Chapter 1 gives a detailed introduction to the book’s historical-epistemological perspective, a combination of approaches from business and media history, media archeology, German media theory, and social theory. First, it establishes a systematic approach to understand visual consulting knowledge as media boundary objects and as part of a historically emergent graphic media network. It looks at the genealogy of the static, kinetic, and calculative media devices that form the graphic media network. Second, it traces the popularization of visualization methods that were originally developed in disciplines such as statistics, engineering, physiology, and macroeconomics. It shows the utopian potential that was attributed to visualization devices, which were conceived as new modes of intuitive thinking. It describes how management in industrial and commercial firms increasingly made use of these graphic, photographic, and filmic techniques. The chapter shows how this connection leads to fundamental changes in business practices, which are characterized as a form of “visual management.”
The Concept of Culture from a Logical and Epistemological Perspective