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 Consumer Objects, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 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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Cultural Citizenship in Contemporary America, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 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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Reality and Simulation in “The Prisoner,” by Caroline Fuchs

January 25th, 2013 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Media Studies

For most of the Villagers it is not possible to separate between what is real and what is simulated. A simulation is created in The Village through the use of media. But what if most of what the Villagers do, see and live is a simulation? Can there even be a reality behind that façade?
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A German Sociology Book on Baudrillard – Samuel Strehle, “Zur Aktualität von Jean Baudrillard”, by Alan N. Shapiro

August 20th, 2012 in Category: Jean Baudrillard

I have had in-depth discussions with Samuel Strehle about his book and about Baudrillard. I have changed my mind and have revised my estimation of his book. I feel now that my first review was a "misrepresentation" of Strehle's work. Perhaps this is a practice of Baudrillard-inspired "reversibility."
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Lecture-Performance in Amsterdam (Alan N. Shapiro and Anja Wiesinger)

April 21st, 2012 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Performance Studies

On March 28, 2012, I did a lecture-performance in Amsterdam, together with the art historian and media theorist Anja Wiesinger.
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Jean Baudrillard and America, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2012 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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Jean Baudrillard and Doomsday: On Louis Arnoux’s “Catastrophe Warning” Discourse, by Alan N. Shapiro

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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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, von Alan N. Shapiro

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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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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