Sharing some notes of stuff I'm thinking about lately...

In 1981, French philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard wrote his seminal work called Simulacra and Simulation, a treatise examining the relationship between real life and the symbolic systems we use to describe, understand, and ultimately, interface with it.

He describes a phenomenon, first realized as a consequence of Modernism and then fully actualized in a post-modernist context: the abstraction of the world into conceptual projections of the real ("simulations") and, coexisting with and eventually even overtaking them, entirely new "realities" with no skeuomorphic reference to a tangible original ("simulacra").

For an example of the former, consider a map. Maps are the archetypal example of a simulation—an abstracted symbol intended to make understandable (inherently in some fraction of the fidelity of the real original) something that in actuality exists only in real life.

Here's a map showing poverty in London in 1899 (the very precipice of the Modern age). This is something that has been designed. And as a result of this design, decisions may be made, for example about where to allocate government assistance or how to price real estate. I love how this map is titled "Map descriptive of London Poverty" (emphasis mine). Therein is exactly the point—this can, by its nature, only ever be a description of a thing, never the thing itself.

This effort to create simulations is really something pretty recent. As James C. Scott writes in his fantastic book, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, the principal actor in this effort has traditionally been governments, for simulations are necessary in order to control real life. It's not feasible, as the French government figured out, to manage a country the size of France on the basis of physically going outside to find out what's going on. No, it's necessary to have a map. It's necessary to have abstraction.

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Alternatively, consider this example below: a blueprint of a house. In this case, the symbolic system is inverted; first the plan was designed, and from that the house was constructed. Now, which is the "real" original and which is the simulated projection? The blueprint or the house that was based on it?

We'd naturally say the house, for that exists in the real world, but was it not the blueprint which was actually the original design? Is it not the blueprint, and not the house, which exists on record in the government archives? And if there is later a dispute about property boundaries or some such thing, would we not insist that the real, physical world conform—be adjusted, if necessary—to the data "abstraction" on record, rather than the other way around?

This is a simulacra, in Baudrillard's definition. It's a conjured, invented, intangible symbol for which there is no real life original to be found. And increasingly, as a consequence of Modernism, our world is defined by this latter example rather than the former. We do not as much live in and attempt to understand the real world as we instead intend to shape it and to define for ourselves what is real.

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Baudrillard would call both of these "first-order" in the sense that both are clearly artificial representations. The map is obviously not the real world, nor is the blueprint the intended final product. But the Modern age's industrial ability to engage in mechanical reproduction means that at some point (the point of the "second-order simulacra") this distinction blurs. The simulation and the simulacra start to become real enough to be indistinguishable from the familiar original they reproduce or imitate. As Walter Benjamin famously discussed in the oft-referenced "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", something profound happens when mechanical processes become of such fidelity that even what we might think of as the last bastion of humanity, artistic expression, can be perfectly created and recreated by machine.

His first words of the preface read,

When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalistic mode of production, this mode was in its infancy. Marx directed his efforts in such a way as to give them prognostic value.

Well, Benjamin's work is similarly prognostic, for we now live firmly within a time when we can readily see the dawn of a time when not only will the work be reproducible, but in fact producible in the first place, entirely by artificial means.

This condition has been inevitable since the creation of software, because software allows, for the first time, a world that is entirely, organically simulacra. No "Mechanical Turk" can be sufficiently simulatory; Dorothy can always go look behind the curtain. Ultimately, any simulation of the physical world can never be more than first-order under sufficient scrutiny. But software has created a condition where the simulation has not only achieved parity with the real, but indeed, it has entirely subsumed it. This is the final level, the "third-order" Baudrillard predicted.

The most compelling technologies of our day—artificial intelligence, crypto, virtual environments, you name it—are entirely unbound from any replication of a preexisting original. They are not, as Google Maps is, an virtual index of a real life original, delivered, for convenience, on your phone. They are entirely organic to their software contexts. Indeed, they could only ever exist there.

Increasingly, artificial intelligence will be the defining mode of intelligence. Artificial money (crypto) will be the defining form of money. Artificial identities and universes will be the defining mode of self-expression and actualization.

Importantly, there's some way in which they are more real than "real life" ever could be because real life can never be accurately reproduced. If we are to live in software, only software can ever be real or true. The hyperreality can only be written in hypertext.

...The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.

Design is the culture of the simulation; designers are the architects of simulacra

To date, most design of software has emerged from skeuomorphism, which is to say, simulation. We're at an inflection point, however, as we move away from the skeuomorphic design that was intended to bridge from the familiar to the novel. We now live firmly within novel land, the land of simulacra.

In this land, no metaphor is either necessary nor sufficient. That is, we don't need it, which is good because it isn't adequate anyway. If today's design is to be a response to today's problems and to live within today's simulated world, it stands to reason that it must be no less native to that simulated state. Design has become the exclusive way to "see" what is real.

Design is arguably the only job that is a response to this situation. Design was made for times like these. We live in an era of extremes: hyper-abundance and yet hyper-scarcity, unbound potential and unbound risk, never-before-seen abstraction and a greater demand for humanity.

To be continued...