The Dialectics of the Visual and the Book Culture in the Postmodern Era

The object of research in the present work is the issue of the coexistence of the book and the visual cultures. Contemporary culture, having become informational, has transformed into a society of visual culture. The phenomenon of visual culture of post-industrial society is examined as a specific type of information and as a process. The processes of virtualization of life are becoming the distinctive feature of contemporary informational technologies. Information in the present era is exerting its influence on the user of technologies to a much greater degree as it was the case earlier. But the author does not agree with the negative evaluation of visualization as a replication of the set model of communication which impoverishes human thought. The reasons for this intellectual impoverishment and the lowering of the overall cultural level of the consumer have not been incited by art works of visual culture. These processes are conditioned by the specificity of contemporary mass culture which forms the “midrange” personality. Descriptions and comparisons are given of the model of the sociocultural mechanism of informational impact of art works pertaining to visual and book culture. The attempt is made to answer the question of whether visual culture possesses a systematic predominating status, or whether it must be examined as one of the directions of culture of the informational society. The conclusion is reached about the prospects of coexistence and interpenetration of the visual and the book culture with each other.