Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse – BAUDRILLARD NOW 2024/02/08, 12:48 INTERNATIONALACADEMICJOURNAL E-ISSN2728-3089 PRINTISSN2780-7274 BAUDRILLARDNOW  POSTMODERN THEORY, SOCIOLOGY Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse  BAUDRILLARD NOW  APRIL 22, 2023 Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse Prof. Dr. Jiré Emine Gözen The renaming of Facebook to Meta at the end of 2021 has sparked and updated discussions about the potential for a future where humanity increasingly operates, works, plays, and lives within the metaverse. In this article, I aim to illustrate through a speci!c example that the conception of virtual worlds, as represented by the metaverse, is an amalgamation of theoretical considerations and topoi from Jean Baudrillard’s work with cyberpunk literature. Cyberpunk authors have used Baudrillard’s theoretical concepts to shape virtual worlds, which have then been perpetuated and expanded upon in both popular culture and academic discourse. These ideas have had a profound impact on societal visions of future virtual worlds, shaping their semantics and signi!cance. Baudrillard’s ideas were widely regarded as the vanguard of subversive contemporary social sciences in the discourse on postmodernism. His views on the drastic transformation of modern society were embraced by both academic circles and https://www.baudrillard-scijournal.com/chambers-of-the-past-and-fu…-the-simulated-worlds-of-baudrillard-cyberpunk-and-the-metaverse/ Seite 1 von 7 Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse – BAUDRILLARD NOW 2024/02/08, 12:48 the artistic avant-garde and gained him the reputation of a postmodern prophet. Of particular interest were Baudrillard’s writing strategies, which blend aesthetics and materials from diverse !elds, resulting in texts that vacillate between literary and scienti!c styles, eroding the boundaries between theory and !ction. But despite Baudrillard’s theoretical and discursive subversion, some critics in the 1980s began to argue that his works lacked new ideas since the 1970s. They claimed that the French philosopher had been recycling his previous ideas rather than genuinely developing his concepts. Douglas Kellner notes in this regard: “For some years, Baudrillard was cutting-edge, high-tech social theorist, the most stimulating and provocative contemporary thinker. But in the early 1980s, Baudrillard ceased producing the stunning analyses of the new postmodern scene that won such attention in the previous decade. Burnt out and terminally cynical, Baudrillard has instead churned out a number of mediocre replays of his previous ideas […] Baudrillard’s travelogues, notebooks, theoretical simulations, and occasional pieces fell dramatically below the level of his 1970s work, and it appeared to many that Baudrillard himself had become boring and irrelevant, the ultimative sin for a supposedly avant-garde postmodern theorist.” (Kellner 1995, 298) It is noteworthy, that during the exact period when Baudrillard’s creativity seemingly began to decline, the !rst works of cyberpunk science !ction appeared. Whereas my discussion of cyberpunk literature here pertains to a particular corpus of works authored by a group of writers who assembled in Austin, Texas in the late 1970s. This literature represented a revolution in science !ction writing, led by authors such as Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Greg Bear, John Shirley, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker, and Pat Cadigan. The group criticized the science !ction of their time in the fanzine Cheap Truth and in the preface of the cyberpunk anthology Mirrorshades, which could be seen as the cyberpunk manifesto – the discursive foundation for a newly emerging movement. Similar to Baudrillard, the authors of cyberpunk literature traversed the previously separated domains of philosophy, social sciences, literature, natural sciences, and media culture, attempting to capture the rapid changes of their present. At the time, many critics regarded the works of Gibson, Sterling, Cadigan, Shirley, Bear, and Shiner as some of the most remarkable and intriguing engagements with contemporary media culture. As I argued before, Cyberpunk https://www.baudrillard-scijournal.com/chambers-of-the-past-and-f…-the-simulated-worlds-of-baudrillard-cyberpunk-and-the-metaverse/ Seite 2 von 7 Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse – BAUDRILLARD NOW 2024/02/08, 12:48 literature should even be regarded as an important companion to media theories, both as a means of artistic expression and as a method of knowledge production, including its theorization (Gözen 2012). So it is not surprising that this new type of science !ction was immediately declared a prominent literary trend of the present, both in academic and artistic circles, and was subsequently recognized as avant-garde and innovation in the !eld of speculative visions. According to Douglas Kellner, “these texts produce one of the most impressive bodies of recent writing on the fate of hypertechnological society since Baudrillard’s key texts of the 1970s” (Kellner 1995, 298). Timothy Leary, on the other hand, assigns a philosophical signi!cance to the texts of cyberpunk writers that is comparable to the importance Mann, Tolstoy, and Melville held for the industrial age (Leary 1996, 56). Brian McHale, who has explored the mutual in#uence of postmodern literature, science !ction texts, and poststructuralist theorizing, also positions cyberpunk literature prominently within this framework (McHale 1992, 244f). It is especially notable that in cyberpunk literature many motifs and themes resonate with Baudrillard’s work. A Baudrillard-oriented reading of