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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“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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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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“Past Tense”

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Deep Space Nine, Time Travel

In the Deep Space Nine episode "Past Tense", economic crisis, urban decay, widening gap between rich and poor, mass unemployment, and homelessness - twenty years into the new Millennium - send Earth society plummeting into a dangerous period of social tension and upheaval.
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The Physics of Wormholes

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Science & Technology, Time Travel

According to Lawrence M. Krauss in The Physics of Star Trek, "a surprising amount of modern theo retical physics research," clustered in the area of astrophysical wormhole studies, is directed towards establishing the scientific and mathematical prerequisites for time travel.
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“Year of Hell”

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Time Travel, Voyager

According to the many-worlds or Many Universes interpretation of quantum physics, the "fabric of reality" (to use David Deutsch's phrase) consists of a multiplicity of tightly interwoven parallel universes existing in utmost proximity to each other as sets of statistically probabilistic spacetimes.
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“The City on the Edge of Forever”

April 14th, 2010 in Category: The Original Series, Time Travel

"The City on the Edge of Forever" is a story of great imagination and literary qualities. It is Star Trek's most artistically sublime episode. It demonstrates the reality of existential freedom precisely in a circumstance of utmost historical importance and necessity.
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“Twelve Monkeys” (film)

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Media Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Time Travel

Terry Gilliam’s brilliant film "Twelve Monkeys" raises critical questions about the linear nature of time and the causality of science. Möbius time travel will provide a fruitful tool for getting out of the hyperreality and myth of the end of history which surround us in modern culture.
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“Groundhog Day” (film)

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Media Studies, Time Travel

"Groundhog Day" is fascinating because it is time travel without a single history book adventure, science fiction without a single technological device, and the triumphant reign of the computer program without a single computer.
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Star Trek, Marx and Time Travel

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Karl Marx, Star Trek, Time Travel

Alan Shapiro - Star guest of the next Transmediale - on new computers, 1968 and anarchism. Interview in the Berlin daily newspaper "Neues Deutschland," January 5, 2010