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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“Trials and Tribble-ations”

May 31st, 2010 in Category: Deep Space Nine

In the Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", Commander Benjamin Sisko, Science Officer Jadzia Dax, Constable Odo, Lt. Worf, Chief Miles O'Brien, and Dr. Julian Bashir of the starship Defiant time travel via the Bajoran Orb of Time back to the twenty-third century.
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Sketches of the Car of the Future, by Nick Pugh

May 26th, 2010 in Category: Car of the Future, Future Design

Visualisations by the virtuoso concept artist-designer Nick Pugh.
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The Car of the Future is a Virtual Reality Game Platform

May 26th, 2010 in Category: Car of the Future, Future Design, Paul Virilio

In our concept of the Car of the Future, people will use their cars a good deal of the time for activities that take place in a virtual reality environment, and less for the physical activity of getting from point A to point B. This will have the direct outcome that less petroleum will be used, and less pollution will be given off.
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The Car of the Future is a Shapeshifter, by Nick Pugh

May 26th, 2010 in Category: Car of the Future, Future Design

As population continues to increase and our cities become ever more dense the need will arise to develop new technologies that actively compact and minimize the products we use, especially the automobile.
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Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in Java Code

May 26th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Georg Cantor, Humanities Informatics, Kurt Gödel, Mathematics, Time Travel

An important coding project of the New Computer Science is to program a Universal Incompleteness Generator in Java. The program will generate undecidable arithmetical statements from axioms. A major first step towards achieving this has been taken by Stephen Lee of Tachyos.org.
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A Critique of the Idea of Neutral Language, by Marc Silver

May 26th, 2010 in Category: Chaim Perelman, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud, Wikipedia

There has been intense scrutiny brought to bear upon the ways in which various disciplines deploy rhetorical devices to “argue their case,” as well as to consolidate their identities and maintain them intact. Marc Silver builds his argument upon such topical foundations, but also shifts the ground in new and original ways.
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Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, edited by Jeffrey Gormly

May 25th, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Dance Theory, Social Choreography, The Illusion Beyond Art

A collection of essays from a diverse group of thinkers - leaders in their fields - exploring the notion of choreography as the aesthetics of change. Established practitioners re-imagine their own fields (theology, social dreaming and organizational change, ethics, community building) as choreographic endeavours.
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Lost: The Crash Out of Globalization and into the World

May 24th, 2010 in Category: Lost, Martin Heidegger, Media Studies, Polysexuality

Combining elements of drama, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, adventure, thriller and Reality-TV, "Lost" is arguably the most original and influential TV program since "Star Trek" in the 1960s.
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Stefanie Schmidt, Film und Erinnerung

May 24th, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Jacques Lacan, Media Studies, Sigmund Freud

Im Hinblick auf einen vergleichenden Bezug zu der zeitphilosophiscen Filmtheorie von Gilles Deleuze werden die bildhaften und sprachlicen Aspekte des Gedächtnisses und des Films, wie sie enmal in Anschluss an die Linie Freud/Lacan und zum anderen bei Bergson/Deleuze entwickelt werden, diskutieret.
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Jean Baudrillard, Le Ludique et le policier

May 24th, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Jean Baudrillard

This collection of 23 essays by Jean Baudrillard in French from the years 1967-1978 is not available at any amazon website. It was published by Sens & Tonka, editeurs in 2001.
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Arguing the Case, by Marc Silver

May 23rd, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Language

Employing analytical methods deriving from linguistics, logic, psychoanalysis and cultural and literary criticism, Marc Silver reveals the common premises and common illusions behind the claims being made about the “human sciences” today.
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Jacques Derrida and the New Computer Science

May 20th, 2010 in Category: Charles Babbage, Humanities Informatics, Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a Jewish-French philosopher born in Algeria who is known as the founder of deconstruction. Derrida’s best known book is “Of Grammatology.” That early work of Derrida is the book by him that most interests me as the basis of the New Computer Science.
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Computer Games and New Mathematics

May 11th, 2010 in Category: Abraham Maslow, Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Mathematics

The advanced software of the New Computer Science will have noteworthy game-like qualities, and one of the first areas of business where Shapiro Technologies (a science fictional company which may or may not ever come into existence) will participate will be computer games.
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Deconstruction and the Q-Bit

May 8th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, David Bohm, Humanities Informatics, Jacques Derrida, Mathematics, Roland Barthes

The Q-Bit of quantum computing can acquire the value of 0 or 1 by autonomously perceiving what is going on in a system in real-time, in a “receiving” way, going beyond the explicit setting of the value of a bit as 0 or 1, and bit-based data structures, by the subject-centered programmer.
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Towards a New Computer Science: Augment the Inheritance Mechanism of Object-Orientation with Resemblance

May 4th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Mathematics

Choice is inaugurated by Incompleteness. Incompleteness is inaugurated by Choice. Choice is inaugurated by the Möbius Twist and the Aleph Operator. Incompleteness is at the foundation of the architecture of a radicalized Object-Oriented class inheritance hierarchy.
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