Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

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

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Discover America und die Idee der Baudrillard-Company, von Alan N. Shapiro

July 16th, 2015 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard

Die beiden wesentlichen Kreisläufe sind die Mobilität (Autos etc.) und der Bildschirm (Fernsehen etc.) – Geschwindigkeit und Virtualität – das Kinetische und das Filmische. Automobile, nicht Menschen, sind die wahren Einwohner erster Klasse der hypermodernen Megalopolis (wie Marshall McLuhan bereits in den 1960er Jahren schrieb), ebenso wie Computernetzwerke und Medientechnologie.
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Der Stellenwert von Simulationen im Berufsleben, von Melike Iskender

September 3rd, 2013 in the categories: Sherry Turkle

Technik und Medien sind heutzutage Bestandteil des alltäglichen Lebens. Einerseits machen sie das Leben des Menschen einfacher; andererseits üben sie einen großen Einfluss auf uns aus. Technik ist längt kein Instrument mehr, über das wir verfügen, um Dinge fertigzustellen; wie dies in früheren Zeiten der Fall war.
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Reality and Simulation in “The Prisoner,” by Caroline Fuchs

January 25th, 2013 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard, Media Studies

For most of the Villagers it is not possible to separate between what is real and what is simulated. A simulation is created in The Village through the use of media. But what if most of what the Villagers do, see and live is a simulation? Can there even be a reality behind that façade?
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Time-Memory-Experience (part 3 of 4), by Anja Wiesinger

April 24th, 2012 in the categories: Rosalind Krauss, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin

The Optical Unconscious in Walter Benjamin’s writing appears first in „A little history of photography“ (1931), which Benjamin wrote a few years prior to the famous Artwork essay.
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The Car of the Future, by Alan N. Shapiro and Alan Cholodenko

February 15th, 2012 in the categories: Car of the Future, Donna Haraway, Future Design, Gregory Bateson, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Virilio, Real/Virtual Reality

In November 2008, Alan N. Shapiro was invited by Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, Germany to speak about his ideas about "the car of the future." He spoke in front of an audience of people from the Human-Machine Interface Dept. and and the Infotainment Dept. This text was written as accompaniment to that presentation.
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The Best of All Possible Worlds: Modal Metaphysics and Possibilia, by James Shapiro

February 11th, 2012 in the categories: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

A brilliant and highly productive intellectual whose work spanned over many fields—mathematics, geometry, physics, etc., in addition to his philosophical contributions—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz remains best known for his rather unique version of “theodicy.”
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On the trail of Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek in the American Desert

June 30th, 2011 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Žižek

In Baudrillard’s "America", the secret heart of reversibility is captured in the imaginary of the desert. The desert is The Other America, the quintessential strange attractor, the counterpoint to the system.
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Authentic Existence in Heidegger’s “Being and Time”

June 23rd, 2011 in the categories: Martin Heidegger

In his essay on "Being and Time", my nephew James Shapiro argues (among other things) that Heidegger gives little content to or explanation of what he means by authentic being. My own reading of "Being and Time" is that Heidegger does indeed explain a lot what he means by authentic being or existence.
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On Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, by James Shapiro

June 23rd, 2011 in the categories: Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger’s "Being and Time" is a work primarily concerned with the explication and understanding of the specific brand of existence and consciousness that is unique to man—or perhaps stated more succinctly, what it means to be a human being. This unique human existence Heidegger calls Dasein.
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Sartre and Derrida: The Promises of the Subject, by Christina Howells

May 25th, 2011 in the categories: Jacques Derrida, Jean-Paul Sartre

The subject of Derrida’s relations with Sartre has preoccupied me for around twenty-five years, since I first discovered Derrida’s work in fact, in 1980, the year of Sartre’s death, and felt certain he owed an enormous amount to the patterns of thinking, if not necessarily the conclusions, of his philosophical predecessor.
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Claude Lefort, Political Philosopher, by Alan N. Shapiro

January 31st, 2011 in the categories: Claude Lefort

"Democracy" in America is obsolete. It is a simulation of democracy. How do we get back to (or move forward to) being a real democracy? By understanding the lifework of Claude Lefort, the greatest thinker of democracy of our time. By understanding Lefort’s writings.
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Baudrillard, Globalization and Terrorism, by Douglas Kellner

December 3rd, 2010 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard

Douglas Kellner is the George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. He is a “third generation” critical theorist in the tradition of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or "Frankfurt School." He is the author of about 10 books.
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Baudrillard und Trek-nologie, von Alan N. Shapiro

November 27th, 2010 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard, Star Trek

Beginnen wir mit dem Ende der sechziger Jahre in New York, dem Ort meiner Kindheit. Als guter Jude sollte ich eine jüdische Erziehung bekommen. Stattdessen liebte ich Star Trek. Alles, was ich weiß, habe ich von Star Trek gelernt.
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Beaubourg, Quai Branly, and the Simulacrum of Jean Baudrillard, by René Capovin

October 23rd, 2010 in the categories: Architecture, Jean Baudrillard

"Quai Branly is a remake of Beaubourg, in a different field of art. Whereas Beaubourg is a perfect institution in the field of modern art (as Baudrillard himself explicitly says – the first part of my essay is dedicated to his famous 1977 article on Beaubourg), Quai Branly is a perfect institution in the field of 'primitive art'."
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Baudrillard and Trek-nology (Or Everything I Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek and Reading Jean Baudrillard), by Alan N. Shapiro

October 10th, 2010 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard, Star Trek

It was my childhood in New York in the late 1960s. As a good Jew, I was supposed to acquire a Jewish education. But instead I loved Star Trek. Everything I know I learned from watching Star Trek.
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