#aitvf2011

One cannot come near the problem of media with a view of the everyday as degraded, debased, and baleful.

Written texts are decoded in a linear fashion, in a sequence of steps that are narrative in nature, moving from start to finish. According to Flusser, the process of interpreting images is different: “In pictures we may get the message first, and then try to decompose it. . . . This difference is one of temporality, and involved the present, the past and the future.”¹⁶ The “historical time” of the written text induces a directional sense in the reader, a feeling of going somewhere, whereas images are read with no sense of movement, with a feeling of going nowhere.

Machines that process texts, images, and sounds, I contend, are significantly distinct from machines that act on materials like wood and iron. [...] Media machines act on the components of culture, not nature [...] One might say that information machines are closer to humans than mechanical machines and establish relations with them that are more profound.

There is a thickening, intensification, and increasing complexity to the use of information machines, technologies that are necessary in the production, reproduction, storage, and distribution of texts, images, and sounds—the constituent elements of culture. This phenomenon has been termed a “media ecology,” adding a new layer to the ecologies of animal, vegetable, and mineral.