Alan N. Shapiro, Visiting Professor in Transdisciplinary Design, Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen, Germany

Blog and project archive about transdisciplinary design, media theory and creative coding

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Donald Trump Casino Owner: seduced to losing by the lure of winning, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 17th, 2016 in the categories: Consumer Culture, Presidential Politics

The gamblers are seduced into the casino by the promise and lure of winning easy money. They are told that they have a good chance to become winners. In reality, the casino only cares about itself. Nearly 100% of the players end up as losers. They get fleeced and come away with less than nothing.
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Jean Baudrillard and Albert Camus on the Simulacrum of Taking a Stance on War, by Alan N. Shapiro

July 3rd, 2015 in the categories: War & Peace

Unlike some other thinkers, Jean Baudrillard is not ‘against war’. Baudrillard’s position is rather that of being ‘neither for nor against’ contemporary hyper-real mediatized wars, and seeing the imperative of choosing whether one is ‘for’ or ‘against’ war as being something of a forced and imposed simulacrum.
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How can we redefine information in the age of social media?, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 in the categories: Information Society, Social Media

On January 24, 2012, I was a keynote speaker at the BOBCATSSS conference on Information Management in Amsterdam. The conference was organised by students from 3 universities of applied sciences, namely Hogeschool van Amsterdam (NL), Hanze Hogeschool Groningen (NL), and Stuttgart Media University (GER).
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Improving the Information Society Through Awareness of Languages, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 in the categories: Information Society, Language

This is the text of a paper that I presented at the ISEA2011 festival of new media, electronic and digital arts in Istanbul, Turkey on September 21, 2011.
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Jean Baudrillard and Consumer Objects, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 in the categories: Consumer Culture, Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard sets out to "classify a world of objects." He wants to go beyond a strictly "technological" analysis of how ordinary objects are intended - by the companies that manufacture them - to operate and to be used. He will instead study the "directly experienced psychological and sociological reality of objects."
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Cultural Citizenship in Contemporary America, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 in the categories: Consumer Culture, Jean Baudrillard

The damaged life of the fragmented individual, performing his duties in the system of production, is circumscribed by a universe of self-referential images and solipsistic spaces which sustain his socialization in that system.
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Diary of a Young Wikipedian, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 11th, 2013 in the categories: Wikipedia

The great 19th century French writer Gustave Flaubert made fun of 18th and 19th century attempts to catalogue, classify, list, and record all of scientific and historical knowledge. To what extent is Wikipedia an unaware continuation of the “Enlightenment” projects that Flaubert so brilliantly mocked?
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Political Philosophy of the Information Society, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 10th, 2013 in the categories: Information Society

So far in our history there is no Political Philosophy of the Information Society. We have had a Political Philosophy of liberal democracy, a Political Philosophy of capitalism, a Political Philosophy of the various historical forms of totalitarianism: Nazism, Stalinism, fascism.
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General Patton Memorial Museum

June 30th, 2011 in the categories: Museum of the Future, War & Peace

I felt that the General Patton Memorial Museum, and especially the "Ed Hastey Military Vehicle Park" next to it, has some elements embodying the basic principle of the "Museum of the Future" as I conceive it.
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West Coast Vietnam Wall

June 30th, 2011 in the categories: War & Peace

West Coast Vietnam Wall, Chiriaco Summit, California
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New Book Published by Geert Lovink’s Institute of Network Cultures

April 30th, 2011 in the categories: Wikipedia

The essays, interviews and artworks brought together in this reader form part of the overarching Critical Point of View research initiative, which began with a conference in Bangalore (January 2010), followed by events in Amsterdam (March 2010) and Leipzig (September 2010).
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Multimedia Real-Time Live In-Play Sports Gambling

April 21st, 2011 in the categories: Information Society, Sports Gambling

Sports gambling at the MGM Grand Casino-Hotel, Las Vegas
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Learning to Love Androids: The Wondrous World of the Universal Scholar Alan Shapiro, by Florian Fricke

December 14th, 2010 in the categories: Quantum Physics Sociology

The journalist Florian Fricke is the winner of the 2010 German Environmental Media Prize.
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A Critique of the Idea of Neutral Language, by Marc Silver

May 26th, 2010 in the categories: Chaim Perelman, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud, Wikipedia

There has been intense scrutiny brought to bear upon the ways in which various disciplines deploy rhetorical devices to “argue their case,” as well as to consolidate their identities and maintain them intact. Marc Silver builds his argument upon such topical foundations, but also shifts the ground in new and original ways.
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Interview about Wikipedia

April 15th, 2010 in the categories: Wikipedia

I studied European Intellectual History with Dominick LaCapra at Cornell University, and I am interested in ambitious systems of knowledge classification in the West starting from the French Encyclopédistes in the 18th century and scientific positivism in the 19th century.
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