Date: Wed, 26 Jul 1995 13:42:40 -0800
Subject:  5th order simulation


steven perella writes:
"isn't it the Fifth level of simulation that we are searching for?
Doesn't Baud define all four levels in
SIMULATIONS?  Also, I think there is a huge agreement in the idea
above re: beginning with extremes in Paul Virilio's recent _The
Vision Machine_.
There scientific visualiation becomes its own object--the
Form-Image."


i'm not sure what '5th order' simulation would be (if 4th order is
already supposed to be 'perfect' simulation, i.e., absolute erasure
of the gap between true/false, real/imaginary, etc.).  part of
baudrillard's appeal for me is his ability to comprehend the current
phase of simulation (3rd order--the image masks the*absence* of the
real) by viewing it from the standpoint of (several of) its
hypothetical 'futures' (4th order, where there is no reference even
to this absence of the real, in fact, no external referentiality at
all, just endless internally related 'hyper-references [like
hypertext symbols on the web, repeating, recycling references that
never touch the ground]).  this 'looking' back on' and 'describing'
the present from this hypothetical future (simulations, after all,
are just 'hypothetical events') is part of baudrillard's poetic(?)
effort to seduce simulation (seduction being the enchanted form of
technical, positivist simulation).  i don't know how effective
politically all this is (that's probably the wrong question anyway),
and like virilio's form-image, it seems to me at times to get caught
up in the same hegelian dynamic it strives so desperately to overcome
(the focus on the end of negation, etc).  just some more thoughts.
bbogard 


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