Author: Alan N. Shapiro

  • From Sociology to Media Studies to Software Studies, part two

    Kittler opposes the so-called discourse analysis of the study of media practiced in much of the humanities, which he sees as deriving its methods from hermeneutics and literary criticism. He instead advocates a technical materialism of data storage devices, data transmission, processors, automatic writing systems, and so forth.

  • The Simulacra of Public Space: the work of Christos Voutichtis, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Der Wohnraum und das Handy selbst werden heute als Kommandozentralen begriffen, als Terminals, ausgestattet mit telematischer Macht, das heißt mit der Möglichkeit, alles über Entfernungen hinweg zu erledigen. Der ordinäre Mensch hat jetzt die Macht, die militärische Generäle früher hatten. Gleiches gilt für den öffentlichen Raum.

  • Technological Anarchism, by Alan N. Shapiro

    My intention is to write a book developing the transdisciplinary concept of Technological Anarchism as an optimistic, normative, heterotopian (a term of Michel Foucault) idea of a near-future and open-ended social, logistical, and economic system of Post-Scarcity and Post-Capitalism.

  • Science-Fiction-Replikatoren: Additive Fertigung und die Ökonomie der Zukunft, von Alan N. Shapiro

    This was the text of my keynote speech at the conference of the Swiss Manufacturing Association in October 2018. Sozialismus ist schiefgegangen. Kapitalismus muss sich verändern. Der europäische Kapitalismus hat Angst davor, von Asien überholt zu werden. Wie also sieht die Vision für den europäischen Kapitalismus aus, um sich erfolgreich weiter zu entwickeln?

  • Baudrillard and the Situationists, by Alan N. Shapiro

    What are the similarities and differences between the Situationist theory of hyper-capitalism and consumerist media culture – the theory of “the society of the spectacle” – and Jean Baudrillard’s theory of image, media and consumer culture – the theory of simulation, simulacra, virtuality, hyper-reality, Integral Reality, and “the models and codes precede the real”?

  • Mobility and Science Fiction, by Alan N. Shapiro

    The term “digitalization” accurately describes the technologies of the past several decades which we already have, like the automation of the office and other work processes, and Personal Computers and the Internet. The next wave of “futurist” technologies is better described with a term like the Fourth Industrial Revolution or self-aware technologies.