Symbiotic Cognition Beyond Flusser’s Telematic Society: Toward a Post-Telematic Stage of Communication and Design

Abstract

[Abstract] This article proposes a post-Flusserian interpretation of contemporary artificial intelligence by tracing a theoretical trajectory from Vilém Flusser’s philosophy of communication to current subsymbolic and distributed AI systems. Beginning with Flusser’s stages of communication, the paper examines how technical images and telematic networks displaced authorship and representation, transforming humans from makers into operators of apparatuses. Paul Virilio’s analysis of technological acceleration further reveals how automated mediation alters perception and presence, while Mario Carpo’s account of digital design situates algorithmic architecture as the material realization of Flusser’s telematic condition. Building on Bartholo and Cadaval-Pereira’s proposal of a “sixth rung,” the article argues that contemporary AI no longer merely processes information but participates in distributed sensing environments. Drawing on the concept of subsymbolic cognition, it introduces the notion of symbiotic cognition: a distributed field of sensing and response shared by human, artificial, and material systems. In this framework, architecture and media operate as cognitive interfaces rather than representational media. Conclusions state that current technological environments indicate the emergence of synthetic sentience, not as machine consciousness, but as a shared experiential ecology in which perception and agency are co-produced across human and non-human actors.