Communication as a black box. Vilém Flusser’s proposals and insufficiencies

Authors

  • Ciro Marcondes Filho ECA/USP

Keywords:

Theories of communication. Technical images. History of communication. Democratization of communication.

Abstract

Vilém Flusser did revolutionize the research on communication when he suggested that images nowadays do not have any rapport to the antique images. They are rather technical images, they signify concepts, they conduct to mathematical formula and to calculation. They did exclude the power of speech and at this moment we are more and more programmed by them. Therefore, our strategy against this new form of domination has to be centered in the field of images and our chance of democracy is in the hands of the “imaginators”. However, Flusser does not succeed to eliminate the ambiguity of his proposal: he bets on the intentionality in a world in which – according to him – the human action is nothing more than a mathematical function of two variables and humans will disappear in a sea of waves and casual particles. In networks, dialog, according to Flusser’s thesis, possesses real political powers while the possibility of democratization tends to the ingenuity of taking numerous access as participation, practice of critic and qualitative proposals.

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Author Biography

Ciro Marcondes Filho, ECA/USP

Professor Titular de Teoria da Comunicação/ECA/USP Currículo Lattes

Published

2007-03-02

How to Cite

FILHO, Ciro Marcondes. Communication as a black box. Vilém Flusser’s proposals and insufficiencies. Em Questão, Porto Alegre, v. 12, n. 2, p. 423–456, 2007. Disponível em: https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/EmQuestao/article/view/136. Acesso em: 27 aug. 2025.

Issue

Section

Essay

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