From reality to the hyperreality of simulation

Résumé

We live today in a new virtual and global space. Computers and electronic devices (smartphones) make us stay online, immersed in the cyberspace, in a network connected in an all-to-all system. An increasingly hyperreal world implies how our perception depends on simulations. The whole system is swamped by indeterminacy and reality is absorbed by the hyperreality of the simulation, says Baudrillard. Hyperreality and simulation replace and seem more real than reality itself. We must reflect on what the virtual is and what are its effects or consequences, since each new electronic medium or digital device brings new procedures, behaviors, and ways of being. Following a theoretical and conceptual approach, the aims of this study are: a) to understand the implications of the virtual and its effects, and b) to problematize the ordinary experiences of hyperreality that reshape and restructure patterns of culture and social interaction. The virtual is not just what Baudrillard defines as illusion. The virtual thinks for us. In the recent past, it was the opposite. We conclude that technology has accustomed us to virtual mediatization and now we perceive it as real without distinction, preferring the unlimited power of the illusory with its effects to the limitations of the real.