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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Jean Baudrillard and Doomsday: On Louis Arnoux’s “Catastrophe Warning” Discourse

August 25th, 2011 in Category: Ecology, Energy, and the Environment, Jean Baudrillard

After a summer break lasting the month of August, I now start the new academic and business year with this major critique of the work of Louis Arnoux.
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On the trail of Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek in the American Desert

June 30th, 2011 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Žižek

In Baudrillard’s "America", the secret heart of reversibility is captured in the imaginary of the desert. The desert is The Other America, the quintessential strange attractor, the counterpoint to the system.
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Whiskey Pete’s Casino at the California/Nevada Border

March 24th, 2011 in Category: Casino Gambling, Jean Baudrillard

From Dublin, Ireland I traveled on to New York City, then to southern California. The Baudrillard-America trip had begun. Moments after entering Nevada by car, we encountered Whiskey Pete's casino. Here an important Baudrillard conference had taken place in 1996.
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Albert Camus’ The Rebel and Jean Baudrillard’s The Perfect Crime

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Albert Camus, Jean Baudrillard

Two great yet underrated works of 20th century political and social theory, both focusing on the question of the institutional justification of murder in modern society, are Albert Camus’ "The Rebel" and Jean Baudrillard’s "The Perfect Crime."
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McLuhan and Baudrillard: Making Science Fiction a Lot More Real

February 5th, 2011 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Marshall McLuhan

In Douglas Coupland's recent book on McLuhan, it says that Baudrillard is McLuhan's "rightful successor." I see futurism as being the grounds where this great Canadian thinker and this great European thinker meet.
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Cultural Citizenship in Contemporary America

December 10th, 2010 in Category: Consumer Culture, Jean Baudrillard

The damaged life of the fragmented individual, performing his duties in the system of production, is circumscribed by a universe of self-referential images and solipsistic spaces which sustain his socialization in that system.
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Baudrillard, Globalization and Terrorism, by Douglas Kellner

December 3rd, 2010 in Category: Jean Baudrillard

Douglas Kellner is the George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. He is a “third generation” critical theorist in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or "Frankfurt School." He is the author of about 10 books.
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Baudrillard und Trek-nologie

November 27th, 2010 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Star Trek

Beginnen wir mit dem Ende der sechziger Jahre in New York, dem Ort meiner Kindheit. Als guter Jude sollte ich eine jüdische Erziehung bekommen. Stattdessen liebte ich Star Trek. Alles, was ich weiß, habe ich von Star Trek gelernt.
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Beaubourg, Quai Branly, and the Simulacrum of Jean Baudrillard, by René Capovin

October 23rd, 2010 in Category: Architecture, Jean Baudrillard

"Quai Branly is a remake of Beaubourg, in a different field of art. Whereas Beaubourg is a perfect institution in the field of modern art (as Baudrillard himself explicitly says – the first part of my essay is dedicated to his famous 1977 article on Beaubourg), Quai Branly is a perfect institution in the field of 'primitive art'."
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Jean Baudrillard and America

October 16th, 2010 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, New American Studies

Baudrillard’s "America" is an important and misunderstood book – a milestone work of social commentary about the USA by a French author, in the same tradition as Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America." Baudrillard continues Tocqueville's inquiry, asking many of the same essential questions 150 years later.
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Baudrillard’s “Requiem for the Twin Towers”

October 16th, 2010 in Category: Jean Baudrillard

In October 2008, Caroline Heinrich single-handedly organized a conference on Baudrillard ("L'actualité de Jean Baudrillard") which took place at the Antiquariat am Ballplatz in Mainz, Germany. The speakers were Caroline, myself, René Capovin, Thomas Weber, Michael Teichert, Robin Parmar, and Marine Baudrillard.
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Baudrillard and Trek-nology (Or Everything I Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek and Reading Jean Baudrillard)

October 10th, 2010 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Star Trek

It was my childhood in New York in the late 1960s. As a good Jew, I was supposed to acquire a Jewish education. But instead I loved Star Trek. Everything I know I learned from watching Star Trek.
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Jean Baudrillard and Consumer Objects

October 6th, 2010 in Category: Consumer Culture, Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard sets out to "classify a world of objects." He wants to go beyond a strictly "technological" analysis of how ordinary objects are intended - by the companies that manufacture them - to operate and to be used. He will instead study the "directly experienced psychological and sociological reality of objects."
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Baudrillard’s Second Life, by René Capovin

July 22nd, 2010 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Media Studies

Baudrillard's appropriation of McLuhan's formula "the medium is the message" comes to be understood in the light of this radical critique of the media, recognized as an instance of making people passive. The Canadian scholar saw here liberatory possibilities, summed up in the noted image of the "global village."
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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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