"The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true."
Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, ed Mark Poster. Stanford University Press, 1998, pp.166-184.

The simulacra is defined as something that is 'an effigy, image, or representation'. Personally, I thought that this topic was very comparable, to ideas in William Gibson's "All Tomorrow's Parties". Basically, a simulacra could be compared to the character Rei Toei in the novel. Rei Toei is the clone of a non-existent model that, as described at the end, is cloned and re-created all over the world by the nanotechnology of the Lucky Dragon. Rei Toei is a purely abstract form. She does not exist at all and was created to fall in love with.
Simulacra are found in many other places in the novel; for example, the false babies, the inner decor of places, nanotechnology, etc. These false representations have been over done and over used that the originals have been forgotten. The false babies have become more popular than the actual living; replicas of the old are overtaking the new and real.
This novel definitely draws lines between the fictional and the truth; however, it seems to draw on the fictional representations intently, forgetting the real. In the futuristic dystopia, which William Gibson creates, the world is transfixed and run through the simulations and simulacra of the new age. The truth does not matter anymore, because the truth is seen as something that is old and has lost its relevance, due to the constant creation of past simulacra, its value is lost. For example, the decor of buildings that is supposed to simulate old 1940 decor is hard to distinguish because no one knows what it looks like anymore because it has been replicated and simulated and changed so many times.
William Gibson's novel really affected my perception of the reality and false reality. If the world did come to be a place like the one described in Gibson's novel, a place suppressed by technology, would it be the same? Would love, friendship, and family have a place in this world run by data and computers? The world depicted in this novel is very fictional, at this time; however I think that Gibson creates this mess of a world to allow society now to see that technology can overtake the world and cause the value of important things to be lost, like Laney's mind, which is solely driven to finding Harwood.
I personally hope that simulacra's will not take over our world and falsify creation. Truth cannot be lost and embodied by false depictions of the real, because if this happens personalities are wiped away and everything becomes lost in this sea of code we view as the Walled City. Gibson definitely caught my attention through his novel. So is a simulacra real, is this true? I don't think so.