Robbing shamelessly from the blog James sent us the link to, I have picked out this little nugget...

Technoculture and hyperreality
In his essay of the same name, Frederic Jameson called postmodernism the “cultural logic of late capitalism.” According to his logic, society has moved beyond capitalism into the information age, in which we are constantly bombarded with advertisements, videos, and product placement. Many postmodern authors reflect this in their work by inventing products that mirror actual advertisements, or by placing their characters in situations in which they cannot escape technology.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/01/27/030127fi_fiction

This seemed to follow my train of thought quite nicely and a lot easier to understand than Baudrillard!

In simply terms, nothing is real, copies of copies are being created infinitum. The information age has just pushed this to the limit and to the forefront of every ones mind, with photography, film and instant messaging forcing itself upon us every where we go.

Pastiche or 'cut and paste' art, music and literature are blooming. The postmodern obsession with 'retro' cannot re make the past it merely apes the bits it liked best. Nauseating teenages carrying retro satchels with pictures of cartoons on they never watched because its retro. No it is not retro it is hyperreal, a reality all of its own not a copy of the past because the past did really exist in that way.

So I think I am at last getting this whole simulcrum thing without all the Baudrillard waffle, phew!!

This to me is the most perfect example of pastiche postmodern music you will ever hear, I hope the link works! (If it doesn't please let me know and I will try it again)

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=dj+yoda+how+to+cut+and+paste&oq=dj+yoda&gs_l=youtube.1.2.0l10.2548.4487.0.6968.7.6.0.1.1.0.95.518.6.6.0...0.0...1ac.1.11.youtube.ToshX8NKctQ

Ahhh the satisfying sight of a blank page! The sound of my own voice given room to witter on at my pleasure....I may never shut up!

Begging the question is this my 'real' voice? Or a carefully constructed persona? An online avatar, devoid of my actual personality, lacking in the traits both pleasant and irritating that makes me human.

By carefully constructing an article in which I hope to convey jocular speech with intelligent thought, I am creating a virtual 'ME,' an avatar to roam the web seeking conversation and (lets be honest here) approval for my words, comforting my ego with love and virtual companionship.

I am a sucker for this sort of flattery so have joined many blogs, forums and social networking sites, in order to put my own ten pence into things, creating a slightly different version of 'me' every time.
These simulacra of myself, all contain elements of me, so which one is the 'real' me?

 To try and help clear my confusion I turned to a book Simulacra and Simulation  (J. Baudrillard 1981) And blimey was I mistaken! I have never felt so stupid reading a text in all my life! I didn't even understand the first page, here is a little example.....
.
"It is no longer really the real, because no imaginary envelopes it anymore. It is hyperreal produced from a radiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere". (J.Baudrillian 1981 p.2)

Ummmmm??

So I tried again and cheated with good old Wikipedia for an answer that I would at least be able to understand!

"A simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal" 

 (Massumi, Brian. "Realer than Real: The Simulacrum According to Deleuze and Guattari." http://www.anu.edu.au/hrc/first_and_last/works/realer.htm retrieved 2 May 2007)

So.... my online  mini me's are not copies of me but true beings in their own right? This could get complicated..........

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/30/tech/innovation/apple-coke-top-brands/index.html

I saw this story yesterday and I thought this is the result of our global human obsession of being permanently connected to each other. Communication technology has now overtaken the human need for liquid, more vital to our survival than quenching thirst. New Tech is taking over the world and perhaps its time for literature to catch up?!

Blogs as a medium appear to me rather like the mist on this foggy Autumn morning, ephemeral, intangible, a fractured non existence. 

Or in other words, down right cloudy!!!

The blurring of the literary lines is obvious, can any of the myriad of works found online be considered Canonical? Would we want them to be? If they have no physical shape or form, no presence on tree pulped paper can they even be considered literature? Are the messages hidden within literature becoming lost in all this fog? Surely it is all a bunch of drivel written by nobodies?!

However if as a race we consider ourselves evolving, becoming more environmentally aware, then surely the medium is all? The out dated, polluting, tree destroying paper back should be banned forever in favour of the green New Tech approach?

After all online literature can reach limitless readership with minimal financial cost to us humans and minimal environmental loss to the planet. No vast printing presses, no shipping containers, no chemical dyes, no fossil fuel burning lorries, no carting of vast amounts of reading material around the globe. A single click of a button transforms your private document into a visual aid more public than any book or newspaper, a million people may view your work within a fraction of a second.

No more will the written world be dominated by a select few publishing houses, demi gods of free speech. Tossing without thought years of toil into the waste paper basket because it failed to come up to their opinion of what a 'book' should be. Authors rejected out of hand over and over because they refuse to be pigeon holed into copy paste literature for the masses.

The internet has created for the first time in human history true free speech. So cheap and easy to operate remote villages all over the world previously cut off from modern technology are becoming connected to this world wide web of wonder and knowledge.
We only have to look at the power of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Google in the recent conflicts around the world to see how effective a communication tool it has become. Would the gas attacks of Syria have been discovered without the images of burnt children caught and broadcast on Twitter?  Despotic Government control weakens with every day that passes,as smart phones transmit real time stories of genocide and torture.

This New Tech should not be viewed as a medium without a message, but as a medium with the only message.
Democratisation of the written word is all.