The Girl at the Bar Has a Blackberry

You know you spent too long in school when you're at a club and you start thinking about Hyperreality and Jean Baudrillard. That was the case last night, a night that could have been considered hyperreal for a variety of reasons, most of which won't make sense to people reading this. But the kicker during the evening was when I pulled out my Blackberry and realized that my friend Roo was online. I was in a bar where I didn't know a soul, where I was too tired to drink or dance, so I started instant messaging him. I told him where I was and he mentioned that people might think that I have issues, a variety of issues.

"That might be the case," I answered. "Were it not for the fact that half the people here are on their phones."

And that's when I started thinking about when I read Simulacra and Simulation. After postmodern French philosophy starts to make sense, it will invade your mind at socially inappropriate moments, like when you're trying hang out in a nightclub and IM your friend without looking like too much of a geek. I started to think of hyperreality in terms of the people I see everywhere interacting with other humans over a smart phone, a symbol of communication, as opposed to actually communicating with the people who are in the room with them.  And I wondered, if Baudrillard had lived long enough to see the iPhone or the Blackberry Storm, what would he think?