Category: Thinkers

  • The Third Order of Simulacra: Simulation and Hyperreality

    The third order of simulacra in Baudrillard’s genealogy is also known as simulation: the system of objects, the consumer society, the system of models and series, simulated differences generated by “the code,” the post-World War II era of media, shopping mall architectures, and the American way of life.

  • The Controversy Around Baudrillard

    Baudrillard is highly controversial as a thinker. Over the course of time, his work has had as many detractors as it has had defenders and enthusiasts. Some of Baudrillard’s critics absurdly even accused him of celebrating the postmodern media-cultural condition of simulacra and semiotic signs becoming increasingly autonomous and detached from the “referents” of which…

  • Early Baudrillard

    The postmodern recombinant culture of cyber-commodities is a system of simulated differences or differences-in-sameness. The sign-object takes on its meaning in a system of marginal or minimal differences from other sign-objects, according to a code of hierarchical significations (Coke and Pepsi, McDonalds and Burger King, the subset of formula-generated episodes of a TV series or…

  • Fiction, Power, and Codes in Hyper-Modernism

    The most significant facet for my perspective is that, in hyper-modernism, the power and control exercised via narratives and fictions in the media-technological society now get implemented on much more detailed micro-levels via algorithmic-informatic codes and digital, virtual, and cybernetic technologies. We have become an informatic society. We are subjected to algorithms, data collection, Big…

  • Claus Pias on First-Order Cybernetics

    The complete transactions of the Macys Conferences on Cybernetics, held between 1946 and 1953, were recently (2015) edited by Claus Pias and published in English and German. Pias discusses the importance of first-order cybernetics in the post-Second World War history of ideas in his introductory essay called “The Age of Cybernetics,” which appears at the…

  • Bernhard Dotzler on Second-Order Cybernetics

    Bernhard J. Dotzler is a prominent German media theorist who has written extensively about the philosophical, scientific, and literary historical backgrounds to the beginnings of the apparatus of the computer and first-order cybernetics. In his major three-volume work Diskurs und Medium, Dotzler considers discourse and medium as embodied knowledge or thinking, examining “archaeologically” the interconnections…

  • Hayles on Writing and Software Code

    In his book Does Writing Have a Future?, the luminary media theorist Vilém Flusser lays out an intellectual project of connecting the future of software code with the history of writing. The code of the future will become more like the writing of the past – or rather, in the future there will be an…

  • Is Trump a Fascist or is He the Parody of Fascism?

    Jean Baudrillard and the Donald: Is Trump a Fascist or is He the Parody of Fascism? Alan N. Shapiro This is the text of my speech at the virtual conference “Trump, Television and the Media: From Drama to Fake News to Tweetstorms” organized by London Metropolitan University which took place on 30-31 October 2020. Epistemology…

  • Baudrillard and the Situationists, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Baudrillard and the Situationists Alan N. Shapiro. Images and Artworks by Christos Voutichtis The full text, with all images, is published at NoemaLab.eu This was also the text of my lecture at the Baudrillard conference at Oxford Brookes University in September 2018. Introduction First, I will say something about the similarities and differences between the…

  • Philosophie, Science und Ökologie: Whitehead und Merleau-Ponty über den Begriff der Natur, von Alan N. Shapiro

    Philosophie, Science und Ökologie: Whitehead und Merleau-Ponty über den Begriff der Natur von Alan N. Shapiro Übersetzung: Florian Arnold Vor etwa zehn Jahren begann ich mich intensiv für Kunstwerke und Kunstinstallationen zu interessieren, die Wissenschaften und Technologien in ihrer Konzeption und Ausführung mit einbezogen: Medienkunst, Electronic Art, Computerkunst, Videokunst, Bio Art, transgenic art, robotics art, telepresence…

  • Alan N. Shapiro racconta “Star Trek” (RAI4 Italian TV interview)

    This is the transcript of an interview about Star Trek which I did on Italian TV (RAI4) a few years ago. If I can find the time, I will translate it soon into English. There exist also transcripts of interviews which I did on Italian TV about Lost and The Prisoner. Poliedrico studioso di tecnologia,…

  • Orwell, Baudrillard and Trump, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Should we be content with the media theory of Orwell or with the media theory of Baudrillard, or do we need a new media theory? Trump makes statements which are not true, but which he claims to be true. His inauguration crowd on January 20th, 2017 was huge, he says. Millions of people voted illegally…

  • Baudrillard und Trump: Agonie des Realen, von Alan N. Shapiro

    Deutsche Übersetzung: Arno Baumgärtel Sollen wir uns mit Orwells Medientheorie bescheiden oder der von Baudrillard? Oder brauchen wir eine neue Medientheorie? Trump behauptet Dinge, die nicht wahr sind, die er jedoch für wahr erklärt. Er sagt, die Menschenmenge am Tag seiner Amtseinführung am 20. Januar 2017 war gigantisch. Millionen Leute haben illegalerweise bei den Präsidentschaftswahlen…

  • Baudrillard und Trump: Simulation und Objektorientierung, nicht wahr und falsch, von Alan N. Shapiro

    Deutsche Übersetzung: Arno Baumgärtel Ich fühle mich sehr privilegiert, dass mein Essay über Baudrillards erstaunliches Buch Amerika gemeinsam mit Gerry Coulters Essay über Amerika 2009 im International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (IJBS), Ausgabe 6/1, erschienen ist. Ich habe Gerrys Essay noch einmal gelesen. Ganz gewiss ist dieser Text äußerst hilfreich beim Nachdenken über das gegenwärtige…

  • Baudrillard and Trump: Simulation and Object-Orientation, Not True and False by Alan N. Shapiro

    I feel very privileged that, in Volume Six, Number One (January 2009) of the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies (IJBS), my essay on Baudrillard’s amazing book America appears in tandem with Gerry Coulter’s essay on America. Yesterday I re-read Gerry’s essay, and surely this text is extremely helpful in thinking about the contemporary phenomenon of…