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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A Proposal for Developing Quantum Computing in Software, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Mathematics

The goal of quantum computing has been clearly and explicitly defined by computer scientists, but the mathematics of how to implement qubits and superposition states does not yet exist. It should be noted right away that most efforts to realize quantum computing are, in my view, too one-sidedly hardware-centric.
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Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in Java Code

May 26th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Georg Cantor, Humanities Informatics, Kurt Gödel, Mathematics, Time Travel

An important coding project of the New Computer Science is to program a Universal Incompleteness Generator in Java. The program will generate undecidable arithmetical statements from axioms. A major first step towards achieving this has been taken by Stephen Lee of Tachyos.org.
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Computer Games and New Mathematics

May 11th, 2010 in Category: Abraham Maslow, Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Mathematics

The advanced software of the New Computer Science will have noteworthy game-like qualities, and one of the first areas of business where Shapiro Technologies (a science fictional company which may or may not ever come into existence) will participate will be computer games.
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Deconstruction and the Q-Bit

May 8th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, David Bohm, Humanities Informatics, Jacques Derrida, Mathematics, Roland Barthes

The Q-Bit of quantum computing can acquire the value of 0 or 1 by autonomously perceiving what is going on in a system in real-time, in a “receiving” way, going beyond the explicit setting of the value of a bit as 0 or 1, and bit-based data structures, by the subject-centered programmer.
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Towards a New Computer Science: Augment the Inheritance Mechanism of Object-Orientation with Resemblance

May 4th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Mathematics

Choice is inaugurated by Incompleteness. Incompleteness is inaugurated by Choice. Choice is inaugurated by the Möbius Twist and the Aleph Operator. Incompleteness is at the foundation of the architecture of a radicalized Object-Oriented class inheritance hierarchy.
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The Superfast Clock

May 1st, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Georg Cantor, Humanities Informatics, Mathematics, Pierre Curie

The Superfast Clock - together with the Metronome Clock, the Elastic Clock, and the Role of the User - opens up what we call the Seven Space or the Gödel Incompleteness Space. We need a coded class for an Incompleteness Channel. It carries the information regarding dimension-hopping and symmetry breaking.
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The Elastic Clock

April 28th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics

We will create a time in software that is electively elastic. The Elastic Clock will mimic a Gaussian distribution. The electivity of time intervals is determined solely by the coder. The Elastic Clock will instantiate an instance that is capable of positive mutation.
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The Metronome Clock

April 28th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics

The Object-Oriented instance is instantiated from micro-measurable tick-tock time. This is the time that is implemented in the time/math libraries of existing OO programming languages like C++ and Java. The quantum computer will come into existence after an expansion in consciousness of our perception of time.
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The Instance and the Shadow

April 24th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Jean Baudrillard

At the end of his book “The Consumer Society: myths and structures,” Jean Baudrillard tells the story of the 1930s German expressionist film “The Student of Prague.” A poor but ambitious student is impatient for a more prosperous life. The student sells his mirror-image to the Devil in exchange for worldly success.
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Towards a New Computer Science: Instantiate a Much Richer Software Instance

April 21st, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics

Object-Orientation is an essential prerequisite to the New Computer Science. Yet Object-Orientation has the limitation that it has continued mainly to be a technical practice, stuck in the binary opposition between technique and culture.
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The Answer to the Question of Artificial Life

April 18th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Androids & Artificial Life, Humanities Informatics

Artificial Life has the goal of making make software that is more “alive.” However, ALife has overlooked that “vitality” already exists in the creative arts. Life means art, music, painting, dance, poetry, literature, languages, sexuality, society, spirituality. Life means emotions, feelings, sensations, intuitions, colors.
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Inscribe Philosophy into the Heart of Computer Science

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Jacques Derrida, P.D. Ouspensky

There are many individuals in the technology and cyberculture communities who are not just “engineers” or techie programmers. They are already working to bring software together with art and sociology. However, in their projects, they are working two or three levels removed from the core of computer science.
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What is the New Computer Science?

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics

It is essential to engage in a reflection on the relationship between computer science and the history of ideas. Existing computer science is based on 17th century ideas. The entire history of ideas of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries has been excluded from computer science.
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The New Computer Science

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics

Computing analyzed from a philosophical viewpoint is still at the level of Descartes, Bacon and Babbage: Mechanical automation. Shapiro wants to include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard and many others into the science of computing.