Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

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

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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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Journal Entry: The Void, by Mary Fox

July 28th, 2010 in the categories: Creative Writing, Fiction, Martin Heidegger, P.D. Ouspensky

What follows is neither philosophical, nor academic. It is both self-indulgent and self-referential, as a journal can only be. It presents no “truths” and it is peppered with inconsistencies and flaws, because I am. I began my journal in May of this year in an attempt to retrieve myself from a guilt-ridden existential “tailspin.”
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Baudrillard’s Second Life, by René Capovin

July 22nd, 2010 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard, Media Studies

Baudrillard's appropriation of McLuhan's formula "the medium is the message" comes to be understood in the light of this radical critique of the media, recognized as an instance of making people passive. The Canadian scholar saw here liberatory possibilities, summed up in the noted image of the "global village."
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Georges Bataille and Epistemology

July 22nd, 2010 in the categories: Georges Bataille

Bataille’s "Theory of Religion" and "The Accursed Share" have been read by a couple of generations of (hippie) Marxists, deconstructionists, and Baudrillard the man himself in economic terms. But, from the current situation of virtuality, it is most interesting to read these texts from an epistemological point of view.
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The End of Homo Oeconomicus

July 16th, 2010 in the categories: Hans-Peter Dürr, Michel Foucault

As the physicist-philosopher Hans-Peter Dürr says, we must change our conception of what human beings are from Homo economicus (Economic human) to an idea of a Creative human.
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Data and Baudrillard, by Franco La Polla

June 25th, 2010 in the categories: Android Data, Androids & Artificial Life, Jean Baudrillard, Star Trek, The Next Generation

This is a translation of one chapter of Franco La Polla’s book "Star Trek: Foto di Gruppo con Astronave." Almost all of the books on Star Trek were written in a relatively thoughtless manner, put together in haste to make money. In contrast to them, La Polla’s books on Star Trek are rare precious gems of high intelligence.
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The Car of the Future is a Virtual Reality Game Platform

May 26th, 2010 in the categories: Car of the Future, Future Design, Paul Virilio

In our concept of the Car of the Future, people will use their cars a good deal of the time for activities that take place in a virtual reality environment, and less for the physical activity of getting from point A to point B. This will have the direct outcome that less petroleum will be used, and less pollution will be given off.
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A Critique of the Idea of Neutral Language, by Marc Silver

May 26th, 2010 in the categories: Chaim Perelman, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud, Wikipedia

There has been intense scrutiny brought to bear upon the ways in which various disciplines deploy rhetorical devices to “argue their case,” as well as to consolidate their identities and maintain them intact. Marc Silver builds his argument upon such topical foundations, but also shifts the ground in new and original ways.
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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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Only Impossible Exchange Is Possible, by Aurel Schmidt (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard, Zen Buddhism

Impossible exchange is an impossible subject. In Jean Baudrillard's book "Impossible Exchange", the matter is treated in such a way that one is better off with an associative and meditative interpretive approach than with a discursive reading.
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In Search of the Child’s Innocence, by Caroline Heinrich (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in the categories: Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Baudrillard

I begin with a quotation. "The child is innocence and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a first motion, a sacred Yes", writes Nietzsche in Zarathustra. The child is innocent because s/he starts all over again from scratch. S/he starts from the space of emptiness that the lion has carved out.
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Adolf Portmann on the New Biology, by Gianna Maria Gatti (translated by Alan N. Shapiro)

April 15th, 2010 in the categories: Adolf Portmann, Arts & Genomics, The Technological Herbarium

This action, offering light to the plant, enables the latter to externalize its 'interiority'. Suggesting this original meaning is the theory developed in the 1960s by the Swiss biologist Adolf Portmann. Focusing attention on the study of the form of living beings, Portmann elaborates the innovative concept of 'self-presentation'.
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