Written by: Emmett Stinson
The appearance of Vilém Flusser’s Does Writing Have a Future? (2011) in English translation almost twenty-five years after its original publication is undoubtedly a seminal event for both media studies and scholarship on the future of the book, but— because of its very importance—the publication of Flusser’s text also feels strangely belated. Although Does Writing Have a Future? was inaccessible to English-speaking scholars, many books and essays influenced by Flusser’s have been available for years, and, as a result, the book no longer produces the shock that was surely intended upon its publication. Most of those reading it for the first time will inevitably find their reading shaped by the history of its reception—both explicit and implicit—over the last two decades. In this sense, the publication of Does Writing Have a Future? serves as an invitation to consider Flusser’s influence, as much as it encourages a response to the text itself