Alan N. Shapiro, Hypermodernism, Hyperreality, Posthumanism

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

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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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Paloque-Bergès and Sondheim on the Poetics of Code

July 31st, 2024 in the categories: Software Poetry, Software Studies

In her book Poétique des codes sur le réseau informatique: une investigation critique, Camille Paloque-Bergès examines the history of the writing practices of software code poetry. Her ultimate emphasis is on the concept of Codeworks which was originated by the theorist, artist, and poet Alan Sondheim.
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“Outer space is a blank canvas” — Interview with Forty Two Magazine

March 23rd, 2021 in the categories: Space Travel, Star Trek

Since Robinson Crusoe and Treasure Island, Western culture has been fascinated with the adventure narrative that starts with great technological ambitions and ends with the mere struggle for survival. And outer space is associated with the future – about which science fiction superficially appears to speculate.
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Body, Self, and Code in Hypermodernism

March 8th, 2021 in the categories: Black Mirror, Hypermodernism, Self and Identity

The text of the speech that I gave at the Schaubühne theater in Berlin on 23. February 2020, at an event in the “Streitraum” series led by Carolin Emcke. There were 450 people in the audience, a highlight of my life.
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How to Regulate the Media when they are ubiquitous and have gone viral: from utopian science fiction to practical European policy

March 8th, 2021 in the categories: European Union, Media in the Digital Society

This is the text of the keynote speech that I gave at the European Union conference "Pluralism and Responsibility: Media in the Digital Society" in Berlin on July 7, 2020. I was invited to speak by Monika Grütters, the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
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Interview with Artist Network Theory

March 8th, 2021 in the categories: Creative Coding

What is the revolution of Creative Coding you also name Poetic Software or Radical Software? What did programming do to your thinking? At what point and in which way did you encounter creativity in this field?
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Some Visions of Post-Capitalism

March 8th, 2021 in the categories: Post-Capitalism

In the post-capitalist economy fictionally envisioned by Varoufakis, work, control over production, digital networks, democratic politics, land use, money, and the internal culture and operations of corporations have been fully democratized. There are no bosses and no hierarchies at any level of the enterprise.
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From mass advertising to personalized advertising: the Billboard Cage Project of Christos Voutichtis

March 8th, 2021 in the categories: Public Space Art

The billboard is like a theatrical stage. It is an exhibition space, a seductive or informative representation of a product or service or venue, or a simulation drawing attention to itself and becoming its own hyper-reality. It is a large advertising structure on the side of the highway or smack in the middle of the city.
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Is Trump a Fascist or is He the Parody of Fascism?

March 8th, 2021 in the categories: Donald Trump, Jean Baudrillard

The kind of media theory or media analysis which has been prevalent on the American political left for the past several decades operates essentially with an epistemology of true and false. In their war against Trump, the liberal political media – CNN and the New York Times, for example – take the same tack.
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From Sociology to Media Studies to Software Studies, part one

March 8th, 2021 in the categories: Media Studies, Software Studies

The science part of the invention of computer science: algorithms and data can all be encoded into lengthy binary strings (i.e., stored as computable numbers). The cultural part: how one does this (i.e., the relationship between the code and the data) is a cultural decision.
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From Sociology to Media Studies to Software Studies, part two

March 8th, 2021 in the categories: Media Studies, Sociology

The study of the societal consequences and existential meanings of digital technologies has today, in effect, merged with media studies: this is called the field of “digital media.”
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The Simulacra of Public Space: the work of Christos Voutichtis, by Alan N. Shapiro

June 28th, 2019 in the categories: Creative Coding, The Illusion Beyond Art

I am going to talk about the artworks of Christos Voutichtis. Seine Arbeit ist ein führendes Beispiel für Interspace Art: nämlich das Bewusstsein für hybriden physischen und virtuellen Raum fördern.
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Technological Anarchism, by Alan N. Shapiro

June 28th, 2019 in the categories: Art and Economics, Ecology, Energy, and the Environment

My intention is to write a book developing the transdisciplinary concept of Technological Anarchism as an optimistic, normative, heterotopian (a term of Michel Foucault) idea of a near-future and open-ended social, logistical, and economic system of Post-Scarcity and Post-Capitalism.
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Science-Fiction-Replikatoren: Additive Fertigung und die Ökonomie der Zukunft, von Alan N. Shapiro

June 27th, 2019 in the categories: Additive Manufacturing, Star Trek

Sozialismus ist schiefgegangen. Kapitalismus muss sich verändern. Der europäische Kapitalismus hat Angst davor, von Asien überholt zu werden. Wie also sieht die Vision für den europäischen Kapitalismus aus, um sich erfolgreich weiter zu entwickeln?
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Baudrillard and the Situationists, by Alan N. Shapiro

June 27th, 2019 in the categories: Jean Baudrillard, Situationists

I will say something about the similarities and differences between the Situationist critical social theory of advanced or hyper-capitalism and consumerist media culture – the theory of “the society of the spectacle” and Jean Baudrillard’s theory of image, media and consumer culture – the theory of simulation, simulacra, virtuality, hyper-reality, Integral Reality, and “the models and codes precede the real.”
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