What If?: Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images - Vilém Flusser

Descriere What If?: Twenty-Two Scenarios in Search of Images - Vilém Flusser

\nAn imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures off-kilter \n \n \n \nProbability is a chimera, its head is true, its tail a suggestion. Futurologists attempt to compel the head to eat the tail (ouroboros). Here, though, we will try to wag the tail. --Vilém Flusser \n \nTwo years after his Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, the philosopher Vilém Flusser engaged in another thought experiment: a collection of twenty-two scenarios for the future to be produced as computer-generated media, or technical images, that would break the imaginative logjam in conceiving the social, political, and economic future of the universe. What If? is not just an impossible journey to which Flusser invites us in the first scenario; it functions also as a distorting mirror held up to humanity. \n \nFlusser's disarming scenarios of an Anthropocene fraught with nightmares offer new visions that range from the scientific to the fantastic to the playful and whimsical. Each essay reflects our present sense of understanding the world, considering the exploitation of nature and the dangers of global warming, overpopulation, and blind reliance on the promises of scientific knowledge and invention. What If? offers insight into the radical futures of a slipstream Anthropocene that have much to do with speculative fiction, with Flusser's concept of design as crafty or slippery, and with art and the immense creative potential of failure versus reasonable, good computing or calculability. As such, the book is both a warning and a nudge to imagine what we may yet become and be.\n

Detalii

Brand

University Of Minnesota Press

Categorie

ENSTK

EAN / GTIN

9781517913663

Magazine

1

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in stock