Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

Blog and project archive about media theory, science fiction theory, and creative coding

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The Car of the Future, by Alan N. Shapiro and Alan Cholodenko

February 15th, 2012 in the categories: Car of the Future, Donna Haraway, Future Design, Gregory Bateson, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Virilio, Real/Virtual Reality

In November 2008, Alan N. Shapiro was invited by Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany to speak about his ideas about "the car of the future." He spoke in front of an audience of people from the Human-Machine Interface Dept. and and the Infotainment Dept. This text was written as accompaniment to that presentation.
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A New Computer Science is Underway: Alan N. Shapiro interviewed by Anja Wiesinger

February 15th, 2012 in the categories: Computer Science 2.0

American philosopher and veteran software engineer Alan Shapiro reflects on computer science in relation to the history of ideas it originated from.
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Beginner’s Luck (a Casino Gambling story)

February 14th, 2012 in the categories: Casino Gambling, Creative Writing, Photography

There was a famous and elegant casino at the Venice Lido called the Casinò Municipale di Venezia. My friends knew about the casino but had never been inside. To my surprise, Tony expressed his belief that I was destined to win a lot of money at blackjack. He announced that he intended to "stake me" money to play.
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On the Sociology of Music, by Alan N. Shapiro and Chris Williams

February 12th, 2012 in the categories: Music

Here we make the first presentation of our ideas about the reality of popular music in contemporary society. But what is reality? What is the relationship between reality and mediality? Between reality and virtuality? Between reality and simulations? What is music in the context of our social system of consumer culture?
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Radical skepticism and the logic of Shakespeare’s artistry, by Robert Schneider

February 12th, 2012 in the categories: English Literature

Robert Schneider is the author of a book-length reinterpretation of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" called "Shylock, The Roman" (Pulpless.com, 2001). I find this book to be the basis for investigating the relationship between Shakespeare and Star Trek as twin canonical texts of "Western Civ."
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The Best of All Possible Worlds: Modal Metaphysics and Possibilia, by James Shapiro

February 11th, 2012 in the categories: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

A brilliant and highly productive intellectual whose work spanned over many fields—mathematics, geometry, physics, etc., in addition to his philosophical contributions—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz remains best known for his rather unique version of “theodicy.”
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Media theory: beyond the dualities of form and content, critical and enthusiastic, real and fake, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 4th, 2012 in the categories: Media Studies

On January 26, 2012, I gave a lecture in the Speakers' Series of the Centre for the Study of Theory, Culture and Politics at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.