http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
Decoding digital culture with science fiction
hyper-modernism, hyperreality, and posthumanism
How do digital media technologies affect society and our lives? Through the cultural theory hypotheses of hyper-modernism, hyperreality, and posthumanism, Alan N. Shapiro investigates the social impact of Virtual/Augmented Reality, AI, social media platforms, robots, and the Brain-Computer Interface. His examination of concepts of Jean Baudrillard and Katherine Hayles, as well as films such as Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, Ex Machina, and the TV series Black Mirror, suggests that the boundary between science fiction narratives and the »real world« has become indistinct. Science-fictional thinking should be advanced as a principal mode of knowledge for grasping the world and digitalization.
Cover -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- The Three Central Hypotheses -- The Logical Progression of the Three Concepts or Hypotheses -- Part One -- Hyper-Modernism: Digital Media Technologies and Science Fiction -- Part One to Part Two: From Hyper-Modernism to Hyperreality -- Part Two -- Hyperreality: Reevaluation of Jean Baudrillard's Media Theory and the Simulacrum -- Part Two to Part Three: From Hyperreality to Post-Humanism and Creative Coding -- Part Three -- Posthumanism: N. Katherine Hayles' History of Cybernetics, Creative Coding, and the Future of Informatics -- Originally Published Versions -- Methodology -- Thirty Minute Statement at my Ph.D. Oral Defense Alan N. Shapiro, April 12, 2024 -- Part One -- Hyper-Modernism: Digital Media Technologies and Science Fiction -- Overview of Part One -- Short Definitions of Modernity, Postmodernism, and Hyper-Modernism -- The Three Essays of Part One -- Mobility and Science Fiction -- Introduction -- We Do Not Live in a Society Where Mobility is Encouraged -- The Dream of the Tomorrow-Car -- Henri Matisse Paints "the Vision Machine" -- The New Vision Machine -- Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Menace of Verticality -- The "Spinner" Flying Cars of Blade Runner: Simulation and Surveillance -- Blade Runner: We Are All Replicants -- Blade Runner 2049: Android Liberation Between Old and New Informatic Power -- Minority Report: The Utopia/Dystopia of Surveillance Technologies -- The Fifth Element: When Manhattan has no More Ways to Expand -- Back to the Future: A Speed So Fast that the Laws of Spacetime Get Shattered -- Total Recall: You're in a Johnny Cab -- Robots Versus Androids -- Self-Owning Cars -- Enhance the Physical World -- The Simulacra, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and Dr. Bloodmoney -- The "Science Fiction World" of Philip K. Dick's Ubik.
Who Is Jory Miller and What is Ubik? -- Fredric Jameson on Postmodernism -- Sonja Yeh on the Postmodern Media Theorists -- Donna J. Haraway's "A Manifesto for Cyborgs" -- Science Fiction Heterotopia: The Economy of the Future -- Introduction: Foucault's Heterotopia -- The Technologizing of Memory -- Black Mirror: "The Entire History of You" -- Scenes from a Marriage -- Similar Technologies in the Real World Today -- Brain-Computer Interface -- Designing the Brain-Computer Interface -- Hyper-Modernist Literature -- The Economy of the Future -- Post-Capitalism and Technological Anarchism -- Star Trek Replicators and Star Trek Economics -- Ecologically Aware or Sustainable 3D Printers -- Additive Manufacturing and Living Organisms -- Andre Gorz: Human Liberation Beyond Work -- Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism -- Yanis Varoufakis' Vision of Post-Capitalism -- Conclusion -- Geert Lovink on Post-Capitalism -- Blockchain Decentralized Idealism -- Smart Contracts -- Between Law and Code -- Decentralized Autonomous Organization -- Between Corporate Intellectual Property Rights and the Rights of Users -- Fiction and Power in Postmodernism -- Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society -- Donna J. Haraway on the Informatics of Domination -- Michel Foucault's Analytics of Power -- Jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault -- Gilles Deleuze, "Postscript on the Societies of Control" -- Fiction, Power, and Codes in Hyper-Modernism -- John Armitage on Hyper-Modernism -- Albert Borgmann on Hyper-Modernism -- Gilles Lipovetsky on Hyper-Modernism -- What is Hyper-Modernism? -- Introduction -- Access to History -- The Carnivalesque -- Modernity, Postmodernism, Hyper-Modernism -- Gustave Flaubert: To Write a Novel About Nothing -- Hyper-Modernist Creativity -- Body, Self, and Code in Hyper-Modernism -- Sincerity and Authenticity.