cyberpunk literature reveals that the principal categories of hyperreality, simulation, and implosion are not only evident in numerous narratives but are also omnipresent as symbolic representations. Authors such as Gibson, Maddox, and Bear not only incorporated Baudrillard’s ideas into their stories but also expanded and developed them. It is worth noting that these interpretations and extensions of Baudrillard’s ideas were recognized by media theory and in#uenced it. Baudrillard views such interaction as symptomatic of a postmodern discourse, in which previously distinct cultural and societal phenomena implode and create something new (Kellner 1995, 301). In this VOLUME 4. ISSUE 1 regard, Scott Bukatman, a !lm and media scholar, emphasizes that: “And so Baudrillard, the students of chaos, the cyberpunks, and others have constructed a master-narrative, one grounded in the centrality of human intention and perception, which has the culmulative e$ect of inaugurating a new subject capable of inhabiting the bewildering and RECENT POSTS disembodied space of the electronic environment – the virtual subject.” (Bukatman 1993, 118) Conspiracy Thinking: Towards an Both Baudrillard and cyberpunk authors depict societies Ambiguous Theory of where all types of boundaries have collapsed, including those Photography between di$erent cultures, biology, technology, and The Supreme Illusion of Real https://www.baudrillard-scijournal.com/chambers-of-the-past-and-f…-the-simulated-worlds-of-baudrillard-cyberpunk-and-the-metaverse/ Seite 3 von 7 Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse – BAUDRILLARD NOW Time as the Limit of All particularly between reality and simulation. New technologies Accelerations have dramatically transformed the body and human experience, with the perception of reality now permanently Baudrillard’s Spirit of Terrorism: A Generation Z Perspective interlaced with simulation. Despite Baudrillard’s literary style and his numerous references to contemporary issues, politics, One More Spiral in the and media culture, his descriptions of simulation remain Simulacrum: Jean Baudrillard’s largely abstract. Conversely, cyberpunk authors present Games with Reality worlds where the human existence is persistently surrounded byof simulations. Characters interact with arti!cial Baudrillard and the Forgetting Death as a Challenge intelligences, androids, cyborgs, virtual personalities, and simulated realities. The portrayed !gures themselves are Baudrillard’s “The Violence of the often arti!cial forms of existence, with such depictions Global” Revisited: Comments and varying signi!cantly among the di$erent authors. New Perspectives this context, an example that stands out is the novel “Eon” The Violence of the Global byIn Jean from 1985 by Greg Bear, wherein an asteroid from a parallel Baudrillard universe enters our own and is examined by humans during the turn of the millennium. The asteroid, which has been 2024/02/08, 12:48 Baudrillard and McLuhan in t Social Media Age Douglas Kellner and Steve Gennaro In the social media age, our interminable digital identities works of art, and we are artists equal parts performance, photography, !lm, composition and graphic design, we write ourselves into stories to depict virtual existence. At the same time, the “tethered togethernes (Schroeder, 2018) of the social media age illustrates how digit selves are not a collection of monologues but communal ar hollowed out, contains several arti!cial chambers that SUBSCRIBE FOR ARTICLES represent the abandoned living spaces of a future humanity. These chambers contain future cities from di$erent epochs, Enter your email Send demonstrate how simulation has progressively advanced and ALAN N. SHAPIRO displaced reality. Through the lens of these chambers, Bear AMERICA exempli!es various stages of simulation. ANDREW MCLAVERTY-ROBINSON In one of the !nal chambers, Bear depicts a society where digitalized minds exist within a computer called “City CATEGORIES Others Philosophy Photography Radical anthropology Sociology HOME AIM AND SCOPE ALEXZANDER MAZ BAUDRILLARDNOW BAUDRILLARD NOW JOURNAL Memory”. Nonetheless, people still have the option to live BRETT NICHOLLS beyond the city’s memory. The external environment, outside DESERT OF THE REAL POLITICS of the virtuality of the city computer, is a featureless space DISNEYLAND onto which landscapes, homes, objects, and weather ECOLOGY ETHNIC THEME PARK conditions are projected. To navigate within this simulated FASCISM GUY DEBORD space beyond the computer simulation, individuals create HIGH PRIEST OF POSTMODERNISM bodies that often bear little resemblance to a natural human ILLUSION form. Should any harm come to this body, the brain contained Postmodern theory TAGS and the changing decor and architecture of the cities within it is equipped with an implant that records all experiences and memories. Thus, in Bear’s novel, virtual reality constitutes the absolute simulation of a bodiless and disembodied present, which remains unbreakable even with the intentional creation of a material body. The convergence FOR AUTHORS EDITORIAL BOARD ISSUES MAESTRO CATEGORIES of genetics and semiotics gives rise to self-generating humans CHRISTA STEINLE DOUGLAS KELLNER JEAN BAUDRILLARD JEROME KRASE LUCIEN OULAHBIB MALTSEV OLEG NEW YORK PARODY PETER WEIBEL PHOTOGRAPHY PSYCHOTHERAPY SERGE LATOUCHE SOCIAL THEOR      CONTACT US SOCIOLOGY ZOMBIE of the future, the perfect simulacrum. The #awless simulation of digital and future humans uploaded into a body highlights that the physical opposition between illusion and truth has SEARCH given way to playing with reality. Bear’s radical interpretation of Baudrillard’s dictum of self-referential signs demonstrates