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
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