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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“Amok Time”

October 22nd, 2010 in Category: Cyborg Spock, The Original Series

"T'Pring, parted from me and never parted, never and always, touching and touched, we meet at the appointed place." "Spock, parted from me and never parted, never and always, touching and touched, I await you." "What thee are about to see comes down from the Time of the Beginning, without change." says T'Pau.
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America at War in Vietnam

October 17th, 2010 in Category: War & Peace

In 1962, President Kennedy starting bombing South Vietnam. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson received authorization from Congress - via the dubious "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" - to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against forces of the United States" and wage Total War against North Vietnam.
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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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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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From The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti – Nerve Garden by Bruce Damer

October 4th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

Nerve Garden is a three-dimensional virtual world accessible on the Internet, a "Public Terrarium in Cyberspace," according to the definition of its authors, where the users of the Net can sow and witness the growth of virtual plants.
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Beginner’s Luck (a Casino Gambling story)

August 31st, 2010 in Category: Casino Gambling, Creative Writing, Photography

There was a famous and elegant casino at the Venice Lido called the Casinò Municipale di Venezia. My friends knew about the casino but had never been inside. To my surprise, Tony expressed his belief that I was destined to win a lot of money at blackjack. He announced that he intended to "stake me" money to play.
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“All Our Yesterdays”

August 29th, 2010 in Category: Library of the Future, Time Travel

Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, and Dr. McCoy beam down to the planet Sarpeidon, the only natural satellite of a star, Beta Niobe, which is going to explode as a supernova in three-and-a-half hours. Enterprise sensor scans indicate that there is no intelligent life remaining anywhere on that world.
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“Shore Leave”

August 9th, 2010 in Category: Real/Virtual Reality, Theme Park of the Future

With the exhausted crew of more than four hundred and thirty people in dire need of quality leisure time following months of especially strenuous missions, advance landing parties scout an uncharted Earth-like world in the Omicron Delta region of space to ascertain its degree of holiday suitability.
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The Technological Herbarium, by Gianna Maria Gatti

July 29th, 2010 in Category: Androids & Artificial Life, Arts & Genomics, Book Descriptions, Rethinking Science, Science & Technology, The Technological Herbarium

"The Technological Herbarium" is a study of works of art that exemplify the importance of science and technology in artistic creation. It embodies the invention of a strong philosophical concept that enables the glimpsing – in the coming together of nature and new technologies in the domain of art – of a new real.
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“The Raven”

July 22nd, 2010 in Category: American Literature, Seven of Nine

Seven of Nine is an apprentice member of Voyager's crew who has "brought back" precise skills and efficiency from her long experience with the Borg. But she is a poor consumer. She does not know how to relax or enjoy, to participate in activities which are not directly productive.
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Around the Town (a Sports Gambling story), part 1 of 4

July 22nd, 2010 in Category: American Slang, Creative Writing, Sports Gambling

As they went inside Grand Central Station, Moe and Siggy saw more hurried commuters moving ahead with tunnel vision. Nobody wanted to look at the homeless. The bag ladies and street people would just put a damper on one’s day.
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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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Lost: The Crash Out of Globalization and into the World

May 24th, 2010 in Category: Lost, Martin Heidegger, Media Studies, Polysexuality

Combining elements of drama, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, adventure, thriller and Reality-TV, "Lost" is arguably the most original and influential TV program since "Star Trek" in the 1960s.
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Stefanie Schmidt, Film und Erinnerung

May 24th, 2010 in Category: Book Descriptions, Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Jacques Lacan, Media Studies, Sigmund Freud

Im Hinblick auf einen vergleichenden Bezug zu der zeitphilosophiscen Filmtheorie von Gilles Deleuze werden die bildhaften und sprachlicen Aspekte des Gedächtnisses und des Films, wie sie enmal in Anschluss an die Linie Freud/Lacan und zum anderen bei Bergson/Deleuze entwickelt werden, diskutieret.
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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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