Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

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

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Blade Runner 2049: Android Liberation Between Old and New Informatic Power

July 31st, 2024 in the categories: Androids & Artificial Life, Science Fiction Film

Blade Runner 2049 is a brilliant sequel to the original Blade Runner. Thirty years after the events of the narrative of the first film, the police discover evidence of the secret that Rachael, who was a replicant or android, became pregnant and gave birth in a “natural” fertility process to a child. Rachael died while achieving childbirth after a clumsy Caesarean section.
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The Truman Show: “The Last Thing That I Would Ever Do is Lie to You”

July 31st, 2024 in the categories: Reality TV, Science Fiction Film, Surveillance

Truman Burbank – played by Jim Carrey – is under surveillance by television cameras twenty-four hours a day within the framework of a carefully choreographed Reality TV show that is watched by billions of voyeuristic viewers all over the world. Truman lives inside a vast Hollywood studio erected as an enclosed dome that is so large that it can be seen from outer space.
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The Zeroth Law of Robotics and the Robot Unconscious

July 31st, 2024 in the categories: Robots, Science Fiction Film, Science Fiction Literature

The suspenseful story of the film I, Robot depends on the energy and complexity of the zeroth law of robotics – added as an even higher ethical priority than the first three laws by Asimov in 1950 in the short story “The Evitable Conflict.” The zeroth law then became a permanent fixture in Asimov’s science fictional literary imagination. According to the zeroth law, a robot must not harm humanity considered in its entirety.
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I, Robot and the Moral Dilemmas of the Three Laws of Robotics

July 31st, 2024 in the categories: Robots, Science Fiction Film, Science Fiction Literature

One of the contemporary developments with which Hayles is concerned is the technoscientific project that has attracted widespread attention of building robots which, thanks to their Artificial Intelligence, will behave and operate in imitation of humans, yet, in all probability, will not have human-like consciousness.
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Mobility and Science Fiction, by Alan N. Shapiro

June 27th, 2019 in the categories: Car of the Future, Future Design, Science Fiction Film

It is the self-driving car – and the way that it has come to inform the advanced technological imagination in our media culture – that I want to focus my attention on here. The autonomous vehicle has become one of the principal exemplars symbolizing the whole wide spectrum of self-aware technologies of Industry 4.0.