Ontology of Technical Images (Published)
What is – reality, the truth, good, justice, man, etc. – is something we have learned from texts for a historically long period of time. Together with writing and linear alphabet, a new ability which could be called conceptual thinking has become part of our life. Therefore, deciphering texts means nothing else than revealing images denoted by these texts. Traditionally, learning meant to be able to read in the book of the world, i.e. to learn to code the world in texts using linear writing first and then to learn to decipher texts applied to reality. Media theorist Vilém Flusser states in his key texts, that technical images become a dominant cognitive metaphor of the contemporary society. New social culture is being formed in connection with their creation, distribution, transfer and consumption. Such new social structure needs new criteria of analysis, it requires a new interpretive beginning. Flusser does not wonder how a medium is possible, but he deals with the consequences of the effect of one type of media abstraction, namely technical images. The following text briefly analyses the dominant cognitive metaphor of Flusser’s theory – the concept technical image
Keywords: Apparatus, Ontology, calculation and computation, linear texts, technical images