Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

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

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8 metamathematical notions to serve a HyperModern World, by Alexis Clancy

March 25th, 2016 in the categories: Mathematics

“Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.” -- Kurt Gödel
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A Proposal for Developing Quantum Computing in Software, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 in the categories: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Mathematics

The goal of quantum computing has been clearly and explicitly defined by computer scientists, but the mathematics of how to implement qubits and superposition states does not yet exist. It should be noted right away that most efforts to realize quantum computing are, in my view, too one-sidedly hardware-centric.
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Transforming Computer Science into a Humanities Subject, by Alan N. Shapiro

February 12th, 2013 in the categories: Humanities Informatics

Despite its name, Computer Science is so far only an engineering discipline. Computer Science excluded art and sociology at its foundation, making itself into a strictly technical engineering practice, the tweaking of bits and bytes. We need a New Computer Science that integrates art and sociology at a fundamental level.
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Interview with AVINUS Press about The Technological Herbarium

September 8th, 2010 in the categories: Humanities Informatics, The Technological Herbarium

"The Technological Herbarium" is an interdisciplinary work, and it places into question in a very strong way the existing division of knowledge into separate spheres like art, technology, natural science, and computer science. I don’t think that these separate categories of disciplinary knowledge are helpful at all anymore.
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Towards a New Computer Science: Instantiate a Much Richer Software Instance

April 21st, 2010 in the categories: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics

Object-Orientation is an essential prerequisite to the New Computer Science. Yet Object-Orientation has the limitation that it has continued mainly to be a technical practice, stuck in the binary opposition between technique and culture.
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The Answer to the Question of Artificial Life

April 18th, 2010 in the categories: Alexis Clancy, Androids & Artificial Life, Humanities Informatics

Artificial Life has the goal of making make software that is more “alive.” However, ALife has overlooked that “vitality” already exists in the creative arts. Life means art, music, painting, dance, poetry, literature, languages, sexuality, society, spirituality. Life means emotions, feelings, sensations, intuitions, colors.
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Inscribe Philosophy into the Heart of Computer Science

April 15th, 2010 in the categories: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics, Jacques Derrida, P.D. Ouspensky

There are many individuals in the technology and cyberculture communities who are not just “engineers” or techie programmers. They are already working to bring software together with art and sociology. However, in their projects, they are working two or three levels removed from the core of computer science.
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The New Computer Science

April 15th, 2010 in the categories: Alexis Clancy, Humanities Informatics

Computing analyzed from a philosophical viewpoint is still at the level of Descartes, Bacon and Babbage: Mechanical automation. Shapiro wants to include Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Baudrillard and many others into the science of computing.
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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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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.