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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Theses on Polysexuality

July 20th, 2010 in Category: Donna Haraway, Felix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze, Judith Butler, Polysexuality, Simone de Beauvoir

Polysexuality wants to build a bridge between the heterosexual majority and homosexual minorities. Polysexuality is about the sexual liberation of the majority, learning from practices and subcultural styles of queer minorities. The theory and practice of queer is very interesting, but it is not restricted to homosexuals.
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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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Framemakers: Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change, edited by Jeffrey Gormly

May 25th, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Dance Theory, Social Choreography, The Illusion Beyond Art

A collection of essays from a diverse group of thinkers - leaders in their fields - exploring the notion of choreography as the aesthetics of change. Established practitioners re-imagine their own fields (theology, social dreaming and organizational change, ethics, community building) as choreographic endeavours.
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Richard Rorty on Radicalism, Liberalism, and Poetic Language

April 13th, 2010 in Category: Jacques Derrida, Language, Polysexuality, Richard Rorty

I was very impressed reading something that Richard Rorty wrote about revolutionaries in his essay "The Contingency of Community" ( in the book "Contingency, irony, and solidarity"). Rorty argues very cogently for a kind of “impossible” deconstructive synthesis of radicalism and liberalism.
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“Desperate Living” (film): John Waters’ Science Fiction Dystopia, by Alan N. Shapiro

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

Maybe it was the mono sound of my budget-priced video recorder, which the salesperson at Saturn Hansa had dubbed the 'Trabant' (der Trabi, das Symbol eines verschwundenen Landes, the symbol of a disappeared country, hat heute längst Kultstatus erreicht, has long since attained cult status) of VCRs.