Lyotard, Baudrillard, Language Games and Simulacra, Oh My!

Modern society has misplaced its assurance in the metanarratives of the past. As a result, French philosopher Jean Lyotard recognizes that the modern collective is organized around 'language games' that are used primarily to authenticate people's behavior. In these games a person attempts to persuade others to recognize his or her point of view as being valid. Each avowal takes on the appearance of the movement of a knight or pawn within a complicated game of chess. Jean Lyotard comprehends these games as having developed from the narrative itself, first through such things as passing along folk tales and legends and then toward the scientific language that developed over the last few hundred years. This scientific language became a game because it was dependent upon evidence used to challenge arguments raised against them. As the social order penetrated into the post-modern era, however, faith went missing somewhere in the denotative language games, to be replaced by language games that utilized more technical jargon. Truth itself is no longer the overriding component; it has been replaced by a competition to discover if the game is actually useful within the human arena. This has resulted in the knowledge essentially being held hostage by capitalist ideology to the point that it has been transformed into little more than just another commodity to be bought, sold or bartered. Lyotard associates the increase in the significance of knowledge to the permeation of computers throughout all levels of society.