The thesis is an attempt to critically analyse script as the dominant media form in societies from the 18th century until the emergence of new information and communication technologies that break the monopoly of writing over the production, distribution and consumption of information. The work first focuses on the media specificities of script, the most important of which is its tendency towards linearisation. In the way that script transforms the human perception of the external world to a linear sequence of graphemes, it gives rise to a specific form of thinking and understanding of reality. The consciousness that responds to the medium of writing is also linear – because it arranges the events of the external world in cause-and-effect sequences, this consciousness is historical. The thesis then turns to the fate of the tandem of writing and historical consciousness in the era of the media revolution, when the new audiovisual media take over some of the essential functions previously performed exclusively by script. The thesis observes the binary code that programs computers as the new dominant media form of contemporary societies, focusing on the visualisation of this new dominant code, the so-called "technical images". In this context, it explores the question of what implications binary code and its technical images carry for the creation of new, non-linear ways of thinking, and how susceptible these are to ideological manipulation.
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