The Shape of Things

by Vilém Flusser, Anthony Mathews (Translator)

This book presents for the first time in English an array of essays on design by the seminal media critic and philosopher Vilém Flusser. It puts forward the view that our future depends on design. In a series of insightful essays on such ordinary "things" as wheels, carpets, pots, umbrellas and tents, Flusser emphasizes the interrelationships between art and science, theology and technology, and archaeology and architecture. Just as formal creativity has produced both weapons of destruction and great works of art, Flusser believed that the shape of things (and the designs behind them) represents both a threat and an opportunity for designers of the future.

Genres: Design, Philosophy, Art, Essays, Nonfiction, Architecture, Czech Literature

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Vilém Flusser was a philosopher born in Czechoslovakia. He lived for a long period in Brazil and later in France, and his works are written in several different languages.
His early work was marked by discussion of the thought of Martin Heidegger, and by the influence of existentialism and phenomenology. Phenomenology would play a major role in the transition to the later phase of his work, in which he turned his attention to the philosophy of communication and of artistic production. He contributed to the dichotomy in history: the period of image worship, and period of text worship, with deviations consequently into idolatry and "textolatry".

Flusser was born in 1920 in Prague into a family of Jewish intellectuals. His father, Gustav Flusser, studied mathematics and physics (under Albert Einstein among others). Flusser attended German and Czech primary schools and later a German grammar school.

In 1938, Flusser started to study philosophy at the Juridical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague. In 1939, shortly after the Nazi occupation, Flusser emigrated to London to continue his studies for one term at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Vilém Flusser lost all of his family in the German concentration camps: his father died in Buchenwald in 1940; his grandparents, his mother and his sister were brought to Auschwitz and later to Theresienstadt where they were killed. The next year, he emigrated to Brazil, living both in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

In 1960 he started to collaborate with the Brazilian Institute for Philosophy (IBF) in São Paulo and published in the Revista Brasileira de Filosofia; by these means he seriously approached the Brazilian intellectual community. During that decade he published and taught at several schools in São Paulo, being Lecturer for Philosophy of Science at the Escola Politécnica of the University of São Paulo and Professor of Philosophy of Communication at the Escola Dramática and the Escola Superior de Cinema in São Paulo. He also participated actively in the arts, collaborating with the Bienal de São Paulo, among other cultural events.

Beginning in the 1950s he taught philosophy and functioned as a journalist, before publishing his first book Língua e realidade (Language and Reality) in 1963. In 1972 he decided to leave Brazil.

He lived in both Germany and the South of France. To the end of his life, he was quite active writing and giving lectures around media theory. He died in 1991 in a car accident, while visiting his native Prague to give a lecture.

Reviews

[Philippe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slender booklet is a collection of short, late essays by the cosmopolitan thinker Vilem Flusser. Originally from the Czech Republic he fled to Brazil at the beginning of the Second World War and returned to Europe only in the early 1970s. He died in a car crash in 1991. Writing in German, Portuguese, and French, Flusser remained unpublished in English during his lifetime. In fact, the book reviewed here was the very first to be made accessible to an English readership. Meanwhile, based on as yet a very small selection of translated work, he has acquired a kind of a cultstatus with cognoscenti as an iconoclastic, clairvoyant linguistic philosopher and media theorist. Flusser's big theme is the transition from a pre-industrial to an industrial and, onwards, to an information society. In that process, spanning a mere 300 years, our relationship with our environment, increasingly populated by `non-things', by artificial intelligences and robotic machines, has been (and continuous to be) fundamentally altered. What happens when human beings morph from being productive, shape-giving artisans to abstract calculators, pressing keys on a keyboard, when our existential concerns shift from things to information? An interesting, ambiguous reciprocal dependency sets in: "the robot only does what the human being wants, but the human being can only want what the robot can do." Hence, humans become `functionaries' of the programmed tools they have created, inscribing themselves into a kind of (hopefully) benign totalitarianism governed by potentially endless but pre-programmed choice. Flusser's perspicaciousness in anticipating an emerging, virtual, omnidirectionally transparant society is admirable. Although "The Shape of Things" is a slim booklet, it is very difficult to do justice to Flusser's ideas in the space of a short review. Flusser's way of communicating complex ideas is highly idiosyncratic. His idiom is more journalistic than scholarly: he uses clear and simple language in very short, punchy essays. There are no references to other thinkers or to secondary literature. His argument is characterized by unexpected twists, linking the mundane to the exotic, relying often on clever etymological and linguistic reasoning. The style is terse, at times to the point of abruptness. Flusser is a combative thinker, not afraid to take provocative positions to tease his readers. Sometimes there is a clenched teeth kind of wittiness. This book is not a full-fledged, methodically argued `philosophy of design' but a series of elliptical, thought-provoking essays intent on redefining the debate on what makes (and keeps) us human in a world engulfed by immaterial objects and smart robots.

[Ricardo Real · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

[Xavi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Colección de cortos ensayos acerca de los objetos y su relación con el ser humano. El autor escoge como reflexión objetos de muy distinta índole: desde misiles de guerra, pasando por tapices, y terminando con camas. A Vilém Flusser le interesa principalmente el diseño desde el plano epistemológico (la influencia que el objeto ejerce en nuestra forma de conocer, y por ende, de desarrollarnos) y desde el ético (qué efectos provoca del diseño).

