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

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.
Read Article

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.
Read Article

“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.
Read Article

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.
Read Article

Captain Kirk Was Never the Original

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.
Read Article

From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Osmose by Char Davies

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.
Read Article

“Ship in a Bottle”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, The Next Generation

Diagnostics engineer Lt. Reginald Barclay is investigating a matrix diode spatial orientation systems bug in Sherlock Holmes Holo-program 3A when he accidentally initializes the executable data file object where Professor James Moriarty, Detective Holmes' archenemy and a self-aware piece of software code, is saved.
Read Article

Enter the Holodeck

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, The Next Generation

Holodeck virtual reality has become an ultimate projective target for digital technology startup companies which are developing virtual reality systems for applications in the "real world." The Holodeck has become a hyperbolic industrial standard of perfection, as well as a forceful cultural symbol.
Read Article

“The Cage” / “The Menagerie”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, The Original Series

The Cage was the first of two pilot episodes produced for The Original Series. It was filmed at MGM Studios in December 1964 and delivered to NBC's executive offices in New York in February 1965. It was first shown to the public at the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention in Cleveland. For decades it was never aired.