that the human, based on digital bits and bytes, has merged into an in!nite circulation of self-referential signs, becoming a OR Search … Search https://www.baudrillard-scijournal.com/chambers-of-the-past-and-f…-the-simulated-worlds-of-baudrillard-cyberpunk-and-the-metaverse/ Seite 4 von 7 Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse – BAUDRILLARD NOW 2024/02/08, 12:48 model without origin and hence a sign in and of itself. In one of the earlier future cities, advanced media PAGES technologies enable the contemporary humans in “Eon” to immerse themselves in a virtual world that creates a simulation of the abandoned city and its inhabitants, which is indistinguishable from reality: JEAN BAUDRILLARD “She called up a student’s basic guide to the second chamber Aim and Scope Contact us Cookies Editorial Board city. French thinker, Jean Baudrillard, is a hard to describe dazzling In an instant, Alexandria surrounded her. She appeared to be !gure. Some “classify” him as a standing on the portico of an apartment in the lower #oors of sociologist, cultural theorist, one of the megas, looking down on the busy streets. The philosopher, scientist, illusion was perfect—even providing her with a memory of photographer, prophet or even what “her” apartment looked like. She could turn her head “God.” Conversely, some consider him to be a “philosopher clown”, and look completely behind her if she wished—indeed, she or not completely sane, “a political could walk around, even though she knew she was sitting idiot … ignorant and cynical” down. whose writings are too obscure; She spent half an hour in Alexandria, observing the clothes so many men, so many minds. Yet, don’t we see this hardwired the people wore, their faces, their hair styles and expressions inescapable repetition in the and ways of moving.” (Bear 1985, 275) history of humanity, as the world’s greatest minds have The degree of overlap between Greg Bear’s 1985 descriptions always been controversial forand thethe 2022 META advertising campaign video “Education in For Authors Maestro Privacy Policy Terms and conditions Vol 2. Issue 1 Volume 2, Issue 2 Volume 3. Issue 1 Volume 4. Issue 1 Volume 5. Issue 1 masses? It’s a rhetorical question. the Metaverse” is remarkable. Jean Baudrillard authored more than 60 books that stirred and Education in the metaverse shook the world, and still do ARCHIVE OF ARTICLES today, by revealing the nature of modern-day “existence”, which is immersed and overwhelmed by peoples’ delusion, misconceptions, and total January 2024 April 2023 March 2022 delirium. His writings cover practically every signi!cant issue, from reality, consumerism, August 2021 May 2021 political intricacies, sexuality and history, to the future’s long term prognosis and human beings as The two works not only present similar scenarios, but even such. Baudrillard was a professor the physical movements Bear describes appear to have been at the Paris X Nanterre University and later at the European incorporated into the clip. Both depictions of simulation- Graduate School. based virtual worlds reveal a high degree of implosion in the sense of Baudrillard, as space and time collapse. As the description in Bears text, the footage presented in the clip April 2021 November 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 portrays a future that has not yet occurred in the recipient’s reality, and may never do so, yet it insists on presenting it as past history. Consequently, it constitutes both a genuine model and an illusion, in which truth vanishes behind simulation. The media-mediated reality overlays sensory https://www.baudrillard-scijournal.com/chambers-of-the-past-and-f…-the-simulated-worlds-of-baudrillard-cyberpunk-and-the-metaverse/ Seite 5 von 7 Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse – BAUDRILLARD NOW 2024/02/08, 12:48 experiences perfectly, as illustrated by the description of the divergent experiences of real and simulated space and body. It is evident that the simulated worlds advertised by META, aimed at their practical implementation, have strong links to the worlds of cyberpunk literature that rely on Baudrillard’s theories. This ultimately suggests that the incorporation, re!nement, and theoretical exploration of Jean Baudrillard’s ideas through cyberpunk literature continue to shape current conceptions and designs of technologies, which we anticipate will in#uence our future. References Bear, Greg. Eon. Castell Group vista edition, 1998 (!rst published 1985) Bukatman, Scott. Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction. Duke University Press, 1993 Gözen, Jiré Emine. Cyberpunk Science Fiction: Literarische Fiktionen und Medientheorie. Transcript, 2012 Kellner, Douglas. Media Culture. Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern and the Postmodern. Routledge, 1995 Leary, Timothy. Quark of the Decade. In: Mondo 2000 #7, 1996, S. 53-56 McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. Routledge, 1992 If you have found a spelling error, please, notify us by selecting that text and pressing Ctrl+Enter. ← Photography, Or The Writing Of Light by Jean Baudrillard Baudrillard as Pataphysicist: Unknowledge Production for the Pluriverse → Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published. Required !elds are marked * Comment * https://www.baudrillard-scijournal.com/chambers-of-the-past-and-f…-the-simulated-worlds-of-baudrillard-cyberpunk-and-the-metaverse/ Seite 6 von 7 Chambers of the past and future. The simulated worlds of Baudrillard, Cyberpunk and the Metaverse – BAUDRILLARD NOW 2024/02/08, 12:48 Name * Email * Website Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. 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