Simacrulum

See also: [Clone] [Simulation] [Authenticity and Originality] [Autographnic vs Allographic] [Philip K. Dick] [The Performed WEB (including programming)] [Realism Now (essay by Linda Nochlin)]

Simulacrum

A simacrulum is something that looks/acts like a certain thing. However, un-like a clone or a duplicate of the orignal its internal design, behaviour, appearance may vary. Thus, in ST-TNG ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"), Commander Data (portrayed by Brent Spiner) is a simacrulum of a human. His behaviour (eg, he can-not or will-not use contractions of verbs) mimics (or at least partially reproduces) that of humans. The concept of an "ersatz" thing ??defn?? can represent both the simarcrulum and the clone of a thing - but probably not both simultaneously.

Important works

Chronology