Media philosopher Vilém Flusser proposed a revolutionary new way of thinking about photography. An analysis of the medium in terms of aesthetics, science and politics provided him with new ways of understanding both the cultural crises of the past and the new social forms nascent within them. Flusser showed how the transformation of textual into visual culture (from the linearity of history into the two-dimensionality of magic) and of industrial into post-industrial society (from work into leisure) went hand in hand, and how photography allows us to read and interpret these changes with particular clarity.

"Poised between hope and despair for a humanity facing an urgent communication crisis, this work by Vilém Flusser forecasts either the first truly human, infinitely creative society in history or a society of unbearable, oppressive sameness, locked in a pattern it cannot change. First published in German in 1985 and now available in English for the first time, Into the Universe of Technical Images outlines the history of communication technology as a process of increasing abstraction. Flusser charts how communication evolved from direct interaction with the world to mediation through various technologies. The invention of writing marked one significant shift; the invention of photography marked another, heralding the current age of the technical image. The automation of the processing of technical images carries both promise and threat: the promise of freeing humans to play and invent and the threat for networks of automation to proceed independently of humans."--Publisher

"In The History of the Devil, Flusser frames the human situation from a pseudo-religious point of view. The phenomenal world, or reality in a general sense, is identified as the Devil, and that which transcends phenomena, or the philosophers' and theologians' reality, is identified as God. Referencing Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in its structure, Flusser provocatively leads the reader through an existential exploration of nothingness as the bedrock of reality, where phenomenon and transcendence, Devil and God become fused and confused. So radically confused, in fact, that Flusser suggests we abandon the quotation marks from the terms Devil and God. At this moment of abysmal confusion, we must make the existential decisions that give direction to our lives"--Publisher's description.

Groundless is, at the same time, Vilém Flusser's autobiography and a singular title in the author's literary production as a thinker. Written in 1973, one year after his return to Europe, when the author was only fifty-three years old, this work addresses a variety of themes, beyond the experiences of the one who reports them. Through an experimental structure, Vilém Flusser presents to the readers a series of philosophical dialogues that he maintained with the people who marked him during his life in Brazil. Among them, Alex Bloch, Haroldo de Campos, João Guimarães Rosa, Milton Vargas, Dora Ferreira da Silva, Vicente Ferreira da Silva, Miguel Reale, Samson Flexor, and Mira Schendel. In a letter to Milton Vargas of 1973, Flusser writes: "To write a biography at 53 means 'to make biography', in the sense in which Hegel says that to write the history of philosophy means to make history and philosophy. ... to write a biography is not contemplation, but action ..." With this intention in mind, Vilém Flusser wrote a book where he explores how his past experiences, especially the experiences within the Brazilian reality, influenced him in the formation of his philosophical project. The particularity with which he describes this process in Portuguese makes it a work of great value in the field of philosophy and communication and deserves to be published in English translated from its original version in Portuguese. This edition differs from the posthumous German edition of 1993 in that it restores the structure of the text to the author's original manuscript. Groundless is a key text for the study and understanding of Vilém Flusser's work as a philosopher.

"Communicology is Vilém Flusser's first ever thesis on his concepts of technical images and technical imagination. In this foundational text he lays the groundwork for later work, offering a philosophical approach to communication as a phenomena that permeates every aspect of human existence. Clearly organized around questions such as "What is Communication," "What are Codes," and "What is Technical Imagination" the work touches on theatre, photography, film, television, and more. Originally written in 1978, but only posthumously published in German, the book is one of the clearest statements of Flusser's theory of communication as involving a variably mediated relation between humans and the world. Although Flusser was writing in the pre-digital 1970s, his work demonstrates a prescience that makes it of significant contemporary interest to scholars in visual culture, art history, media studies, and philosophy"--