Someone with the same squirrel attention who starts a lot of books a rarely finishes one. I think for a philosophy book, it is quite accessible in the sense that it builds on common knowledge and known cultural phenomenon, not that much on prior theory you must have read. Regarding the language it is not that accessible, Baudrillard (in the culture of french intellectuals of the time) has a very dense, complex language. But it is not a dry philosophy lecture, its more like hackerman punk-rock philosophy.

The book consists of a set of loosely related essays, and the first essay "the precession of simulacra" is just roughly 40 pages. If you read that, squirrel brain is happy and you got most of the books content. The rest is just explaining this concept on modern (slightly outdated now, but culturally still relevant), cultural phenomenon. Once you understand his concepts of "simulacrum" and "image" it is very readable. Later he uses his concepts of "economic and symbolic exchange" which come from his earlier book Symbolic Exchange and Death. The concept is quite easy to grasp, the book is good but you don't have to have read it. The rest of the book builds on these concepts. So the key to making this book accessible is understanding these concepts, which for me took some thinking and time to actually understand deeply.

But, and that's important, once you worked through the book, it is a phenomenal tool to understand modern culture. So is it accessible: theoretically yes, linguistically not, but its worth it.

"readable and accessible" are some of the last words I would use to describe the book.

Tried to read it, gave up.

It's hard but if you read it once for the vibes and then pay closer attention the next time you go through it's not too hard. Baudrillard is a Zizek-level philosopher in the sense that his own celebrity is kind of at the centre of most of his work (this doesn't mean it's simple, dumb or low-quality, it's pretty interesting, it's just also kinda sci-fi/fanciful as opposed to hardcore logic-chopping or idk complex historiography like some of his contemporaries)

Its not great. I suggest reading Villem Flusser instead.

Depends on your proficiency. As a former philosophy student I find it one of the more readable books. It still is probably hard to wrap your head around as a layperson not used to this kind of theoretical thinking.

But what it is not: Some authors use word plays, complexity and semantics to make their ideas appear more sophisticated than they are. This is not that.

> It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.

Do you think it is because Ellul is hard to read or because Kaczynski is just more well-known for obvious reasons?

> How readable and accessible is this book?

As with most works of cultural theory you need to read it few times, and also check other works of his. Otherwise you may end up reducing concepts from this book to social media or AI slop.

Moreover, books like this usually are just phrases in a long dialectical process. For example, it is useful to read Debord first, and then move to Baudrillard.