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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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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Jean Baudrillard, Le Ludique et le policier

May 24th, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Jean Baudrillard

This collection of 23 essays by Jean Baudrillard in French from the years 1967-1978 is not available at any amazon website. It was published by Sens & Tonka, editeurs in 2001.
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The Instance and the Shadow

April 24th, 2010 in Category: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Jean Baudrillard

At the end of his book “The Consumer Society: myths and structures,” Jean Baudrillard tells the story of the 1930s German expressionist film “The Student of Prague.” A poor but ambitious student is impatient for a more prosperous life. The student sells his mirror-image to the Devil in exchange for worldly success.
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Only Impossible Exchange Is Possible, by Aurel Schmidt (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Jean Baudrillard, Zen Buddhism

Impossible exchange is an impossible subject. In Jean Baudrillard's book "Impossible Exchange", the matter is treated in such a way that one is better off with an associative and meditative interpretive approach than with a discursive reading.
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In Search of the Child’s Innocence, by Caroline Heinrich (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in Category: Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Baudrillard

I begin with a quotation. "The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes", writes Nietzsche in Zarathustra. The child is innocent because s/he starts all over again from scratch. S/he starts from the space of emptiness that the lion has carved out.
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