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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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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Data and Baudrillard, by Franco La Polla

June 25th, 2010 in Category: Android Data, Androids & Artificial Life, Jean Baudrillard, Star Trek, The Next Generation

This is a translation of one chapter of Franco La Polla’s book "Star Trek: Foto di Gruppo con Astronave." Almost all of the books on Star Trek were written in a relatively thoughtless manner, put together in haste to make money. In contrast to them, La Polla’s books on Star Trek are rare precious gems of high intelligence.
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Dance and Digital/Virtual Technologies, by Jaana Parviainen

June 22nd, 2010 in Category: Dance Theory, Real/Virtual Reality, The Body

Dwelling in the virtual sonic environment: phenomenological analysis of dancers’ learning processes in working with the EGM (Embodied Generative Music) interface.
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Bayerischer Rundfunk programme on Alan N. Shapiro

June 20th, 2010 in Category: Android Data, Androids & Artificial Life, Baseball, Car of the Future, Casino Gambling, Dance Theory, Hans-Peter Dürr, Humanities Informatics, Rethinking Science, Star Trek

On June 13, 2010, Bayerischer Rundfunk broadcast a 38-minute programme (mostly in German) about the ideas and projects of Alan N. Shapiro. The show was produced by Florian Fricke. It includes a segment on the social choreography ideas and practice of Alan's close friend Steve Valk.
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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Teleporting an Unknown State, by Eduardo Kac (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

June 6th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, Rethinking Science, The Technological Herbarium

"Teleporting an Unknown State" is defined by Eduardo Kac as a biotelematic interactive installation in which the natural biological process at the basis of the artwork is activated by a telecommunications system managed by the computer.
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Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in Java Code

May 26th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Georg Cantor, Humanities Informatics, Kurt Gödel, Mathematics, Time Travel

An important coding project of the New Computer Science is to program a Universal Incompleteness Generator in Java. The program will generate undecidable arithmetical statements from axioms. A major first step towards achieving this has been taken by Stephen Lee of Tachyos.org.
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The Answer to the Question of Artificial Life

April 18th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Androids & Artificial Life, Humanities Informatics

Artificial Life has the goal of making make software that is more “alive.” However, ALife has overlooked that “vitality” already exists in the creative arts. Life means art, music, painting, dance, poetry, literature, languages, sexuality, society, spirituality. Life means emotions, feelings, sensations, intuitions, colors.
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Alan Sokal on French theory and Science

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Rethinking Science

Sokal’s hoax was very funny. Its strength was that it was a literary strategy (taking a page from the playbook of that very same interdisciplinarity and “literary turn” – science and literature – that he was ostensibly attacking); the strength did not come from his hardcore physics.
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The Star Trekking of Physics, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Star Trek, Teleportation

In spite of the proliferation of exhilarated technoculture and its multidisciplinary, wired self-image, there remain some straightlaced, uncool tendencies within the techno-elite which boil over at the thought of all this openness to the humanities and the soft.
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Captain Kirk Was Never the Original, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Captain Kirk, Captain Pike, Real/Virtual Reality, Star Trek

In its prevalent forms, the cottage consumer industry of Star Trek is a classic virtuality of identification where the viewers' senses of self, otherness, and reality are blurred by the contemplation of iconic spectacles.
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Re-Thinking Science: The Interview

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Rethinking Science

Alan N. Shapiro interviewed by Ulrike Reinhard and Joy Tang.
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Considerations on Transgenic and Biotech Art, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

At the Experimental Art Foundation of Adelaide, Australia, there took place in 2004 the exhibition "Art of the Biotech Era" organized by Melentie Pandilovski. It involved the principal exponents of the artistic sphere connected to biology, genetics and bio-technologies, showing their projects and realizations.
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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Osmose by Char Davies (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

To enter inside a tree and exit it through the leaves after having participated in its process of chlorophyllous photosynthesis: this is one of the many journeys that Char Davies makes the user of "Osmose" experience in an immersive, interactive, and multisensorial VR environment that was developed and produced in 1995.
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