“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. The specialization of images of the world has culminated in a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system.” — Guy Debord

Alan N. Shapiro
media theory,
science fiction theory,
future design research

  • “Groundhog Day” (film), by Alan N. Shapiro

    In most movies and television series about time travel, a temporal displacement system still under construction (usually at the cutting edge of research in theoretical physics) has gone haywire. In the TV series Time Tunnel (1966-67), the Pentagon is about to cut off financial support for a top-secret time travel project operating underground.

  • Star Trek, Marx and Time Travel

    Alan Shapiro – Star guest of the next Transmediale – on new computers, 1968 and anarchism Interview in the Berlin daily newspaper “Neues Deutschland,” January 5, 2010 Translated from the German by Dwight “Doc” Gooden As a software specialist, Alan Shapiro would like to set the digital world on a new footing.

  • “Desperate Living” (film): John Waters’ Science Fiction Dystopia, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Maybe it was the mono sound of my budget-priced video recorder, which the salesperson at Saturn Hansa had dubbed the ‘Trabant’ (der Trabi, das Symbol eines verschwundenen Landes, the symbol of a disappeared country, hat heute längst Kultstatus erreicht, has long since attained cult status) of VCRs.

  • “Jurassic Park” (film): Newman Eaten by a Dilophosaurus, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Steven Spielberg’s stated goal for the film Jurassic Park (1993) is to achieve what he calls “total realism.” He wants to make cinema coincide with the real. This is a symptomatic fantasy that Jean Baudrillard diagnoses in The Evil Demon of Images as “cinema attempting to abolish itself in the absolute of reality.”

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