Competing with Computers
From his first encounters with game theory, or decision theory in the 1960s, Flusser was concerned with the way human beings were different from “apparatuses”. As far as I know, he never used the...
Category: Flusser
Image and Imagine
The German verb “einbilden” is ordinarily translated into English as “imagine.” But at one point in Into the Universe of Technical Images, Flusser calls attention to the difference between “einbilden” and the cognate “imaginieren”. Expressing his gratitude to Kant for...
Science and Sentimentality
Flusser translated the title of his essay “Geste und Gestimmtheit” as “Gesture and Sentimentality”. I didn’t. I found, and to some extent still find that particular word misleading at best. Its equivalence to “Gestimmtheit” is almost...
“Drawing” and “Being Drawn”
The German word “Entwerfen” — drafting or drawing — is closely related, a kind of reversal of the verb “werfen,” which is to throw, or hurl, or toss. Flusser uses the association to describe...
Flusser on Games
I’m honoured to be a contributor to a volume called Understanding Flusser, Understanding Modernism, edited by Aaron Jaffe and published at Routledge, probably 2020. Jaffe’s earlier volume is called The Way Things Go: An Essay on...
homo ludens
Flusser is well-known as a “media theorist,” and hardly known at all as a “games theorist.” But games figure often and prominently in his thinking and writing from the time of his earliest publications...