10. Let's start by giving a short outline of Flusser's general theoretical framework. Basically, Flusser's general theoretical framework consists of five layers or rungs (Stufen) of abstracting (abstrahieren). In the English translation, these layers are described as follows: First rung: Animals and "primitive" people are immersed in an animate world, a four-dimensional space-time continuum of animals and primitive peoples. It is the level of concrete experience. Second rung: The kinds of human beings that preceded us (approximately two million to forty thousand years ago) stood as subjects facing an objective situation, a three-dimensional situation comprising graspable objects. This is the level of grasping and shaping, characterized by objects such as stone blades and carved figures. Third rung: Homo sapiens sapiens slipped into an imaginary, two- dimensional mediation zone between itself and its environment. This is the level of observation and imagining characterized by traditional pictures such as cave paintings. Fourth rung: About four thousand years ago, another mediation zone, that of linear texts, was introduced between human beings and their images, a zone to which human beings henceforth owe most of their insights. This is the level of understanding and explanation, the historical level. Linear texts, such as Homer and the Bible, are at this level. Fifth rung: Texts have recently shown themselves to be inaccessible. They don't permit any further pictorial mediation. They have become unclear. They collapse into particles that must be gathered up. This is the level of calculation and computation, the level of technical images. (Flusser 2011 [1985], pp. 6-7) For present purposes, in this section, we focus on the transition from layer four to layer five by discussing three conceptual distinctions, which are partly based on, and partly inferred from, Flusser's text. Firstly, the distinction between the representational and the simulative; secondly, distinction between to imagine (imaginieren) and to envision (einbilden), as already mentioned in the introduction; and thirdly, the distinction between the discursive or linear and the dialogical. 11. As to the first distinction, it is inducible from Flusser's theory - even though he does not literally employ this terminology - that the digital is not so much ruled by a representational logic but rather by what one could call a simulative logic. This difference between representation and simulation is intrinsically linked to the both technical and conceptual difference between analog and digital, between inscription and encoding. Essentially, the difference between analog and digital, between inscription and encoding, lies in the use of the physical. Analog techniques use physical, in itself analog, phenomena for the sake of recording and carrying only a specific kind of information. Sometimes a machine is needed (e.g., a microfilm) to make analog information sensorially available, sometimes there is not (ink on paper). Digital techniques, by contrast, use these in itself analog - continuous, non-discrete - phenomena for encoding and transferring any kind of information in discrete bits (yes/no or 0/1, and nothing in between), which Flusser refers to as "Punktelemente". To make this digital information graspable, however, we also still need analog physical phenomena, such as screens and speakers. For bits and algorithmic processes as such are not sensory. Here, again, one could raise the question whether we are actually 'affected differently', as Derrida suggests (see #8) by digital information, or is it merely 'better represented' to us, in comparison to analog media? One could also recall McLuhan's observation that the message of a newly introduced medium (in this case the digital) tends to be the previous medium (in this case the analog). The first use of the new one is to imitate the old (cf. McLuhan 1994, pp. 7-21). What makes the difference here is, firstly, that the basic technique of bit- encoding makes information extremely flexible, processable, and transportable (e.g., the internet). When compared to analog information, there are almost no physical constraints. Secondly, because specific kinds of information are not bound to, or hard-coded on, specific physical phenomena (e.g., music as magnetic fields in the case of a cassette recorder), the encoding technique also does not restrain on form and structure of information. Indeed, a lot of today's digital information has no analog counterpart (e.g., hyperlink, database etc.). Although bits undoubtedly have a physical side (photons, electrons, etc.) we are dealing with an almost immaterial technical substrate. In fact, Flusser describes the digital as the perfect realm of the technical image, because the restraints on form and structure of technical images are reduced to an absolute minimum. In our view, continuous physical representation, for instance on a two- dimensional screen, is not the basic way of making sense of the principally non-sensory and algorithmically processed bits, including all the possible, analogically unprecedented, forms and structures of information. Therefore, we are indeed affected by, and oriented towards, something beyond the screen that, as such, is not physically present, nor physically representable, but nonetheless perfectly real, albeit in a non-empirical and non-empiricist way, which might be linked to the German word 'wirklich'. As Slavoj Zizek puts it: VR [Virtual Reality] doesn't imitate reality, it simulates it by way of generating its semblance. Imitation imitates a pre-existing real-life model, whereas simulation generates the semblance of a non-existing reality - it simulates something that doesn't exist. (Zizek, 1997) This conception of the simulative nature of digital information neatly corresponds to Flusser's idea that technical images do not represent something in the world 'out there', but project a meaning, some informational content, without designating or mirroring something outside of it (see #1). The basic form of digital information is therefore that of simulation. In fact, digital information consists of simulacra. Or, in other words, the digital is ruled by a simulative logic. 12. The second distinction, the one between imagine (imaginieren) and envision (einbilden), corresponds to our first distinction between representation and simulation. Within Flusser's general framework, the concepts of imagine and envision should be located on the third/fourth and the fifth layer, respectively. Ultimately, as to the fourth and fifth layer, his framework is archives in liquid times 128 arnoud glaudemans and jacco verburgt the archival transition from analogue to digital: revisiting derrida and flusser 129

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