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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Morality in Europe Today

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Music, University of the Future

There is a crisis of liberalism in Europe today. Liberalism and radicalism need each other. It is not a question of giving up one for the other, as so many activists and intellectuals in our history unfortunately did.
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Albert Camus’ The Rebel and Jean Baudrillard’s The Perfect Crime

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Albert Camus, Jean Baudrillard

Two great yet underrated works of 20th century political and social theory, both focusing on the question of the institutional justification of murder in modern society, are Albert Camus’ "The Rebel" and Jean Baudrillard’s "The Perfect Crime."
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McLuhan and Baudrillard: Making Science Fiction a Lot More Real

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Marshall McLuhan

In Douglas Coupland's recent book on McLuhan, it says that Baudrillard is McLuhan's "rightful successor." I see futurism as being the grounds where this great Canadian thinker and this great European thinker meet.
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A Turning Point for Technology?

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Science & Technology

In "The Technological Herbarium," I wrote of "2001: A Space Odyssey": “... a change in what technology is for humanity, shifting from being a tool for the 'domination of nature' and a weapon in the killing-madness of war to technology redefined as a ‘Friend of the Earth’ and a helper in the life-affirming organization of peace.”
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A Turning Point for Media?

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Media Studies

Media studies has operated with a binary opposition or dualism between deep thinkers like Innis, McLuhan and Baudrillard who disparaged content and believed that "the medium is the message" and ordinary practitioners who wrote about content but in a way rather uninformed by theory.
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Transforming Computer Science into a Humanities Subject

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Humanities Informatics

Despite its name, Computer Science is so far only an engineering discipline. Computer Science excluded art and sociology at its foundation, making itself into a strictly technical engineering practice, the tweaking of bits and bytes. We need a New Computer Science that integrates art and sociology at a fundamental level.
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Diary of a Young Wikipedian

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Wikipedia

An excerpt from my piece entitled “Diary of a Young Wikipedian,” which will be published in its entirety in the book publication of the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam.
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Questioning Steven Hawking’s Scientific Discourse, by Marc Silver and Simon Schaffer

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Science & Technology

This text is an interview-conversation between Professor Marc Silver of the University of Modena and Professor Simon Schaffer of Cambridge University that took place in Cambridge, UK in November 1995.