Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

Blog and project archive about media theory, science fiction theory, and creative coding

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Gianna Maria Gatti’s The Technological Herbarium, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Arts & Genomics, The Illusion Beyond Art, The Technological Herbarium

The hybrid of art and technoscience is the carrier of a new worldview, a new era for cyberspace, new cognitive thought and cybernetic epistemology, and the emergence of authentic post-metaphysical thinking as pointed to by 20th century philosophers like Heidegger, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty and Bateson.
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Society of the Instance: Artificial Intelligence, Object- Orientation, and Semiotics, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Humanities Informatics

The entire virtual life of societies in which postcapitalist conditions of seduction prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of software instances.
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Europe at War in Serbia and Kosovo, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Information Society, War & Peace

On March 24, 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization initiated a bombing campaign from 15,000 feet vectored towards designated targets inside the territory of Yugoslavia.
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Consumer Culture and Naming the Animals, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Consumer Culture, New American Studies, Roland Barthes

In his famous essay "Myth Today," published in 1957, Roland Barthes added a second dimension to the semiotic analysis of Ferdinand de Saussure, to the insight of the Swiss linguist that language is a social institution. Barthes added a social theory of culture to the social theory of language.
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Garry Winogrand’s “Park Avenue, New York”

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Architecture

In a 1959 photograph by Garry Winogrand entitled "Park Avenue, New York", our camera line of vision starts from an image-producing apparatus in the car behind or mounted on the back of a Chevy convertible with folding top down in the muggy summer, traveling on this most prestigious of Manhattan thoroughfares.
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The Klingon Language

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Language, Star Trek

At the same time that many of the world's languages are either disappearing or imploding into deeper uncertainty and complexity, there is one new language which is currently experiencing rapid exponential growth in its number of speakers, and is the object of widespread fascination: the Klingon Language.
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The Fate of Languages

April 14th, 2010 in the categories: Language

There are about 6000 living human languages spoken in the world today. The vast majority of Earth languages are in danger of imminent disappearance.
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Richard Rorty on Radicalism, Liberalism, and Poetic Language

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Jacques Derrida, Language, Polysexuality, Richard Rorty

I was very impressed reading something that Richard Rorty wrote about revolutionaries in his essay "The Contingency of Community" ( in the book "Contingency, irony, and solidarity"). Rorty argues very cogently for a kind of “impossible” deconstructive synthesis of radicalism and liberalism.
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The Revolution will not be Televised, it will be led by Radical Software

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Baseball, Casino Gambling, Humanities Informatics

In my story “Betting on Longshots,” I describe how I won $3000 in the casino on the Lido in Venice, Italy when I was 24 years old, starting from nearly nothing. If I had not won that money, maybe my European wanderings would have come to an end, and I would have gone back to New York and become a dentist.
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I consider Star Trek to be a great text of Western Civilization

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Star Trek

The philosopher and computer expert Alan N. Shapiro explains his ideal for a future as an "employer": "I don’t create workplaces; I create playing fields," said Shapiro.
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“Twelve Monkeys” (film), by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Media Studies, Science Fiction Studies, Time Travel

Terry Gilliam’s brilliant film "Twelve Monkeys" raises critical questions about the linear nature of time and the causality of science. Möbius time travel will provide a fruitful tool for getting out of the hyperreality and myth of the end of history which surround us in modern culture.
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“Groundhog Day” (film), by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Media Studies, Time Travel

"Groundhog Day" is fascinating because it is time travel without a single history book adventure, science fiction without a single technological device, and the triumphant reign of the computer program without a single computer.
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Star Trek, Marx and Time Travel

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Karl Marx, Star Trek, 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
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“Desperate Living” (film): John Waters’ Science Fiction Dystopia, by Alan N. Shapiro

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Media Studies, Polysexuality, Science Fiction Studies

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

April 13th, 2010 in the categories: Arts & Genomics, Media Studies, Science Fiction Studies

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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