Algunas de las reflexiones más interesantes surgen acerca de cómo el objeto actúa de condicionante cultural. “El aparato sólo hace lo que el ser humano quiere, pero a la vez el ser humano solo puede querer aquello que el aparato puede hacer”, llegando a la conclusión que el humano se torna "el funcionario" del objeto. También cuestiona la libertad de decisión con el esclarecedor ejemplo de un revolver: aunque es la persona la que aprieta el gatillo, no podemos hablar de libertad sino de "libertad programada" porque el objeto viene con un programa prescrito que hace que la persona solo pueda escoger entre una serie de posibilidades delimitadas por el propio objeto. En esta misma línea, también mencionará la influencia de los objetos en la cultura, porque pese a que la cultura la hacen las personas, los objetos con los que conformamos esa cultura nos son dados.

En el plano ético destacaría su énfasis en que toda función—y el diseño es pura función— es inherentemente mala porque tiene un fin; solo lo que no tiene fin es bueno. A este respecto pondrá el ejemplo durante el nazismo donde un industrial envió una carta al gobierno alemán pidiendo disculpas porque sus cámaras de gas estaban mal construidas: en lugar de matar a miles de personas, solo mataban unas cientas.

Se aprecian claramente las influencias de Heidegger, que se plasma en una obsesión por describir etimologías y descomponer palabras. Un ejemplo es cuando dice que el diseño es "in-formar", que no es otra cosa que dar forma a la naturaleza, moldearla.

Vilém adopta a lo largo de los distintos ensayos una posición con tintes pesimistas y sarcásticos hacia la tecnología, presuntamente por una mediación cada vez más presente en la vida . Otro elemento muy presente a lo largo de todo el texto, es el aspecto teológico, que si bien no se aborda de forma directa en ningún momento, atraviesa sucintamente todo el relato. En cuanto a la calidad de los ensayos, me ha parecido muy irregular. Se mezclan ensayos brillantes con otros absolutamente insustanciales. Parte de ese problema no es del autor, sino del editor en crear un libro a partir de la recopilación de textos aislados del autor a lo largo de su vida.

En esta misma línea, me gustaría terminar esta reseña indicando lo desafortunado que resulta el título del libro. Pese a que el libro versa sobre reflexiones filosóficas del diseño, resulta demasiado presuntuoso llamarlo "Filosofía del diseño". En ningún momento se articula un sistema filosófico ni nada parecido. De hecho, Flusser ni siquiera plantea una definición estricta de lo que es diseño.

[Joel Gn · Rating 4 out of 5]

An understated collection. Readers familiar with the work of Marshall McLuhan would see the semblance in approach, but I think Flusser's much more measured with the critique. Don't be misled by the term 'design' in the title; the essays, as described in the introduction, are an etymological treatment of the ways objects and technologies have shaped language and thought.

[Kristoffer · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 50%. Flusser, a philosopher of science, approaches design through etymological analysis and empirical observation. Which could have been interesting but the inaccessible ramblings in the brief essays do little useful or usable intellectual work regarding what design is or could be.

[Pato Vergara]

No me suelen gustar los libros que arman paquetes de ensayos y lo venden con títulos pomposos. Este no es la excepción. Pero el último ensayo, La cama, es de lo más interesante que he leído en el último tiempo. Las cosas no son cosas son personas.

[Maria Cerase · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting topics. Essays though are too short for me to absorb them completely.

[Roberto Rangel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excelente visión y cuestionamientos acerca de la disciplina.

[Yokusun Basi]

Filosofia del design by Vilém Flusser (2003)

[Jake Moran · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quality series of essays on design philosophy, with an artistic touch. Some are challenging, but the one on 'the factory' is a favorite. Definitely worth a read. 📚🎨🏭

[ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh

[Avşar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ignore what anyone might say about Flusser and read it.

[Sarbajit Ghosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple in its exposition

[Andree Verdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

everything there is in this world stutters. pg 62
everything quantizes. pg 62
a. there are no longer norms that are applicable to industrial production.
b. there is no such this as a single author of a crime
c. responsibility has been so watered down that in effect we find ourselves in a situation of total irresponsibility towards acts resulting from industrial produciton. pg 68

the new human being does not wish to do or to have but to experience. he wishes to experience, to know and , above all, to enjoy. p89

the peoples of the computer, these producers of pots, shall be broken along with their empty vessels. p102

the 'I' is that which ones says "you" to. p105

first, the human being is made in the unique image of God. Second, the fact that people come together in groups conditioned by biology or economics has to be take into account by the administration, but must not overshadow the fundamental uniqueness of the individual human being. Third, the administration has to build up and maintain the economic, legal, biological, and educational principles by which the intellectual, moral and artistic approach of every individual human being to their god can be developed. However, it must not itself influence the particular approach. p113

in the world of Myth, there can be no unmotivated movement. p 120

[Lee Barry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A must-read book for any designer, even if only a few essays. Written in the early web, but still relevant today. "...for the time being we still have hands with which we can grasp things...hence we can see the approaching totalitarianism doing the programming for what it is: a non-thing [and] shows how 'outdated' we are." (From 'Non-Thing 2')

[Karla Huebner]

This is an interesting set of very short philosophical essays relating to design. I find Flusser an intriguing and original thinker and am wondering whether I can make good use of some of these essays in the design history course I'm preparing.

[Anastasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Каждая страница книги заставляла задуматься о разном - от ковров до исскуственного интеллекта. Книга написана очень интересно и мне удалось почерпать из нее новые идеи для жизни, а иногда и поменять свой взгляд на обыденные вещи. (На то она и философия вещей)