I read the book in college decades ago. It's very famous and he predicted a lot of stuff about media and culture that has become true in the modern era of Internet / social media / YouTube e-celebs / etc.<p>However, his good ideas are cluttered up by the usual sloppy reasoning of postmodernists. He also has an unfortunate obsession with weaving Marxist far-left politics into everything, which is distracting. (Chomsky has the same problem for me.)<p>The book did not change my life, but it is a notable work of late 20th century philosophy.
This is the book Neo has in his home: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6R94keJcHk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6R94keJcHk</a>
I highly recommend Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death”. It’s a much more accessible and quite frankly more entertaining (amusing?) than Baudrillard’s work. It was written in the early 80’s but is so relevant it could have been published two weeks ago.
Fun fact: in the opening scene in The Matrix, this is the book from which Neo produces the hidden memory card.<p>The Wachowski brothers loved Baudrillard and he was part of their inspiration for their story about a whole society trapped in simulation.
For people completely unfamiliar with these concepts(at least the former) and into cars Mr. Regular from Regular Car Reviews explains them beautifully(with some added profanity):<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA23qLvl79k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA23qLvl79k</a><p>The Simulacra and Simulation part starts at about 4:10.
Also referenced in The Matrix: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=matrix+simulacra" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=matrix+simulacr...</a>
I picked this book up years ago, and it was a terrible slog to get through. The ideas were absolutely fascinating, but the writing is one of the /worst/ I've ever seen. I had to read and reread every single sentence to understand what on earth it was talking about. And once decoded (through reading or supplementary resources), the ideas were not as complex as the text.