Christopher Wink

Simulacra and Simulation

The industrial mass-market modern age brought forth intertextuality, hyperreality and meaning implosion. These concepts — that media reflect other media, rather than reality, until we can no longer separate truth from story — is a defining princiople of postmodernism.

That’s how French philosopher and controversial academic Jean Baudrillard put it in his influential 1981 treatise Simulacra and Simulation. I read excerpts as an undergrad, and his other works. I just reread the 1994 English translation by Sheila Faria Glaser.

It’s a challenging read, but like all good philosophy, whether you disagree with it all or not, Baudrillard certainly makes you think. Once strawberries were a whole food to eat seasonally and locally. Then they became an ingredient, and then chemically recreated as a flavor. How does that change us?

Below I share my notes for future reference.

On moral relativism

(This was originally a social video, and below is my script)

Most people totally misuse the phrase “product of their time.” Here’s the fix.

There’s a classic trap in moral relativism debates. We say, “Well, people back then didn’t know any better.” But here’s the key idea from moral realism in philosophy: something can be true, even if most people at the time don’t recognize it.

A vision for Philadelphia 250 years in the future

I’m deeply proud and honored to have helped develop a vision statement for Philadelphia for the next 250 years. An earlier version was shared last summer here. I shared this new version more widely for one last round of resident feedback in an Inquirer op-ed here.

The statement, a place to give feedback and information on the process can be found at PH.LY.

Below is the vision statement as it stands now.

Is a river alive

What if a river isn’t just scenery or infrastructure—but a living being with rights, memory, and agency? If a corporation has personhood, then certainly ecological systems can.

That’s from the much-publicized lyrical 2025 book Is a River Alive by British writer Robert Macfarlane. It’s gotten heaps of praise, though I’ll admit I found it an over-stretched poem at times. It felt a bit pompous but I so appreciate the book’s premise.

Below I share notes for my future reference.

This is what a robotics ecosystem looks like

A robotics ecosystem connects education to workforce training to entrepreneurship and industry. Many parts and components fit in, overlap and even compete but contribute to a shared goal.

While out there, I filed a story on driverless freight company Aurora, and on a new mural series.

That’s what I got to in a panel discussion I led on the main stage of the Pittsburgh Robotics Discovery Day last Thursday. Below watch video of the panel.

Improving gender equality at home

Becoming an equal partner is the man’s glass ceiling.

Most American households are dual-income earners, and even in these, men contribute less domestically than women. Gender plays an outsized role. But even in same-sex relationships, one partner seems entirely aloof of what the other does domestically. Culture seems to make this all difficult to overcome, so a manual helps.

That’s the spirit of the 2022 book Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home, written by Kate Mangino, who has a PhD in social development.

“It is harder and more time-consuming to be a good mother than to be a good father, and it is easier for a woman to fail in motherhood than for a man to fail in fatherhood,” Mangino writes. “We have set the caregiving bar too high for mothers and too low for fathers.”

Mangino makes great effort to speak to relationships with different genders, while reflecting that close to 90% of American households have those in a male and female roles. Those “male-coded” and “female-coded” dynamics are a theme. I found the book challenging at times — sometimes productively, and a few times because I just flatly disagreed with the author’s framing. But I respect and appreciate Mangino’s contribution. It helped me marriage, and will help others. I recommend it. Buy it here.

Below I share my notes for future reference.

Present Shock

“We tend to exist in a a distracted present where forces on the periphery are magnified and those immediately before us are ignored.”

That’s from Douglas Rushkoff’s 2013 book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now.

Rushkoff is a media theorist and professor who is credited with the term “viral media.” In the early 2010s, as social media and digital tools were in the ascent, he put forward his “present shock,” as a kind of response to the 1970s concept of “future shock.”

Toffler’s “future shock” was the stress and disorientation caused by too much rapid change arriving from the future, while Rushkoff’s “present shock” is the stress and disorientation caused by an always-on, real-time culture that collapses time into a perpetual now.

New technologies can reduce the time and energy we spend on less complex tasks. As Rushkoff writes: “We are also in danger of squandering this cognitive surplus in the trivial pursuit of the immediately relevant.”

Below I share my notes for future references.

We didn’t remove gatekeepers; we replaced them with algorithms.

I joined CURRENTLY, the slick video interview series from the creative agency [Electric Kite], hosted by principal Kevin Renton, to talk about local journalism, entrepreneurship and how we build healthier information ecosystems. (I wrote more about it on Technical.ly here)

Themes we hit: why geography still matters online; why “friction” is a feature of community; how luck shapes entrepreneurial outcomes; and why journalism is a strategy you attach to sustainable business models.

Below the full video, and a few points I want to stand out.

How to write short

All writers are either putter-inners, or the taker-outers.

We either write sparingly, and then add more in. Or, we over-write, and then edit down. (Count me as an over-writer). It helps to know who we are, so we can then focus on how to keep tight and clear prose.

That’s from the 2013 book How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times by the journalist and journalism scholar Roy Peter Clark. Below I share my notes for future reference.