Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist whose work examines technology’s transformation of art, politics and experience. His “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” analyses how photography and film alter perception and political possibility.
Benjamin’s concept of the optical unconscious describes what cameras reveal beyond normal human sight. This prefigures analysis of the digital unconscious where Big Data systems make visible patterns in behaviour escaping conscious awareness.
Related: digital-unconscious, war-and-cinema