Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

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

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The “Science Fiction World” of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik

July 31st, 2024 in the categories: Real/Virtual Reality, Science Fiction Literature

The novel Ubik is generally regarded as being Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece. In this major literary work of 1969, the struggle to occupy an “outside” relative to the “inside” of a cybernetic-economic-technological-virtual system is poignantly illustrated. It is a scenario where the “science fiction world” becomes everything, leaving the “safe confines” of a clearly defined literary space that is called a novel.
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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.