Alan N. Shapiro
“I am very excited and humbled by the depth of your work.”
– Joy Tang, founder of oneVillage Foundation
Alan N. Shapiro is an interdisciplinary thinker who studied science-technology at MIT and philosophy-history-literature at Cornell University. He is the author of Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance (Berlin: AVINUS Verlag, 2004), a leading work in science fiction studies and on the conception of futuristic technoscience. He is the editor and translator of The Technological Herbarium by Gianna Maria Gatti (Berlin: AVINUS Verlag, 2010), a major study of art and technology. He is a practicing software developer. Alan has worked as a consultant to many large companies in several European countries. He is working on projects like “Computer Science 2.0,” “The Car of the Future,” “The Library and Museum of the Future,” and robotics. At his website “Alan N. Shapiro, Technologist and Futurist” (www.alan-shapiro.com), he has already published more than 200 articles (by himself and others). He is recognised as one of the leading experts on the philosophy and cultural theory of Jean Baudrillard. He is currently starting a book project called “The Prisoner: Confinement and Freedom in the Global Village.”
Alan Neil Shapiro (born April 23, 1956 in Brooklyn, New York) is a software developer, computer scientist, and author and translator in the field of contemporary cultural phenomena.
Alan’s most important early experience was the 4 years that he spent as a pupil at the Sands Point Academy on the North Shore of Nassau County, near the cliffs and beaches of Long Island Sound. The Sands Point school for gifted children, founded by Marie L. Fetsch with Benjamin Fine as headmaster, was a first taste of utopia and harmony.
As an undergraduate, he studied mathematics/science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and government, history, literature at Cornell University. He also has an M.A./A.B.D. in sociology from New York University.
Originally from New York City, Shapiro has worked in several European countries. Since 1991 he has been living in Germany. His academic career includes work as a lecturer at New York University, and lectures at the University of Erlangen, the University of Limerick, Ireland, the University of Porto, Portugal, the Humboldt University of Berlin (Institute for Media Studies), the University of Oldenburg (American Studies Dept.), the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karslruhe, the Arts & Genomics Centre of the University of Leiden, Holland, the Interface Culture Lab at the Art University in Linz, Austria, and NABA Design University in Milan, Italy.
In 2010-2011, he lectured at the Transmediale Festival for Art and Digital Culture, Berlin; Kunst im Tunnel Art Museum, Düsseldorf; Ars Electronica, Linz; Plektrum Festival, Tallinn; and ISEA2011, Istanbul. He spoke at the Critical Point of View Wikipedia conferences in Amsterdam and Leipzig. He was the keynote speaker at the conference on “Knowledge of the Future” at the University of Vienna.
In January 2012, he will be a keynote speaker at BOBCATSSS in Amsterdam, and will lecture at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
More on Alan N. Shapiro at Wikipedia…
