Month: March 2021

  • “Outer space is a blank canvas” — Interview with Forty Two Magazine

    „Der Weltraum ist wie eine weiße Leinwand” “Outer space is a blank canvas” — Interview with Forty Two Magazine This is an excerpt from the complete interview. It can be found at Forty Two Magazine Alan N. Shapiro ist gebürtiger Amerikaner, der in seiner Wahlheimat Deutschland als transdisziplinärer Theoretiker und Dozent Medientheorie und Science-Fiction an der…

  • Body, Self, and Code in Hypermodernism

    This is the text of the speech that I gave at the Schaubühne theater in Berlin on 23. February 2020, at an event in the “Streitraum” series led by Carolin Emcke. I have slightly edited and expanded the original text. Most of the expansions are in italics. You can watch the video of my speech here:…

  • How to Regulate the Media when they are ubiquitous and have gone viral: from utopian science fiction to practical European policy

    How to Regulate the Media when they are ubiquitous and have gone viral: from utopian science fiction to practical European policy Alan N. Shapiro This is the text of the keynote speech that I gave at the European Union conference “Pluralism and Responsibility: Media in the Digital Society” in Berlin on July 7, 2020. I…

  • Interview with Artist Network Theory

    An interview with Alan N. Shapiro by Axelle Stiefel August 2020 This interview was published in Volume 1, Issue 2 of Artist Network Theory. Info about Artist Network Theory AXELLE: We met in a media theory course you gave in Lucerne at the HSLU where I was enrolled as a student in the masters design…

  • Some Visions of Post-Capitalism

    Play Don’t Work The book that I have read about Marx that most inspired me was Marx’s Theory of Alienation by the Hungarian Marxist philosopher István Mészáros, published in 1970. Mészáros argues that the first full-fledged elaboration of Marx’s philosophical system is to be found in the theory of alienated labour of the Economic and Philosophical…

  • From mass advertising to personalized advertising: the Billboard Cage Project of Christos Voutichtis

    From mass advertising to personalized advertising: the Billboard Cage Project of Christos Voutichtis Alan N. Shapiro The billboard is like a theatrical stage. It is an exhibition space, a seductive or informative representation of a product or service or venue, or a simulation drawing attention to itself and becoming its own hyper-reality. It is a…

  • 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…

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

    Friedrich Kittler was the founder of German media theory and media archaeology. I disagree with Kittler’s statement that there is no software and his belief that the numerical logic of the low-level hardware that Alan Turing and John von Neumann conceptualized in the 1930s-1940s is determining and decisive. In my view, just because the kernel or…

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

    Friedrich Kittler’s Media Archaeology What has, to the contrary, been very successful and influential in German universities is the media theory of Friedrich Kittler. Kittler’s media archaeology and media historiography have led to the rise of the Berlin School of media theory, of which Wolfgang Ernst is at the forefront. Kittler opposes the so-called discourse analysis of…