In total these three definitions convey the ideas that the simulation is usually of a set of actions, and furthermore is deceitful in its display of "some situation or process." In comparison simulacrum is defined as "a material image, made as a representation of some deity, person, or thing," as "something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities," and as "a mere image, a specious imitation or likeness, of something" (OED).
Simulation is defined first as "the action or practice of simulating, with an intent to deceive," then as "a false assumption or display, a surface resemblance or imitation, of something," and finally as "the technique of imitating the behavior of some situation or means of a suitably analogous situation or apparatus" (OED online). The terms simulation and simulacrum have subtly different meanings. Beginning as a primarily visual representation, the simulacrum (provisionally: the image of a simulation) has since been extended theoretically, and in the recent theory exemplified by the work of Baudrillard functions as a catch-all term for systems still operating despite the loss of what previous meaning they had held. What are forged or represented are not likenesses of static entities, but instead the processes of feeling and experiencing themselves. The simulation differs from the image and the icon (and the simulacrum) in the active nature of its representation. When media reach a certain advanced state, they integrate themselves into daily "real" experience to such an extent that the unmediated sensation is indistinguishable from the mediated, and the simulation becomes confused with its source.
Media theorists, especially Jean Baudrillard, have been intensely concerned with the concept of the simulation in lieu of its interaction with our notion of the real and the original, revealing in this preoccupation media's identity not as a means of communication, but as a means of representation (the work of art as a reflection of something fundamentally "real"). Whether or not we live in a world of simulacra, the term is certainly important in light of how we view media.
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