Baudrillard and the

Hyper-real

“Irreality no longer belongs to the dream or the

phantasm . . . But to the hallucinatory resemblance of

the real to itself”

What is real?

Old question—PlatoWriting

Consumer Society

Media Images

Technology

Welcome . . .. . . to the order of the simulacra

Jean Baudrillard

Professor of Sociology at Nanterre1960s-1987

Initially concerned with Media and Consumption

Breaks with Marxism in 1973 (Mirror of Production)

Eventually identified with Postmodernismmis-identified, really

Baudrillard’s antecedents

Karl Marx (1818-1883):

Use Value--utilitarian value

Exchange Value--value of object in exchange

Marcel Mauss (1872-1950):

Symbolic value--The Gift

consumption wasteful

social interactions can not be reduced to utility

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929):

“Conspicuous Consumption”

prestige through wastefulness

Political Economy of Signs

Four Logics of the object:

Practical Operations--use value--utility--instrument

Equivalence--exchange value--the market--commodity

Ambivalence--symbolic exchange--the gift--symbol

Difference--sign value--status--sign

Le Système des objects, 1968La Sociètè de la consommation, 1970For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, 1972

Sign Value

Value is assigned primarily through the logic of the sign

Thus, an object’s relationships to other objects are emphasized

Value of an object is determined through relationships to other objects and not through utility

Implications

Human beings:

Do not search for happiness

Do not search to realize equality

Rather, preoccupied with lifestyles and values

Consumption:

Rarely fulfills basic needs

Does not level or homogenize

Rather, differentiates through a system of signs

Computers

Main-frame Main-frame mid 1950s

– Sign up

– ½ hour or so of access, run program

– Computing time often cost $100/hr

– Not an efficient use of expensive time

Batch processing Up until 1960s, main form of optimizing

computer time Punch Cards

– Submit to a receptionist– Programs ran through in “batches”– Collect results

Complex programs could take weeks to debug

Maximize Production

Talking to the Univac

Interface: Cards and Key-punch

Machine: Case 1107

IBM 026 Card Punch

http://inventors.about.com/education/inventors/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/cards.html

Transistors Late 1950s, TX-0

– 1956, Lincoln Labs– First general all purpose

programmable transistor computer

– Better access– Paper tape reader– Fanciful, push machine to

the limits» Aesthetic http://www.net.org/html/history/detail/1956-txo.html

DEC

1961, PDP-1 – Designed for interactive use

» IBM conservative in product development» Not for huge number crunching

– Cheap, $120,000– Easy to start– No 15 tons of air conditioning (tubes)– Easy to start up– Easy to program screen

Microchip Microcomputers created to help

liberate the computer from “the high priests” of computing

Can only be done with a technology developed by the “military industrial complex”

Computer as a “package” of transistors

Production and consumption mixed up

Intel 8080, CPU for Altair

What’s real

“The Code”Symbolic Exchange and Death, 1976

Not Defined--meaning through contextDistinction between production and

reproduction obsolete

Original Reproductions

Production reproduces a “natural” object

The Code 2With binary data, however . . .

The

code

The “natural” has been by passed

What is the distinction

between the copy and the original?

Hyper-realityIn the age of the copy of the copy, or the

“simulacrum,” there is no difference between the real and the representation

“everything becomes undecideable”nature/culture, beautiful/ugly, true/false

“At the end of this process of reproducibility, the real is not only that which can be reproduced, but that which

is already reproduce: the hyperreal.”

“The very definition of real is that of which it is possible to provide an equivalent reproduction.”

“A kind of unintentional parody hovers over everything, a tactical simulation, a consummate aesthetic enjoyment, is attached to the indefinable play of reading and the rules of the game. Travelling signs, media, fashion and models, the blind but brilliant ambience of the simulacrum.”

Real?

In the age of hyper-reality how real is most experience?

Extreme experience as a means of convincing oneself thatone is real

But are you?

. . . but this is true of everything in the age of Simulacrum.