To clarify:
Why read, in our course, baudrillard and deleuze, who wrote in the 70s and 80s, that is, in a pre-computer era? Once software takes command, there is a reversal of the truth claims of simulation: simulation provides access to the real. See, for example, this short review of a recent book on city planning and simulation:

Book Review: The New Science of Cities by Michael Batty

Nonetheless, baudrillard and deleuze, as prototypical post-modern thinkers, still provide the epistemological context in which "theory" operates today (as in the work of zabala and vattimo that lev recently noted). And that conjuncture – software and postmodern epistemology – is worth discussing.

To clarify:
Why read, in our course, baudrillard and deleuze, who wrote in the 70s and 80s, that is, in a pre-computer era? Once software takes command, there is a reversal of the truth claims of simulation: simulation provides access to the real. See, for example, this short review of a recent book on city planning and simulation:

Book Review: The New Science of Cities by Michael Batty

Nonetheless, baudrillard and deleuze, as prototypical post-modern thinkers, still provide the epistemological context in which "theory" operates today (as in the work of zabala and vattimo that lev recently noted). And that conjuncture – software and postmodern epistemology – is worth discussing.