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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Cyborg Spock

April 4th, 2011 in Category: Donna Haraway, Star Trek, The Original Series

Spock of "Star Trek: The Original Series" is the most perfect example of a cyborg in the sense described by Donna Haraway in her seminal essay. But for more than 40 years, no scholar has ever mentioned this. Why?
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“Amok Time”

October 22nd, 2010 in Category: Cyborg Spock, The Original Series

"T'Pring, parted from me and never parted, never and always, touching and touched, we meet at the appointed place." "Spock, parted from me and never parted, never and always, touching and touched, I await you." "What thee are about to see comes down from the Time of the Beginning, without change." says T'Pau.
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“Spock’s Brain” (Star Trek: The Original Series) and “Forbidden Planet” (film)

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Cyborg Spock, The Original Series

The seminal Original Series episodes about Mr. Spock deal subtly with the tension between Spock as an emblem of first-wave cybernetics (Norbert Wiener's command and control in objects of bio-power-knowledge, treated as information systems by the logos) and Spock as potentially subversive male cyborg.
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“The Devil in the Dark”

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Cyborg Spock, The Original Series

Spock begins to demonstrate his unusual capabilities of empathy towards alien others in his mind meld encounter with the silicon-based Horta life-form on the mining planet Janus VI.
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“This Side of Paradise”

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Cyborg Spock, The Original Series

What the resourceful plant biologist has perceived is that Spock may not wish to conclusively reject his human side. So far in his personal development, he is lacking a language to express himself and his unnamed cyborg existence.
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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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“Metamorphosis”

April 14th, 2010 in Category: Feminist Theory, The Original Series

An alternative feminist reading is that it is a story of sacrifice and Metamorphosis as positive principles. The alien entity, the Companion, sacrifices herself. A Metamorphosis of becoming-other (Deleuze and Guattari), becoming-woman, and crossing the line of demarcation between species, takes place.
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“Arena”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Captain Kirk, The Original Series

In the pre-Klingon and pre-Borg Original Series episode "Arena", Captain Kirk is involved in a one-on-one duel against an antagonistic and radical alien Other, the Gorn commander. The episode is entitled "Kaijû Gôn tono Taiketus", or "Duel With the Monster Gorn", in Japanese dubbing.
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“The Enemy Within”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Captain Kirk, Teleportation, The Original Series

Captain Kirk, Lt. Sulu, Geological Technician Fisher, and three other Enterprise crew members are approaching the end of a routine, one-day geological survey and specimen gathering mission on the planet Alpha 177.
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“The Ultimate Computer”

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Humanities Informatics, The Original Series

Dr. Richard Daystrom is the information scientist who designed the comptronic and duotronic computer systems of Constitution-class starships like the Enterprise. Daystrom is a Nobel and Zee-Magnees Prize winner. His next generation automation invention, the M-5 multitronic unit, is a breakthrough technology.
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“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.
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“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.