The obsolescence of man, vol I , part 2: The world as phantom and as matrix: philosophical considerations on radio and television - Günther Anders

The first complete English translation of a remarkable 1956 essay about television from Vol. I of The Obsolescence of Man by Günther Anders, who—using phenomenological analyses, excerpts from his diaries and reflections on daily life—depicts a capitalist world that manufactures a warped “mass-man” by imposing nonparticipation, consumption of images, artificial “needs” (“drug addiction is the model for today’s needs”), separation, “conditioning”, an eternal present, commodified leisure and the dissolution of the individual in vapid mass produced roles, in a text that in many ways anticipates the theory of the “spectacle” of Guy Debord and the situationists.

Submitted by Alias Recluse on May 2, 2014

Translated in April-May 2014 from: Günther Anders, La Obsolescencia del Hombre (Vol. I), tr. Josep Monter Pérez, Pre-Textos, Valencia, 2011, pp. 105-208.

La Obsolescencia del Hombre (Vol. I) was originally published in Germany in 1956 under the title: Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen I.

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