The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
-Ecclesiastes
I originally encountered this term Simulacrum, or simulacra, as a philisophical theory set forth by French thinker Jean Baudrillard in his discourse on reality and images. I was studying semiotics at the time.
Baudrillard argues that "postmodern" culture is a world of signs that have made a fundamental break from referring to "reality."
Simulation and illusion replace reality and become more real that the actual reality itself.
CAUTION: OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR
This is part of a Gather word interpretation game introduced by Andrew Maffei played here with Gather tags I thought it might be fun to play.
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In the story a map (i.e. a representation) is produced so detailed that it ends up coming into one-to-one correspondence with the territory (i.e. everything that had once been directly lived), but argues that in the postmodern epoch, the territory ceases to exist, and there is nothing left but the map; or indeed, the very concepts of the map and the territory have become indistinguishable, the distinction which once existed between them having been erased.
In a world where I can see my home so vividly on Google Maps or, even more clearly on Microsoft's Live Local, we just may be on our way there.
At the height of her spectacularly short-lived fame, coverage of everything from her dietary habits to her taste in men was enormous, with approximately 15 magazine articles appearing every month. The thing is, it all happened so fast, was over practically before it began, that we can almost be forgiven for misconstruing her as a cultural simulacrum: a blip on the monitor, a media invention, an adorable incarnation of a feminine ideal of the reluctant or unwitting nymphet, rather than a flesh-and-blood creature with needs and wishes (not to mention raging demons) of her own.