I am not sure how I stumbled upon Günther Anders. I must have read about him previously while studying Hannah Arendt’s writing and life story. But the name Anders, to whom Arendt was married between 1929 and 1937, had not stuck. It is refreshingly unusual for the wife to be remembered by history rather than the husband; a husband who, one might be forgiven for thinking until recently, was not much more than a footnote on Arendt’s Wiki page. The graph below, however, tells a different story as it illustrates how interest in Anders has grown in recent years. For some, this trend proves that contemporary technology amounts to Armageddon. But for me, always suspicious of end-of-the-world narratives, Anders’ text demonstrates that the current hierarchical values applied to different image forms is, at best, historically myopic.
Anders caught my attention, not via Arendt, but due to the word obsolescence, which plays a significant role in a piece I am writing. I came across The Obsolescence of Man after being compelled to write by a sense that the general terror and rage about image and language-generating machines needs to be unpicked and, in certain places, challenged. (The issue of energy resources and environmental impact is not one of those spaces and may indeed represent the most substantive objection—one that isn’t primarily underpinned by anxieties about the collapse of meritocratic myths and the fetish of the hyper-individual. That said, such anxieties are entirely understandable given that these myths provide the illusion that one can indeed ‘be someone’, which Anders analyses). The reaction may indeed be wholly appropriate, or it may not be; however, if one complains about AI but then goes home and watches reality TV or expresses their rage on social media, in my opinion, they’re engaged in a grand form of self-delusion. All three – AI, social media and reality TV – are integrally linked and each an element of an overarching apparatus that arises out of capitalism’s four-century drive to commodify the crap out everything in the universe. This commodification is expressed through reproduction and imagery which came to fruition in the Industrial Revolution and continues today. This was as true in 1956 when Anders wrote The Obsolescence of Man as it is now.
Working with analogue photography (regardless of the process – even if using seeds and plants to bring one’s images to the page or screen) is a way of commodifying reality, perception and relations. According to Anders’ analysis, one does not (cannot) circumvent this commodification by using an analogue process rather than a digital or generative process. Any opposition to that statement is immediately answered by the fact that Anders was writing when only analogue processes were available. If anyone has any doubts about this, they can refer to Section 22 of Anders’ text, where he outlines his economic ontology and discusses photography’s role in converting unique experiences into reproducible commodities. “The first axiom of economic ontology: that which only happens once does not exist” (see paragraph above). Even these few words help to expand on Flusser’s (2012; loc 819) comment about the camera being the ancestor of future technologies (he was writing in the 1980s), and this axiom really speaks to my ever-present flirtation with deleting all my social media accounts, which would amount to a form of symbolic suicide in today’s landscape – to exist at all today demands that every one of us become reproducible images circulating through and within digital networks.
This economic foundation sets the stage for understanding how Anders presages not only Flusser and Baudrillard (he writes extensively on the matrix) but also Deleuze, Kathryn Hayles, and even the process and post-representation philosopher Thomas Nail. If you were to read Anders, initially you might question this connection to Nail. Anders frequently speaks of ‘real and true reality’ as opposed to the ‘phantom’ reality generated by contemporary media – using language that sounds thoroughly representational. However, Anders also identifies something unprecedented: a new ontological category emerging from industrial mass reproduction that had never existed before. Crucially, he recognised that mediated reality was becoming more real than the original events – a position that moves beyond simple representation vs reality thinking. In his writing, he is always walking a conceptual tightrope between traditional representational thinking (real world vs represented world) and post-representational reality as theorised by Nail (2019), where images are not copies but echoes and reverberations – matter folding over itself endlessly. Nail’s processual concept aligns with digital reality where images proliferate, mutate and spread throughout networks (Fisher and Rubinstein, 2013) – conditions Anders was beginning to identify decades earlier. Anders recognised this fundamental perceptual shift but was writing when the theoretical tools to describe this were nascent. He sometimes reverts to representational metaphor while elsewhere seems to glimpse with fantastic prescience what comes after representation entirely.
Interestingly, while reading Anders, I also watched Adam Curtis’ latest offering Shifty (BBC, 2025). Not at exactly the same time as my children, who frequently manage multiple screens – a trend Anders anticipated in 1956. Quoting Descartes, he noted, “Today, the divided soul is an everyday phenomenon. In fact, no feature is more characteristic of our time, at least of its leisure time dimension, than its inclination to devote itself at the same time to two or more disparate activities”. This fragmentation of attention connects directly to what Anders identifies as a key characteristic of contemporary atomisation and powerlessness. When consciousness becomes divided across multiple simultaneous activities, our capacity for sustained critical engagement subsides. In Section 12: Atrophy, Anders explores how this divided attention leads to increased feelings of banalisation (his central concern, which resonates intensely with me) and political impotence.
This concern also runs throughout Curtis’s oeuvre, as he explores how complex systems, often driven by technology and abstract mechanisms such as neoliberalism, create a reality that feels increasingly ungraspable and beyond individual control. According to Curtis (2025) in a podcast interview following the release of Shifty, the hyperbole and outrage that thrives on social media too often amounts to performance rather than effective political engagement (I think things are somewhat more complex than this, but agree social media is a deeply problematic space with considerable empty, formulaic posturing). Anders’ wonderful insight into why this performance feels so hollow feels immensely valuable: we have stopped being human and become the predicates that describe us (much like the advertising of a product works). Instead of complex individuals capable of multiple qualities and contradictions, we reduce ourselves to single, consumable characteristics – the “wellness influencer,” the “political activist,” the “authentic artist.” This is, for me, a brilliant and perceptive anticipation of what would ultimately become identity politics on social media, where people perform simplified and ultimately commodified versions of themselves. As Anders explains: “What we are consuming when we sit down in front of our radio or television is, instead of the scene of its preparation and the alleged thing S, its predicate p; in short: a prejudice that is presented in the form of an image, which, like every prejudice, conceals its character as a judgment; however, since that is still what it secretly is, it spares the consumer from having to take the trouble to make any judgments. Actually, the consumer does not consider this idea, no more so than he would with regard to the other prepared commodities, for example, pre-cooked canned food, which he buys so he does not have to cook it himself.” Note, Anders does not have social media or AI but TV and radio at the forefront of his argument.
