolver and taking your own life. The restriction of reality and escaping it was interesting. The fact we are not able to make free decision due to our limits is true. This would appear to be the height of freedom: I am able to free myself from any predicament by pulling the trigger. But in reality, with this pulling of the trigger I set in motion a process that is pre-programmed in the revolver. “I have not, as it were, made a ‘free’ decision, but I have made a decision within the limits of the revolver program..I am able to free myself from any predicament by pulling the trigger…with this pulling of the trigger I set in motion a process that is pre-programmed in the revolver.” I have not, as it were, made a ‘free’ decision, but I have made a decision within the limits of the revolver program. He also talked about ourselves not being human beings and being soft due to the new technology and big problems would be system errors. I agree, because sometimes people hide their faces behind screens selling a tough persona but with his example of work,throughout history we were known for tough manual labor instead of keyboard typing.This is incorporated to Carr’s writing and how the idea using the media to lower our concentration. Alos instead of intaking the information in a regular reading tempo we tend to skim or scan like a computer of pages. The fingertips of pencil, typewriting,keyboard programs us and according to Flusser’s argument this is making us soft. The new bonds our brain is making is hindering our performance. Flusser also mentions that if we don’t gather information from non living things our, memory can be stronger and work at its highest peak.
I think that Flusser’s project is to explain how his current industrial based society is operating under the production of “things” and how these “things” limit and control most of us because most of us are the workers under this kind of society and we don’t have the freedom to make decisions. However, in this forthcoming society we will be liberated from this life as workers under capitalism because technology will take over the work concerning “things” and we will be able to live a life “no longer… of action, but of sensation,” and we will “not wish to do or have, but to experience.” Even though we’ll still be living under a system, the pool of available outcomes will be so vast that it’ll feel as though we’re autonomous. In addition he also talks a bit on mortality and how in both of these kinds of societies we’re basically “proceeding towards death.”
The phenomenon that he is pointing to is that we’re creating all of this technology and innovation, but eventually it will outgrow us and outperform us. We will all lose our jobs to the “things” that capitalism was pushing us to create. I think that the general feelings in today’s society towards this idea are negative ones (think the sentiment towards any “other” stealing American Jobs) but Flusser does not seem troubled by this concept. In fact, he appears to be relieved by the idea that we won’t need to be troubled by “things” anymore. Perhaps this is because Flusser grew up under communism in Czechoslovakia, where unemployment seems better than laboring under the state’s orders.
It’s a bit eerie how Flusser has sort’ve foreshadowed the idea of Google, a database of information that we all have access to. Unfortunately his idea was a bit too optimistic. In “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr communicates his concern about us having lost our humanities and becoming dumbed down due to the crutch Google provides us with and the format in which we take in media. Flusser thought that with the emergence of something like Google, we would have the facilities to cultivate ourselves and make decisions about what we want to learn about and how we want to live our lives, freely. Sadly, I believe that the reason we have come to live like this, even though we have the potential to live how Flusser presents is because we workers are still being exploited under this system of capitalism. As Marx says, once we realize that the workers are the majority and overthrow the ruling class we can then escape this half state we’re living in, scrolling through our phones like zombies in the free moments we have between work and home. Flusser says “The society of the future without things will be classless,” so only once the revolution comes, we can be free- “after all, is not a society emancipated from work, believing that it can make free decisions, the kind of utopia that has always beckoned to humanity? Perhaps we are approaching the fulfilment of the ages?”
(Sorry this is so long! I got a bit carried away with my response.)
In “The Non-Thing” and “The Non-Thing 2” by Vilem Flusser, Flusser focuses on how society will evolve based on our increased reliance on immaterial information. He says these non-things of information have always existed but will have increasingly displaced things. Things that were tangible no longer hold as much meaning as this information which is in itself intangible. Flusser points out that this is true because “hardware is getting cheaper and cheaper and software more and more expensive”. Things like the computer itself will eventually decrease in value while the actual software that’s on that computer will be the main focus of attention. Despite being years behind our modern day technology he was able to predict how the inclusion of technology in our daily lives will have caused us to become less productive. The overwhelming increase of technology has allowed humans endless information from many sources. It has also allowed us to decrease productivity and limit ourselves to our information because “The new human being does not wish to do or to have but to experience.” We no longer have to take action to experience something for ourselves because we can get knowledge from the internet about that experience.
I think this relates to Nicholas Carr’s “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” because it shares the idea that increased reliance on information based and intangible items, such as the internet, decreases the need for human action. The convenience of this non-thing, google, has decreased our mental capabilities by making it difficult to grasp information and really hold on to it. In Flusser’s predictions things become hard to grasp, just in the physical sense as they no longer can be held and created by our own hands. He claims that as a result the hand is no longer useful as the action of grasping real things no longer has much relevance as non-things are more important. In the same way our brains have had their work simplified with all-knowing search engines. We no longer have to go grasp a book or experience something to get the information that we need; instead we skim from site to site with nothing really staying with us. Information is draining us and preventing people from doing different activities for themselves, so in the end the more we know the dumber we get.