Decoding Digital Culture with Science Fiction : Hyper-Modernism, Hyperreality, and Posthumanism.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shapiro, Alan N.

Series:

Digitale Gesellschaft Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Popular culture.

Science fiction--Social aspects.

Science fiction.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (375 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Bielefeld : transcript Verlag, 2024.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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

Overview of Part One

Short Definitions of Modernity, Postmodernism, and Hyper‐Modernism

The Three Essays of Part One

Mobility and Science Fiction

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

Alan Turing: The Scientific and Cultural Levels of Computing.

Notes:

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9783839472422

OCLC:

1443531712