Initially rejected by MIT Press for being too radical, Flusser’s 1978 Communicology: Mutations in Human Relations? was finally published in December 2022 by Stanford University Press. The work maps out a massive transition in the way we communicate—one that was legible to Flusser in the 1970s, has only accelerated with the proliferation of networked media, and might possibly help us understand—so Munger argues—why everything now feels so weird.
Earlier this year, Kevin Munger, a political scientist and repeat New Models guest, led a reading group via the New Models Discord server on Communicology. Synthesizing the group's findings with his own analysis, Munger put together this talk unpacking Flusser's work in terms of the present—or as Munger puts it, in a way that set out to answer, Why are things so weird? As in, why does communication now feel so weird, so dissociated and unhinged?
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