Darko Suvin on Science Fiction Studies -- Carl Freedman on Science Fiction Studies -- Istvan Ciscsery-Ronay, Jr. on Science Fiction Studies -- Part Two -- Hyperreality: Reevaluation of Jean Baudrillard's Media Theory and the Simulacrum -- Overview of Part Two -- Defining the Simulacrum and Hyperreality -- Thinking Hyperreality: From Rhetoric to Code -- Baudrillard's Importance for the Future -- Baudrillard and the Situationists -- Baudrillard and Trump -- Baudrillard's Importance for the Future -- The Controversy Around Baudrillard -- Yes -- Everything is Simulation! -- Early Baudrillard: The Consumer Society and For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign -- Symbolic Exchange and the Gift Economy -- The First Order of Simulacra: The Student of Prague -- The Second Order of Simulacra: The First Industrial Revolution -- The Third Order of Simulacra: Simulation and Hyperreality -- First-Wave Digitalization as Interactive Performance -- The Fourth Order of Simulacra: Value Radiates in All Directions -- From Descartes to Baudrillard: The "Evil Demon" of Images -- Arthur C. Clarke, "The Nine Billion Names of God" -- The Trapdoor Escape Hatch Way Out of Hyperreality -- High Life: The Black Hole of Humanity's Extinction and New Hope -- Poetic Resolution in Baudrillard's Thought -- Daniel Boorstin, The Image: Hyperreality Overtakes America -- Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality -- Roland Barthes, Mythologies -- Taking the Side of Objects -- Plato and the Simulacrum -- Plato as Software Designer -- Brian Gogan on Plato, Baudrillard, and Rhetoric -- Deleuze on "Plato and the Simulacrum" -- Upgrading Hyperreality and the Simulacrum for Digitalization -- Personalized Advertising -- Transdisciplinarity is Good for (Post-)Humanity -- Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and the Metaverse -- Baudrillard and the Situationists -- Introduction.
"Taking the Side of Objects" and the Situationists -- Baudrillard's Paradigm Shift -- Is Baudrillard Fair to the Situationists? -- "Baudrillard and the Situationists" Commentators Douglas Kellner and Sadie Plant, and the Tension between Critical Theory and Fatal Theory -- Exhibit A (Baudrillard self-simplifies): -- Exhibit B (Baudrillard's critique of the Situationists is reductionist): -- Exhibit C (Sadie Plant's critique of Baudrillard is reductionist): -- Situationist Practices -- Wandering or the Drift -- Le Dérive -- Psycho-Geography -- The Diverting of Technologies -- Le détournement -- The Making or Creating or Construction of Situations -- The Radical Illusion Beyond Art -- Neo-Situationism in the Field of Advanced Digital Technologies -- Urban and Street Art Activism -- Augmented Reality versus Wall Street -- Conclusion -- McKenzie Wark on the Situationists -- Play Don't Work -- Existential Encounter with the Object -- From the Subject to the Object in Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea -- The Myth of Sisyphus: Albert Camus on the Side of Objects -- Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity -- Jean Baudrillard and the Donald: Is Trump a Fascist or is He the Parody of Fascism? -- Epistemology of True and False -- Society of the Spectacle and Hyperreality -- Donald Trump the Empty Signifier -- From Simulation to the Grotesque and the Self-Parody -- Springtime for Hitler -- Serge Latouche Remembers Baudrillard -- Biosphere 2: The Artificial Paradise of Nature -- Reality TV and Baudrillard's Telemorphosis -- The Truman Show: "The Last Thing That I Would Ever Do is Lie to You" -- My Two Key Differences from Baudrillard -- Part Three -- Posthumanism: N. Katherine Hayles' History of Cybernetics, Creative Coding, and the Future of Informatics -- Overview of Part Three -- The Science Fiction of Star Trek.
Star Trek's Spock, Data, and Seven of Nine and the Three Orders of Cybernetics -- What is Posthumanism? -- The Concept of Nature in Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty -- Rosi Braidotti's Celebratory Posthuman Philosophy -- A Fully Posthuman Situation -- Wendy Chun on Software Code -- Software Code as Expanded Narration -- The Software of the Future -- Star Trek: Technologies of Disappearance -- Technoscience and Storytelling -- From Liberal Humanism to Posthumanism -- Cyborg Spock and NASA's Cyborg -- First Order Cybernetics -- How Information Lost Its Body -- Claus Pias on First-Order Cybernetics -- Gene Roddenberry Designs His First Alien -- "The Devil in the Dark": Empathy for Radical Otherness -- Second Order Cybernetics -- Bernhard Dotzler on Second-Order Cybernetics -- The Android Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation -- "The Offspring": Data's Daughter Lal -- Third Order Cybernetics -- "Becoming-Borg" Seven of Nine -- Star Trek: Picard, "Remembrance" -- "Embodied Informatics" is a Science Fiction Idea -- Hayles on Writing and Software Code -- Hyper-Modernist Science -- I, Robot and the Moral Dilemmas of the Three Laws of Robotics -- The Zeroth Law of Robotics and the Robot Unconscious -- Hayles on the Cognitive Nonconscious -- Marie-Luise Angerer Critiques Hayles -- Judith Butler and Gender Theory -- Ex Machina and the Turing Test -- Ex Machina: The Performance of Female and Human -- Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind -- Software Code as Expanded Narration -- Software Code as Expressive Media -- Friedrich Kittler: The Numeric Kernel is Decisive -- Kittler's Media Archaeology -- Wolfgang Hagen on Programming Languages -- Ten Paradigms of Informatics and Programming -- The First Hyper-Modern Computers -- Enter Software Studies -- Enter Creative Coding -- Alan Turing: The Imitation Game and Befriending the Evil Demon.