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The digital-neurological or Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is another key science fiction and “real” technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. BCIs can be interpreted as a “becoming cyborg” of humanity. One can distinguish between mainstream versus alternative/transformative designs and implementations of the user applications to be based on BCI – the command-and-control cyborg versus the feminist-theory…
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The novel Ubik is generally regarded as being Philip K. Dick’s masterpiece. In this major literary work of 1969, the struggle to occupy an “outside” relative to the “inside” of a cybernetic-economic-technological-virtual system is poignantly illustrated. It is a scenario where the “science fiction world” becomes everything, leaving the “safe confines” of a clearly defined…
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In his book Does Writing Have a Future?, the luminary media theorist Vilém Flusser lays out an intellectual project of connecting the future of software code with the history of writing. The code of the future will become more like the writing of the past – or rather, in the future there will be an…
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Blade Runner 2049 is a brilliant sequel to the original Blade Runner. Thirty years after the events of the narrative of the first film, the police discover evidence of the secret that Rachael, who was a replicant or android, became pregnant and gave birth in a “natural” fertility process to a child. Rachael died while…
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Erkenntnistheorie des Wahren und Falschen Die Art von Medientheorie oder Medienanalyse, die in der amerikanischen politischen Linken in den letzten Jahrzehnten vorherrschend war, arbeitet im Wesentlichen mit einer Erkenntnistheorie von wahr und falsch. Noam Chomsky hat die moralische Komplizenschaft der intellektuellen Klasse (und seinen eigenen Kampf, diese Komplizenschaft zu überwinden) mit der abscheulichen Politik der…
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Reading these two books: Blockchain Revolution, by Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott (Penguin, 2016) Ethereum, by Henning Diedrich (Wildfire Publishing, 2016) thanks to Primavera De Filippi and Pindar Wong and Henning Diedrich Blockchain is a very interesting technology both because of its revolutionary computer science architecture and because of its possible future applications in business,…
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The Americans dream big. The biggest hamburgers. The biggest hot dogs. To the moon and Mars. The football Super Bowl and the baseball World Series. The biggest celebrities. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna. They were big. They were the stars. They were the celebrities in the age of mass media. They were separated…
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Epistemology of True and False 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. Noam Chomsky has always been subtle and nuanced in describing the moral complicity of the intellectual class (and his…
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Die Amerikaner träumen groß. Die größten Hamburger. Die größten Hot Dogs. Zum Mond und Mars. Der Football Super Bowl und die Baseball World Series. Die größten Prominenten. Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna. Sie waren groß. Sie waren die Stars. Das waren die Prominente im Zeitalter der Massenmedien. Sie waren von uns durch die…
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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…