Category: Media Studies

  • 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…

  • What is hyper-modernism?, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Text of keynote lecture at the same-named conference held at  at the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, March 20th, 2016. Performance by Regan O’Brien: “Bounding with UNknown Others” * * * * * * * * Lecture: What is hyper-modernism? Alan N. Shapiro   In the age that we are living in…

  • How can we redefine information in the age of social media?, by Alan N. Shapiro

    On January 24, 2012, I was a keynote speaker at the BOBCATSSS conference on Information Management of the organization of European university libraries in Amsterdam. On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, BOBCATSSS 2012 was organised by students from three universities of applied sciences, namely Hogeschool van Amsterdam (NL), Hanze Hogeschool Groningen (NL), and Stuttgart…

  • International Flusser Lecture, by Alan N. Shapiro

    On July 10, 2012, I gave the International Flusser Lecture at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Related to this lecture, a small book by me in German will be published in the International Flusser Lecture series by the Walther Koenig Verlag. Diplomandenfeier  Fokus Medientheorie  UdK Berlin  Fakultät Gestaltung Mit einem Festvortrag von Alan Shapiro …

  • “Mad Men” and the Sociology of Advertising Consumer Culture, by Venecia Suriel de Häusler

    To What Extent Did the Writer of Mad Men Know About the Sociology of Advertising Consumer Culture?   Public relations – Episode 1, Season 4 Introduction Mad Men is a complex TV show in which topics like gender and gender role, race relations and racism, alcoholism and chain smoking, as well as homosexuality in 1960s…

  • Macht- und Hierarchieverhältnisse am Beispiel von „The Wire“, von Jaška Klocke

    Einleitung Im folgenden Essay möchte ich den Versuch unternehmen, auf unterschiedliche Machtstrukturen in der ersten Staffel der US amerikanischen Fernsehserie The Wire, die von 2002 bis 2008 im Privatsender HBO („Home Box Office“) ausgestrahlt wurde, einzugehen und diese miteinander zu vergleichen. Dabei interessiert mich vor allem die Frage, in wie weit sich Macht auf der…

  • “The Wire” and Luhmann’s Systems Theory, by Yara Scholtis

    King of the Crowds: Looking at The Wire’s Omar Little and Luhmann’s Systems Theory by Yara Scholtis This essay will examine the television series The Wire from a sociological point of view – that this is a possible thing to do has been proven several times. There have not only been entire university seminars taught…

  • Reality and Simulation in “The Prisoner,” by Caroline Fuchs

    Number 6 is being held hostage in “The Village” for only one reason: to answer the question why did he resign. But Number 6, who is a faithful servant to his former authorities and did not resign for personal gain – that is to say to sell the valuable information he has – but for…

  • “Out of thin air” – Mask and Representation in “Mad Men,” by Marten Weise

    Preliminaries The American TV Show Mad Men, first broadcast in July 2007, has received a lot of positive critique and has also been awarded with many well-known prizes. In three consecutive years (2007, 2008 and 2009) it won the Golden Globe for The Best Television Series in the category Drama. Being called “the best show…

  • Time-Memory-Experience (part 4 of 4), by Anja Wiesinger and Alan N. Shapiro

    Timeliness of the Computer from the Time-Memory-Experience project (this is part 4 of a 4-part essay) by Anja Wiesinger and Alan N. Shapiro Let us now take a look at the specific modes of time of the computer. In what comes next we would like to look into the timeliness of the computer itself, the…

  • Time-Memory-Experience (part 2 of 4), by Anja Wiesinger

    Timeliness and Perception of Time in and with the Computer, by Anja Wiesinger from the Time-Memory-Experience project (this is part 2 of a 4-part essay) The Construction of ARTstor as Collection The object of analysis is a specific kind of digital image archive. I chose ARTstor, the biggest online image library for research and education. ARTstor…

  • Time, Memory, Experience (part 1 of 4), by Anja Wiesinger

    Time-Memory-Experience by Anja Wiesinger (this is part 1 of a 4-part essay) In my Master’s Thesis in Art History, done at the Technical University of Berlin in 2011, I attempted to do the following: My project is to revise the theories and concepts that arose in the advent of the Internet in the early 1990s, when the…

  • Media theory: beyond the dualities of form and content, critical and enthusiastic, real and fake, by Alan N. Shapiro

    On January 26, 2012, I gave a lecture in the Speakers’ Series of the Centre for the Study of Theory, Culture and Politics at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada. My topic was: “Media theory: beyond the dualities of form and content, critical and enthusiastic, real and fake.” Here are my lecture notes for this…

  • Star Trek: 20 Basic Principles

    Star Trek Basic Principle #1: Radical Uncertainty Captain’s Log, Supplemental: “We are seeing things that cannot possibly exist, yet they are undeniably real.” In its indeterminacy and paradox, the object discovers us. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle holds that the degrees of my knowing the position and speed of quantum particles are inversely proportional to each other.

  • Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance, by Alan N. Shapiro

    Does Star Trek’s worldview coincide with the unbridled high-tech enthusiasm of recent years? Or is there a tension between the show’s originality and the Borg-like assimilation of its creativity by the Star Trek industry? Focusing on the stories themselves, the author reveals the basic principles behind Star Trek that contest the ideology of mainstream technoscience.