While I understand the difficulties some people have with generative technologies, there’s something wrong with this singular focus. Reality TV has few redeeming qualities, and social media is both symptom and cause of deeper cultural shifts. Yet machine-learning processes, despite legitimate concerns about their control by the billionaire class, have genuine potential to transform existing power structures. The reason lies in their intrinsic non-linearity – machine learning systems operate through complex feedback loops and emergent patterns that resist the hierarchical, linear thinking upon which traditional power depends. This suggests that the grotesque individualism infecting modern culture may not survive in its current form. Yet it remains strange to me that no one gives a damn about reality TV or the harm it represents and causes. In fact, it is entirely celebrated and accepted as a perfectly benign form of entertainment. And as for social media… the other day (on social media of course), I saw someone ask, “Is social media making us all psychopathic?” At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, YES! If not that, it is doing something profound which authors like Haidt (2024) and Kornbluh (2023 are exploring although from very different standpoints and Kornbluh might take umbrage at being positioned beside Haidt in this instance. ( I cannot find the psychopathic post so forgive me or please send it if you’ve seen so I can insert and reference it properly.)
I am always sceptical of end-of-the-world narratives, and Anders is literally known as the Philosopher of the Apocalypse; so it might seem strange that I have taken to his writing with such enthusiasm. (Aside from anything else, he’s incredibly amusing, which usually captures me). However, what I appreciate most about his writing is that it helps us reconnect with the eternal history that places us in our current position. It cuts through analogue fetishisation. Anders shows us how the banalisation process, which disconnects us not only from our immediate world, ourselves and our neighbours, also severs us from the past as everything becomes homogenised, so that even Plato loses his differentiation and becomes a bland commodified product, flattened across historical time. Curtis aims to do something similar, providing historical context that reveals how current anxieties repeat patterns from previous technological and social transformations, helping us see beyond the present moment – our social media-induced hyper-parochial Now.
I am going to have to go back and reformulate the text I am writing about obsolescence, weaving Anders’ brilliant observations throughout. But that’s OK. Taking one’s time and focusing on a single screen is not so bad.
Finally, look out for a post about The Circular Life and Death of Images – coming soon! (Image below included in forthcoming zine
Refs:
Anders, G. (1956) The obsolescence of man, vol I , part 2: The world as phantom and as matrix: philosophical considerations on radio and television – Günther Anders | libcom.org. Translated by J.M. Pérez. Available at: https://libcom.org/article/obsolescence-man-vol-i-part-2-world-phantom-and-matrix-philosophical-considerations-radio (Accessed: 25 June 2025).
Babich, B. (2018) “On Guenther Anders, Political Media Theory, and Nuclear Violence” (2018). Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections. 94. https://research.library.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1096&context=phil_babich (Accessed 26/06/25)
Fisher, A. and Rubinstein, D. (2013) On the Verge of Photography: Image Beyond Representation. Birmingham: ARTicle Press.
Flusser, V. (2012) Towards a philosophy of photography. London: Reaktion Books.
Goethe-Institut Slowenien, 2022 ‘Dr. Srećko Horvat – The Burning Relevance of Günther Anders, 2022’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxpgXoFQtLc (Accessed 11/06/25)
Haidt, J. (2024) The anxious generation: how the great rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness. UK USA Canada Ireland Australia India New Zealand South Africa: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books.
Haselby, S. 2022, ‘Günther Anders, a forgotten prophet for the 21st century?’ | Aeon Essays, Aeon. URL https://aeon.co/essays/gunther-anders-a-forgotten-prophet-for-the-21st-century (Accessed 11/06/25).
Hunter, B., 2024. ‘Unworldliness: A Pathology of Humankind (On Günther Anders’s Negative Anthropology)’ – Journal #147. e-flux. URL https://www.e-flux.com/journal/147/625279/unworldliness-a-pathology-of-humankind-on-gunther-anders-s-negative-anthropology/ (Accessed 25/06/25).
Jennings, M. 2025, Bonus: Adam Curtis on “Shifty”, Self-Interest & Why We’re All “Scunnered” by The Some Laugh Podcast URL https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/some-laugh/episodes/Bonus-Adam-Curtis-on-Shifty–Self-Interest–Why-Were-All-Scunnered-e345ko5 (Accessed 25/06/25).
Kornbluh, A. (2023) Immediacy, or The style of too late capitalism. London New York: Verso.
Müller, C., 2016. Anders, Günther. Critical Posthumanism Network. URL https://criticalposthumanism.net/anders-gunther/ (Accessed 11/06/25).
Nail, T. (2019) Theory of the image. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
‘Shifty’ (2025). Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002d2jv/shifty (Accessed: 25 June 2025).
AI use: LLM used conversationally to think through some of the concepts in Anders’ text as I was reading, and where I felt I needed help with a little more nuance in some statements and claims.