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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How can we redefine information in the age of social media?

February 4th, 2012 in Category: 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

September 29th, 2011 in Category: Information Society, Language

This is about half 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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General Patton Memorial Museum

June 30th, 2011 in Category: 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 Category: 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 Category: 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 Category: Information Society, Sports Gambling

Sports gambling at the MGM Grand Casino-Hotel, Las Vegas
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Diary of a Young Wikipedian

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Wikipedia

An excerpt from my piece entitled “Diary of a Young Wikipedian,” which will be published in its entirety in the book publication of the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam.
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Learning to Love Androids: The Wondrous World of the Universal Scholar Alan Shapiro, by Florian Fricke

December 14th, 2010 in Category: Quantum Physics Sociology

The journalist Florian Fricke is the winner of the 2010 German Environmental Media Prize.
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Cultural Citizenship in Contemporary America

December 10th, 2010 in Category: 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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Iraq vs. U.S.: Total War Meets Pure War

October 24th, 2010 in Category: War & Peace

This was one of the very first high-quality pieces of writing that I did in my life. I wrote it during the first two weeks of the Gulf War in 1991. I was living in New York City at the time. I tried to balance the perspectives of Chomsky and Baudrillard/Virilio.
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America at War in Vietnam

October 17th, 2010 in Category: War & Peace

In 1962, President Kennedy starting bombing South Vietnam. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson received authorization from Congress - via the dubious "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" - to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States" and wage Total War against North Vietnam.
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Jean Baudrillard and Consumer Objects

October 6th, 2010 in Category: 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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A Critique of the Idea of Neutral Language, by Marc Silver

May 26th, 2010 in Category: 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 Category: 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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Europe at War in Serbia and Kosovo

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Information Society, War & Peace

On March 24, 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization initiated a bombing campaign from 15,000 feet vectored towards designated targets inside the territory of Yugoslavia.
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