Month: February 2012
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The Car of the Future, by Alan N. Shapiro and Alan Cholodenko
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.
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A New Computer Science is Underway: Alan N. Shapiro interviewed by Anja Wiesinger
Published in the Berlin fashion print magazine, Fall 2010 (in German and English). 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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On the Sociology of Music, by Alan N. Shapiro and Chris Williams
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
Robert Schneider is the author of a book-length reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice called Shylock, The Roman. This book is important as a basis for investigating the relationship between Shakespeare and Star Trek as twin canonical texts of what universities call “Western Civ.”
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The Best of All Possible Worlds: Modal Metaphysics and Possibilia, by James Shapiro
A brilliant intellectual whose work spanned 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.” This term refers to an argument defending the benevolence of God and His methods, despite the worldly suffering and injustice that has and always will occur.
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Media theory: beyond the dualities of form and content, critical and enthusiastic, real and fake, by Alan N. Shapiro
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. My topic was: “Media theory: beyond the dualities of form and content, critical and enthusiastic, real and fake.”