Alan N. Shapiro, Technologist and Futurist

Blog and text archive about media theory, science fiction theory, future design, social choreography, Computer Science 2.0, new media art, robots and androids, Star Trek, The Prisoner, Jean Baudrillard, Albert Camus, Michel Foucault, and Marshall McLuhan

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“Darmok”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Language, The Next Generation

In the paradigm of multiple "selves" that has dominated critical cultural thinking about cyberspace, there is soft intermingling with simulated others. In the duel relationship, there is reciprocal seduction and transformation achieved through a real encounter with an agonistic other.
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“Arena”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Captain Kirk, The Original Series

In the pre-Klingon and pre-Borg Original Series episode "Arena", Captain Kirk is involved in a one-on-one duel against an antagonistic and radical alien Other, the Gorn commander. The episode is entitled "Kaijû Gôn tono Taiketus", or "Duel With the Monster Gorn", in Japanese dubbing.
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How the Transporter Really Works

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Teleportation

Over the decades, the copious science fictional "explanations" of how Star Trek's beaming technology really works, or might some- day be able to work, have undergone discernable paradigm shifts.
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“The Enemy Within”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Captain Kirk, Teleportation, The Original Series

Captain Kirk, Lt. Sulu, Geological Technician Fisher, and three other Enterprise crew members are approaching the end of a routine, one-day geological survey and specimen gathering mission on the planet Alpha 177.
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Richard Rorty on Radicalism, Liberalism, and Poetic Language

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Jacques Derrida, Language, Polysexuality, Richard Rorty

I was very impressed reading something that Richard Rorty wrote about revolutionaries in his essay "The Contingency of Community" ( in the book "Contingency, irony, and solidarity"). Rorty argues very cogently for a kind of “impossible” deconstructive synthesis of radicalism and liberalism.
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The Revolution will not be Televised, it will be led by Radical Software

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Baseball, Casino Gambling, Humanities Informatics

In my story “Betting on Longshots,” I describe how I won $3000 in the casino on the Lido in Venice, Italy when I was 24 years old, starting from nearly nothing. If I had not won that money, maybe my European wanderings would have come to an end, and I would have gone back to New York and become a dentist.
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I consider Star Trek to be a great text of Western Civilization

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Star Trek

The philosopher and computer expert Alan N. Shapiro explains his ideal for a future as an "employer": "I don’t create workplaces; I create playing fields," said Shapiro.
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“Twelve Monkeys” (film), by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Media Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Time Travel

Terry Gilliam’s brilliant film "Twelve Monkeys" raises critical questions about the linear nature of time and the causality of science. Möbius time travel will provide a fruitful tool for getting out of the hyperreality and myth of the end of history which surround us in modern culture.
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“Groundhog Day” (film), by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Media Studies, Time Travel

"Groundhog Day" is fascinating because it is time travel without a single history book adventure, science fiction without a single technological device, and the triumphant reign of the computer program without a single computer.
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Star Trek, Marx and Time Travel

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Karl Marx, Star Trek, Time Travel

Alan Shapiro - Star guest of the next Transmediale - on new computers, 1968 and anarchism. Interview in the Berlin daily newspaper "Neues Deutschland," January 5, 2010
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“Desperate Living” (film): John Waters’ Science Fiction Dystopia, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Media Studies, Polysexuality, Science Fiction Studies

Maybe it was the mono sound of my budget-priced video recorder, which the salesperson at Saturn Hansa had dubbed the 'Trabant' (der Trabi, das Symbol eines verschwundenen Landes, the symbol of a disappeared country, hat heute längst Kultstatus erreicht, has long since attained cult status) of VCRs.
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Wikipedia and Libraries

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Library of the Future, Wikipedia

Alan N. Shapiro (together with Patrick Lichty and Father Roderick) interviewed by Erik Boekesteijn on Wikipedia and libraries, on vimeo show "This Week in Libraries."
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Gustave Flaubert Laughs at Wikipedia, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in Category: French Literature, Wikipedia

In novels like "Sentimental Education" and "Bouvard and Pécuchet", and in his comic inventory of clichés and repeated ideas, Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues, Gustave Flaubert made fun of 18th and 19th century attempts to catalogue, classify, list, and record all of scientific and historical knowledge.
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“Jurassic Park” (film): Newman Eaten by a Dilophosaurus, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, Media Studies, Science Fiction Studies

Steven Spielberg's stated goal for the film "Jurassic Park" (1993) is to achieve what he calls "total realism." He wants to make cinema coincide with the real. This is a symptomatic fantasy that Jean Baudrillard diagnoses in "The Evil Demon of Images" as "cinema attempting to abolish itself in the absolute of reality."
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“Blade Runner” (film): I, Alan N. Shapiro, am an Android

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Androids & Artificial Life, Media Studies, Science Fiction Studies

What makes "Blade Runner" extraordinary is that it artfully presents an alternative to the two predominant ways in which artificially intelligent machines or androids are thought about and depicted in mainstream techno-culture. These modes recur again and again in novels, scientific pundit books, and Hollywood films.
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