Transcript Baudrillard and the Hyper-real

Baudrillard
Hyper-real
and the
“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—
Plato
Writing
Welcome . . .
. . . to the order of the simulacra
Consumer Society
Media Images
Technology
Jean Baudrillard
Professor of Sociology at Nanterre
1960s-1987
Initially concerned with Media and Consumption
Breaks with Marxism in 1973
(Mirror of Production)
Eventually identified with Postmodernism
mis-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
Le Système des objects, 1968
La Sociètè de la consommation, 1970
For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, 1972
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
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
IBM 026 Card Punch
Machine: Case 1107
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 Intel 8080,
high priests” of computing
CPU for Altair
 Can only be done with a
technology developed by the
“military industrial complex”
 Computer as a “package” of
transistors
 Production and consumption
mixed up

What’s real
“The Code”
Symbolic Exchange and Death, 1976
Not Defined--meaning through context
Distinction between production and reproduction
obsolete
Original
Reproductions
Production reproduces a “natural” object
The Code 2
With binary data, however . . .
The “natural” has
been by passed
T
h
e
c
o
d
e
What is the
distinction between
the copy and the
original?
Hyper-reality
In 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
“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.”
“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.”
Real?
In the age of hyper-reality how real is
most experience?
Extreme experience as a means of convincing oneself that
one is real
But are you?
. . . but this is true of everything in the age of
Simulacrum.