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

Read Article

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.
Read Article

West Coast Vietnam Wall

June 30th, 2011 in Category: War & Peace

West Coast Vietnam Wall, Chiriaco Summit, California
Read Article

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.
Read Article

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.
Read Article

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.
Read Article

“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.