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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Consumer Culture and Naming the Animals, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Consumer Culture, New American Studies, Roland Barthes

In his famous essay "Myth Today," published in 1957, Roland Barthes added a second dimension to the semiotic analysis of Ferdinand de Saussure, to the insight of the Swiss linguist that language is a social institution. Barthes added a social theory of culture to the social theory of language.
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Wikipedia and Libraries

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Library of the Future, Wikipedia

Alan N. Shapiro (together with Patrick Lichty and Father Roderick) interviewed by Erik Boekesteijn on Wikipedia and libraries, on vimeo show "This Week in Libraries."
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Gustave Flaubert Laughs at Wikipedia, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in Category: French Literature, Wikipedia

In novels like "Sentimental Education" and "Bouvard and Pécuchet", and in his comic inventory of clichés and repeated ideas, Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues, Gustave Flaubert made fun of 18th and 19th century attempts to catalogue, classify, list, and record all of scientific and historical knowledge.
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Baseball in the Information Age

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Baseball, Information Society

I am sitting in the loge reserved section at a baseball stadium which has not yet been renamed to BankOne Ballpark, UMAX Coliseum, Qualcomm Stadium, 3Com Park, or Citi Field.
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“A Taste of Armageddon”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: The Original Series, War & Peace

The Enterprise is en route to the NGC 321 star cluster to try to establish diplomatic relations with Eminiar VII, the most technologically advanced planet in the area. More than fifty years earlier, the Federation starship U.S.S. Valiant was listed as missing in space after it transmitted a report from Eminiar and then vanished.
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