4 ms·

Baudrillard just gets more relevant every day. Honestly I find it hard to imagine how someone could have media literacy in the modern day without coming to an i

Baudrillard just gets more relevant every day. Honestly I find it hard to imagine how someone could have media literacy in the modern day without coming to an intuitive understanding of semiotics, whether they know it or not!

aiono 2y ago
I find the ideas of Baudrillard really accurate in describing some parts of modern life, but to be honest I feel like he just saying random stuff when I tried to read one of his book. It's so metaphorical and abstract it's very difficult to understand what exactly he is saying.
- cess11 2y ago
  He's not "just saying random stuff", he was a very serious thinker. Unlike Derrida he wasn't much of a joker. Perhaps language is fundamentally metaphorical, and perhaps reality is actually abstract.
  - aiono 2y ago
    That's just what I feel I didn't claim that it actually is just random stuff. But I value clarity and Baudrillard doesn't seem to try to be. However, as I said I do find his general points very valuable just his style is not my cup of tea.
    - cess11 2y ago
      He wrote in many different styles, depending on the subject and likely audience. Simulacra and Simulation, Silent Majorities and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place are very different texts.
    - NoGravitas 2y ago
      Part of it may be translation, too. English translations of French academic writing always seem to come out especially convoluted.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  My best experience reading Baudrillard was out loud with a group. Some passages spoke to some but not others, but most generated discussion. Some are also obvious to us now in the TikTok age - uncannily so.
  - aiono 2y ago
    Definitely when I read his works even though I didn't understand some of his writings it made me think about it.
Communitivity 2y ago
I called myself a Semiotics Engineer for 4 years, but the title didn't catch. I did domain analysis, logical model creation, concrete model creation in XML/OWL/KML, model review and improvement, semantic reasoning-based system design/implementation, and message system design/implementation. This was before the rise of ML.
- j45 2y ago
  That collection of skills is still valuable.
- Xmd5a 2y ago
  What's your take on LLMs ? I ask you to comment on any aspect, whatever you think is the most interesting from a semiotician's perspective.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Everyone who is familiar with Baudrillard goes "simulacrum!" whenever they encounter LLM output. LLM output is after all a pure chain of symbols that is extremely far removed from a connection with ground truth reality.
    - garte 2y ago
      I'm not sure it's that direct of a connection. There's something to be said about the structuralist part of it: using large amounts of text as a rule set to return a semblance of truth seems to be a structuralist's wet dream. It's like drawing the map for the king: the real is being represented by reducing a huge number of data points to a mixture of randomness and hard rules that pretend to be real. At the very least it's a form of hyperreality as far as I understand it.
      - Xmd5a 2y ago
        Indeed this is what I was aiming at, however the concern for (a semblance of) truth seems rooted in a view that locates meaning in what signs refer to. This view feels incomplete when faced with a dyadic model where the relationship between signifier and signified takes precedence over reference. The notion of simulacrum only emerges in a technical culture that has elevated 'reality' to a special status. After all, what is 'reality' in technical systems if not itself a simulacrum? Hilbert's program, symbolic AI, rule systems, ontologies, the semantic web - they all struggled to capture reality as a whole precisely because they tried to grasp it through formal objects claiming universal scope via the machinery of said formalisms.
jpm_sd 2y ago
Yes, the 21st century is the age of simulacra and simulation. Post-truth society.
- coliveira 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure this was set in motion in the 20th century. This century is only about refining and monetizing it to the nth power.
thundergolfer 2y ago
Him and also Marshal McLuhan. McLuhan realized all the way back in the 60s that computer technology (like all technology) in some sense wants things and manipulates the user to get it. The 'electric' technologies have their own logic and are not neutral on questions of humanity, politics, nature, etc.
stafford_beer 2y ago
OP here -- I like Baudrillard and McLuhan but the media theorist who best captures the present IMO is Flusser: https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/the-discourse-is-the-cybernetic-event https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/the-discourse-is-the-cybe...
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  Heh, I wonder if (hope that ?) Discord and WhatsApp are the equivalent of railroad's robber barons : they brought world-changing technology, but at the cost of tyrannical greed, before their abuses being reigned in by regulations. Though now that I think of it, didn't that only happen when their power was on the way out, replaced by trucks and container ships ?

