Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

Blog and project archive about media theory, science fiction theory, and creative coding

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The Car of the Future, by Alan N. Shapiro and Alan Cholodenko

February 15th, 2012 in the categories: Car of the Future, Donna Haraway, Future Design, Gregory Bateson, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Virilio, Real/Virtual Reality

In November 2008, Alan N. Shapiro was invited by Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany to speak about his ideas about "the car of the future." He spoke in front of an audience of people from the Human-Machine Interface Dept. and and the Infotainment Dept. This text was written as accompaniment to that presentation.
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The Best of All Possible Worlds: Modal Metaphysics and Possibilia, by James Shapiro

February 11th, 2012 in the categories: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

A brilliant and highly productive intellectual whose work spanned over many fields—mathematics, geometry, physics, etc., in addition to his philosophical contributions—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz remains best known for his rather unique version of “theodicy.”
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On the trail of Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek in the American Desert

June 30th, 2011 in the categories: 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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Authentic Existence in Heidegger’s “Being and Time”

June 23rd, 2011 in the categories: Martin Heidegger

In his essay on "Being and Time", my nephew James Shapiro argues (among other things) that Heidegger gives little content to or explanation of what he means by authentic being. My own reading of "Being and Time" is that Heidegger does indeed explain a lot what he means by authentic being or existence.
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On Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, by James Shapiro

June 23rd, 2011 in the categories: Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger’s "Being and Time" is a work primarily concerned with the explication and understanding of the specific brand of existence and consciousness that is unique to man—or perhaps stated more succinctly, what it means to be a human being. This unique human existence Heidegger calls Dasein.
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Sartre and Derrida: The Promises of the Subject, by Christina Howells

May 25th, 2011 in the categories: Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre

The subject of Derrida’s relations with Sartre has preoccupied me for around twenty-five years, since I first discovered Derrida’s work in fact, in 1980, the year of Sartre’s death, and felt certain he owed an enormous amount to the patterns of thinking, if not necessarily the conclusions, of his philosophical predecessor.
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Whiskey Pete’s Casino at the California/Nevada Border

March 24th, 2011 in the categories: 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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Claude Lefort, Political Philosopher, by Alan N. Shapiro

January 31st, 2011 in the categories: Claude Lefort

"Democracy" in America is obsolete. It is a simulation of democracy. How do we get back to (or move forward to) being a real democracy? By understanding the lifework of Claude Lefort, the greatest thinker of democracy of our time. By understanding Lefort’s writings.
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Baudrillard, Globalization and Terrorism, by Douglas Kellner

December 3rd, 2010 in the categories: 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 the categories: 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 the categories: 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 and Trek-nology (Or Everything I Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek and Reading Jean Baudrillard), by Alan N. Shapiro

October 10th, 2010 in the categories: 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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Journal Entry: The Void, by Mary Fox

July 28th, 2010 in the categories: Creative Writing, Fiction, Martin Heidegger, P.D. Ouspensky

What follows is neither philosophical, nor academic. It is both self-indulgent and self-referential, as a journal can only be. It presents no “truths” and it is peppered with inconsistencies and flaws, because I am. I began my journal in May of this year in an attempt to retrieve myself from a guilt-ridden existential “tailspin.”
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Baudrillard’s Second Life, by René Capovin

July 22nd, 2010 in the categories: 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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Georges Bataille and Epistemology

July 22nd, 2010 in the categories: Georges Bataille

Bataille’s "Theory of Religion" and "The Accursed Share" have been read by a couple of generations of (hippie) Marxists, deconstructionists, and Baudrillard the man himself in economic terms. But, from the current situation of virtuality, it is most interesting to read these texts from an epistemological point of view.
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