Cool Memories Iii, 1991-95, by Jean Baudrillard. He treated the ideas of Marx, Freud and Nietzsche with much the same attitude that J.G. Ballard's characters brought to automobiles. They were sexiest when accelerated to high speeds and brought into collision. But with the total saturation of society by the media, cybernetics and mass production, the world has turned upside down.
All reality becomes virtual.
About a dozen years ago, Baudrillard's work started appearing in English translation with some regularity. And the timing could not have been better. The dissemination of his jargon during the late 1980s corresponded with the rise of the VCR, the home PC, the video game and the modem. To judge from the evidence of his journal, becoming an international intellectual superstar has not exactly been bad for his sex life. Plus, he wracks up a lot of frequent-flier miles.