On the level of elite communication texts and technical images complete each other; they aim at each other. Technical images give texts very specific meanings, and they provoke new texts. It is not a question of technical images illustrating texts, and texts describing technical images, as is the case in traditional image-text relations: there is feedback between the two codes that lifts texts to the level of technical imagination. But this works as it does only within the closed circuits of hermetic dialogues in technology and science. On the level of mass communication, apparatus are progressively devouring all the texts in order to be recoded as technical images. This is a case of absorption of conceptual thought by technical image codes to be radiated and to program receivers that have no technical imagination: a case of progressive destruction of conceptual thought, of historical reason, of linear consciousness, and of passive reception of opaque yet effective programs. The result is a progressive strengthening of the apparatus-operator complexes that radiate the programs.

– Vilem Flusser

read the book