A Society of Simulations

An Essay by Koert van Mensvoort, from his blog http://www.nextnature.net/ where he has a lot of interesting material on Simulacra and much else besides. He begins this essay with the following quote: 

An interviewer once asked Pablo Picasso
 why he paints such strange pictures 
instead of painting things the way they are. Picasso asks the man what he means. The man then takes out a photograph
from his wallet and says, “This is my wife!”
 Picasso looks at the photo and then says: 
“isn’t she rather short and flat?”.

Says it all – download the paper either from his blog or from my own site.