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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I am physically in Las Vegas, Nevada, but I am really in Venice, Italy

March 31st, 2011 in Category: Architecture, Quantum Culture

The reality of what Las Vegas architecture has achieved exceeds the intentions of the casino hotel owners. Venice is no longer restricted to its physical location in the region of Veneto in northern Italy.
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Beaubourg, Quai Branly, and the Simulacrum of Jean Baudrillard, by René Capovin

October 23rd, 2010 in Category: Architecture, Jean Baudrillard

"Quai Branly is a remake of Beaubourg, in a different field of art. Whereas Beaubourg is a perfect institution in the field of modern art (as Baudrillard himself explicitly says – the first part of my essay is dedicated to his famous 1977 article on Beaubourg), Quai Branly is a perfect institution in the field of 'primitive art'."
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Garry Winogrand’s “Park Avenue, New York”

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Architecture

In a 1959 photograph by Garry Winogrand entitled "Park Avenue, New York", our camera line of vision starts from an image-producing apparatus in the car behind or mounted on the back of a Chevy convertible with folding top down in the muggy summer, traveling on this most prestigious of Manhattan thoroughfares.