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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From the Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Giardino Cablato (Cabled Garden) by Pietro Mussini

June 18th, 2011 in Category: The Technological Herbarium

The digital images of flowers, fields, and gardens created by Pietro Mussini do not constitute the work in itself, but rather a moment of passage, useful for re-elaborating nature, studying forms and expressive combinations of nature's sounds and colors, constructing graphically what will be concretized in sculpture.
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Eduardo Kac: Living Works, by Claudio Cravero

June 3rd, 2011 in Category: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art

The first exhibition in Italy dedicated to the controversial figure of Eduardo Kac (Rio de Janeiro, 1962; he lives in Chicago). His research explores the frontiers between man, animal and robot, culminating in Transgenic Art, through which living beings become a single entity with the technological.
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Of Art, Biotech and the Body in the World, by Claudio Cravero

March 24th, 2011 in Category: Arts & Genomics, Rethinking Science

Research over the last fifty years, including work in biotechnologies and in genetics, now enables us to intervene in the development and growth of life forms. It is a reference point around which artists develop their research, enabling creators to make biotechnologies their artistic medium.
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A Turning Point for Technology?

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Science & Technology

In "The Technological Herbarium," I wrote of "2001: A Space Odyssey": “... a change in what technology is for humanity, shifting from being a tool for the 'domination of nature' and a weapon in the killing-madness of war to technology redefined as a ‘Friend of the Earth’ and a helper in the life-affirming organization of peace.”
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Questioning Steven Hawking’s Scientific Discourse, by Marc Silver and Simon Schaffer

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Science & Technology

This text is an interview-conversation between Professor Marc Silver of the University of Modena and Professor Simon Schaffer of Cambridge University that took place in Cambridge, UK in November 1995.
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The Car of the Future

October 10th, 2010 in Category: Car of the Future, Donna Haraway, Future Design, Gregory Bateson, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Virilio, Real/Virtual Reality

In November 2008, Alan N. Shapiro was invited by Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany to speak about his ideas about "the car of the future." He spoke in front of an audience of people from the Human-Machine Interface Dept. and and the Infotainment Dept. This text was written as accompaniment to that presentation.
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Who are the new radical thinkers in Europe?

October 4th, 2010 in Category: The Technological Herbarium

It’s more important to see that Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Lacan - and even Baudrillard, Derrida, Deleuze, and Foucault - cannot help us to move forward in the mess that we are in. A Supernova Explosion of new phenomena and new realities has taken place, and only truly new original thinking can help us.
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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Interactive Plant Growing and Trans Plant by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau

October 4th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

Botany forms the basis of Christa Sommerer's training: she dedicated herself to it after her secondary studies, at the Faculty of Biology and Botany of Vienna. Her intention was to investigate nature applying and elaborating methods suitable to the classification of plants. to achieve the formulation of systematic rules.
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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Nerve Garden by Bruce Damer

October 4th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

Nerve Garden is a three-dimensional virtual world accessible on the Internet, a "Public Terrarium in Cyberspace," according to the definition of its authors, where the users of the Net can sow and witness the growth of virtual plants.
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Interview with AVINUS Press about The Technological Herbarium

September 8th, 2010 in Category: Humanities Informatics, The Technological Herbarium

"The Technological Herbarium" is an interdisciplinary work, and it places into question in a very strong way the existing division of knowledge into separate spheres like art, technology, natural science, and computer science. I don’t think that these separate categories of disciplinary knowledge are helpful at all anymore.
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“All Our Yesterdays”

August 29th, 2010 in Category: Library of the Future, Time Travel

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy beam down to the planet Sarpeidon, the only natural satellite of a star, Beta Niobe, which is going to explode as a supernova in three-and-a-half hours. Enterprise sensor scans indicate that there is no intelligent life remaining anywhere on that world.
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“Shore Leave”

August 9th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, Theme Park of the Future

With the exhausted crew of more than four hundred and thirty people in dire need of quality leisure time following months of especially strenuous missions, advance landing parties scout an uncharted Earth-like world in the Omicron Delta region of space to ascertain its degree of holiday suitability.
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Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance, by Alan N. Shapiro

July 29th, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Media Studies, Science & Technology, Science Fiction Studies, Star Trek

In his lengthy review-essay of "Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance" in "Science Fiction Studies", coeditor Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr. remarks: "Shapiro’s study of Star Trek is one of the most original works of sf-theory since Scott Bukatman’s 'Terminal Identity' (1993)."
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The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti

July 29th, 2010 in Category: Androids & Artificial Life, Arts & Genomics, Book Descriptions, Rethinking Science, Science & Technology, The Technological Herbarium

"The Technological Herbarium" is a study of works of art that exemplify the importance of science and technology in artistic creation. It embodies the invention of a strong philosophical concept that enables the glimpsing – in the coming together of nature and new technologies in the domain of art – of a new real.
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Alan N. Shapiro interviewed by Gerry Ryan

July 23rd, 2010 in Category: Star Trek, Teleportation

I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Gerry Ryan on April 30, 2010, Ireland's premier radio and television broadcaster. On June 1, 2005, I was interviewed for 45 minutes by Gerry on the Gerry Ryan Show - Ireland's most popular FM radio programme - about my book "Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance."
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