Stuart Mills concludes his series on data policy theory, exploring simulcara, doppelgängers and how much we really exist in a virtual world.
In the final blogpost of this series, I’d like to talk about people.
The truth be told, I have struggled to write this blogpost. I was going to write something on cryptocurrency and simulacra, and how a false idea of money can become transformed into a very real myanmar rcs data value-system (e.g. bitcoin). To an extent, I still am, though I have decided to veer away from cryptocurrency and focus on what I think is more interesting – simulacra.
Simulacra is one of those fancy academic words which no one who is self-aware actually uses (evidently, I am not self-aware). The singular of simulacra is simulacrum, which the Cambridge University Dictionary defines as:
“something that looks like or represents something else.”
In my opinion, however, this definition misses something.
I first came across the term simulacra in Jean Baudrillard’s book Simulacra and Simulation (again, a self-aware person wouldn’t admit this), a book which heavily inspired the Matrix films. In the book, Baudrillard explores the idea of the sign, or how symbols such as brands take on substance in modern society. And for Baudrillard, simulacra do not just represent something else, they become the something else.