If the historian has difficulty assessing events in the past, matters are worse for the contemporary critic who attempts to explore events which are still unfolding. Thus, it is not surprising that contemporary discourse about Post Modernism in architecture does not lend itself to a neat taxonomy, not least because the participants sometimes term themselves Post Modernists, and other times reject that label. It is possible, however, to distinguish between stylistic Post Modernism and theoretical Post Modernism. Stylistic Post Modernism is (...) that of the popular press — an architecture characterized by a departure from the stylistic canons of the Modern Movement. Its leading practitioners claim that the architecture of Modernism eschewed ornament, emphasized the expressive potential of functionalism only, and denied both history and the human element in architecture. (shrink)

This book marks an important evolution in Jean Baudrillard's thought as he leavesbehind his older and better-known concept of the "simulacrum" and tackles the new problem of digitaltechnology acquiring organicity. The resulting world of cold communication and its indifferentalterity, seduction, metamorphoses, metastases, and transparency requires a new form of response.Writing in the shadow of Marshall McLuhan, Baudrillard insists that the content of communication iscompletely without meaning: the only thing that is communicated is communication itself. He sees themasses writhing in an (...) orgiastic ecstasy of communications. Baudrillard navigates the Object'smaelstrom with the euphoria of the astronaut reentering Earth's atmosphere with no possibility ofassistance from Mission Control. (shrink)