"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.

"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"--