To Create
Vilém Flusser · University of Minnesota Press eBooks · 2011
This chapter examines whether there can be creative inspiration, without author or work, in a telematic society where all information will be synthesized through intersubjective conversations, information that is infinitely reproducible and designed to be changed by its receivers and forwarded as new information. It also asks whether, in such a society, there can be that disregard of self, that absorption in work that constitutes freedom. The issue here is first the reproducibility of all generated information. The Latin copia means “surplus.” To copy, therefore, would be “to make superfluous.” The question is, what is actually made superfluous by copying? One answer is that copying makes all authority and all authors superfluous and so puts creative inspiration to the test. This can be seen, for example, in the problem of copyright in light of the copy shop. This chapter describes a telematic society where everyone could theoretically participate in a dialogue.