A matter of hours after I was reading a blog lauding the benefits of simplicity in communication, a friend sends me 169 pages of Baudrillard. On page three I run into:

The real is produced from miniaturized cells, matrices, and memory banks, models of control – and it can be reproduced an indefinite number of times from these. It no longer needs to be rational, because it no longer measures itself against either an ideal or negative instance. It is no longer anything but operational. In fact, it is no longer really the real, because no imaginary envelops it anymore. It is a hyperreal, produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere.

I mean. Even for a French philosopher that’s a bit rich, what? Still, only 166 pages to go…