Are We Living in a Technological or a Cultural Simulation? (and what to do about it)

Here are some excerpts from my essay published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Communication and Media Studies, July 2026. The full text can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/15ooHy1Hnc__N2VZIJZ0CHmUJSfHFlJyg/view

This theoretical article examines the ongoing debate over whether contemporary humanity lives in a technological simulation or a cultural simulation. While the technological simulation hypothesis, promoted by thinkers such as Nick Bostrom and Elon Musk, suggests that reality may be an artificial environment created by an advanced civilization, the article argues that cultural simulation provides a more convincing explanation of present-day social life. Drawing primarily on Jean Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra and hyperreality, the study contends that simulation emerged as a cultural phenomenon long before digital technologies intensified its effects. The article analyzes several influential science fiction works—including The Matrix, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Truman Show, and Ready Player One—to demonstrate how popular culture reflects and critiques the increasing dominance of simulation, virtuality, and mediated reality. Furthermore, the discussion connects these cultural representations to contemporary developments such as artificial intelligence, algorithmic governance, big data, social media, virtual reality, and the metaverse. Rather than interpreting technological simulation as an entirely new condition, the study proposes that digital technologies amplify pre-existing structures of hyperreality by replacing direct experience with coded representations and algorithmically mediated interactions. Consequently, the challenges associated with post-truth politics, surveillance capitalism, and algorithmic personalization should be understood within a broader cultural framework of simulation. The article concludes that critical media literacy, philosophical reflection, and a renewed epistemological perspective are necessary to understand and resist increasingly sophisticated forms of digital simulation. Ultimately, cultural
simulation precedes technological simulation both historically and conceptually, providing a more comprehensive framework for interpreting contemporary digital society.

Billionaires like Elon Musk, whose main interests (besides undermining democracy) are making money and developing advanced technologies, and futurist philosophers like Nick Bostrom, who focus heavily on technology, believe that we might be living in a technological simulation created by a super-evolved alien civilization somewhere in the galaxy. This civilization could have achieved Artificial General Intelligence, built super-powerful computers, and developed Virtual Realities indistinguishable from physical worlds. Musk has speculated that the chance we are living in such a simulation is 99.9%. Bostrom’s thesis is known as the simulation hypothesis or argument.

Conversely, postmodern media theorists such as Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard argue that we live in a cultural simulation, also called hyperreality. After World War II, Western societies developed a consumer and media culture centered on television, film, advertising, organized leisure, shopping malls, cult of celebrities, and politics as a form of entertainment. In postmodernism, images and verbal rhetoric replace the physical reality and social facts they are meant to represent. The copy replaces the original. In a reversal, codes and models take precedence and shape daily life. The disappearance of reality does not happen through some supposed betrayal of “reality” by virtuality but through an overload of “reality” shown in high-resolution graphics. The culture of what the ancient Greek philosopher Plato already called rhetoric—defined as images and discourse—creates its own “hyperreality,” making the old, familiar reality fade away. Signs become independent and disconnected from their “referents.” Reality and the image move into each other’s spaces. Simulation replaces representation.

In science fiction movies such as The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, World on a Wire, and Don’t Worry, Darling, the idea is presented that what we consider our physical reality—the world around us—is actually a complex, detailed three-dimensional computer simulation. In Inception, the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio uses a small spinning top as his sole means of determining whether he is in reality or in a simulation.

The race is on to become the first multi-billion-dollar mega-company to develop AGI and reach the groundbreaking milestone of surpassing human intelligence with Artificial General Intelligence, an achievement we can either celebrate or fear. This predicted event, expected within the next few decades, is known as “the singularity.” Bostrom has described it as “superintelligence.” Microsoft, the largest investor in OpenAI, and Google, owner of DeepMind (setting aside for now the powerful Chinese AI chatbots like DeepSeek), are key contenders in this race. It serves their interests to excite the public with sensational, history-altering capabilities that AGI will possess, often presented as public relations statements supported by supposedly brilliant philosophical and scientific expertise. In a sense, the idea of our “reality” as a technological simulation programmed by post-AGI aliens is one aspect of the hype surrounding the purported incredible breakthroughs AGI will achieve. However, it is also essential to treat the idea with philosophical seriousness and to engage in rational debate…

The Oasis [of Ready Player One] is an immersive gaming system where capitalist elements thrive within a post-capitalist economy. In the Oasis, players succeed in challenges and collect items: your coins, your money, your clothes, your weapons. In this virtual world, you experience the core aspects of capitalism—desire, speed, ecstasy, destruction, crashes, and domination. Meanwhile, in the utopian design, the physical world would remain a region of democratic socialism with universal human rights. Socialism in the physical world and capitalism in the virtual world.