The fact of this implosion of contents, of the absorption of meaning, of the evanescence of the medium itself, of the reabsorption of every dialectic of communication in a total circularity of the model, of the implosion of the social in the masses, may seem catstrophic and desperate. But this is only the case in light of the idealism that dominates our whole view of information. We all live by a passionate idealism of meaning and of communication, by an idealism of communication through meaning, and, from this perspective, it is truly the catastrophe of meaning that lies in wait for us.
But one must realize that “catastrophe” has this “catastrophic” meaning of end and annihilation only in relation to a linear vision of accumulation, of productive finality, imposed on us by the system.
[Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, p. 83]