aiono 2y ago

I find the ideas of Baudrillard really accurate in describing some parts of modern life, but to be honest I feel like he just saying random stuff when I tried to read one of his book. It's so metaphorical and abstract it's very difficult to understand what exactly he is saying.

cess11 2y ago
He's not "just saying random stuff", he was a very serious thinker. Unlike Derrida he wasn't much of a joker. Perhaps language is fundamentally metaphorical, and perhaps reality is actually abstract.
- aiono 2y ago
  That's just what I feel I didn't claim that it actually is just random stuff. But I value clarity and Baudrillard doesn't seem to try to be. However, as I said I do find his general points very valuable just his style is not my cup of tea.
  - cess11 2y ago
    He wrote in many different styles, depending on the subject and likely audience. Simulacra and Simulation, Silent Majorities and The Gulf War Did Not Take Place are very different texts.
  - NoGravitas 2y ago
    Part of it may be translation, too. English translations of French academic writing always seem to come out especially convoluted.
kelseyfrog 2y ago
My best experience reading Baudrillard was out loud with a group. Some passages spoke to some but not others, but most generated discussion. Some are also obvious to us now in the TikTok age - uncannily so.
- aiono 2y ago
  Definitely when I read his works even though I didn't understand some of his writings it made me think about it.

Communitivity 2y ago

I called myself a Semiotics Engineer for 4 years, but the title didn't catch. I did domain analysis, logical model creation, concrete model creation in XML/OWL/KML, model review and improvement, semantic reasoning-based system design/implementation, and message system design/implementation. This was before the rise of ML.

j45 2y ago
That collection of skills is still valuable.
Xmd5a 2y ago
What's your take on LLMs ? I ask you to comment on any aspect, whatever you think is the most interesting from a semiotician's perspective.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Everyone who is familiar with Baudrillard goes "simulacrum!" whenever they encounter LLM output. LLM output is after all a pure chain of symbols that is extremely far removed from a connection with ground truth reality.
  - garte 2y ago
    I'm not sure it's that direct of a connection. There's something to be said about the structuralist part of it: using large amounts of text as a rule set to return a semblance of truth seems to be a structuralist's wet dream. It's like drawing the map for the king: the real is being represented by reducing a huge number of data points to a mixture of randomness and hard rules that pretend to be real. At the very least it's a form of hyperreality as far as I understand it.
    - Xmd5a 2y ago
      Indeed this is what I was aiming at, however the concern for (a semblance of) truth seems rooted in a view that locates meaning in what signs refer to. This view feels incomplete when faced with a dyadic model where the relationship between signifier and signified takes precedence over reference. The notion of simulacrum only emerges in a technical culture that has elevated 'reality' to a special status. After all, what is 'reality' in technical systems if not itself a simulacrum? Hilbert's program, symbolic AI, rule systems, ontologies, the semantic web - they all struggled to capture reality as a whole precisely because they tried to grasp it through formal objects claiming universal scope via the machinery of said formalisms.

jpm_sd 2y ago

Yes, the 21st century is the age of simulacra and simulation. Post-truth society.

coliveira 2y ago
I'm pretty sure this was set in motion in the 20th century. This century is only about refining and monetizing it to the nth power.

thundergolfer 2y ago

Him and also Marshal McLuhan. McLuhan realized all the way back in the 60s that computer technology (like all technology) in some sense wants things and manipulates the user to get it. The 'electric' technologies have their own logic and are not neutral on questions of humanity, politics, nature, etc.

stafford_beer 2y ago

OP here -- I like Baudrillard and McLuhan but the media theorist who best captures the present IMO is Flusser: https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/the-discourse-is-the-cybernetic-event https://kevinmunger.substack.com/p/the-discourse-is-the-cybe...

BlueTemplar 2y ago
Heh, I wonder if (hope that ?) Discord and WhatsApp are the equivalent of railroad's robber barons : they brought world-changing technology, but at the cost of tyrannical greed, before their abuses being reigned in by regulations. Though now that I think of it, didn't that only happen when their power was on the way out, replaced by trucks and container ships ?