Jean Baudrillard, a French philosopher and sociologist, wrote dozens of books. But his ideas may have found their biggest platform in the movie The Matrix. Baudrillard died Tuesday at the age of 77.

Few philosophers score a book-to-film treatment, and fewer still become blockbusters. Jean Baudrillard-the scholar whose idea of simulation both inspired and appeared in The Matrix (1999)-is the rare ...

When Baudrillard writes that we live in an age of simulacra, he is not wrong. The phenomena he describes can be observed in corner video stores, supermarket aisles, and neighborhood gas stations as ...