ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore how the various mediatic modulations have constituted a path of gradual abstraction in the dimensions of human experience. Following Flusser’s account of the evolution of the virtual from cave paintings, speech, writing, photography, and film to the digital, we explore the movement from the four dimensionality of pre-technological existence, through the three dimensionality of speech, the two dimensionality of painting, and the one dimensionality of writing, to finally consider the implications of the zero dimensionality of the digital (i.e., a form of representation that is wholly cut off from its ground in the material world). In this light, we explore the radical subversion of communication that we are currently experiencing in the phenomenon of post-truth. In considering the negative role of the media in this respect we also identify – by appealing to an example from the TV series Black Mirror – how the virtual world may also become a valuable laboratory of subjectivity where Ortega y Gasset’s vision of the task of exploring sensibility in our time may come to fruition.
