Jean Baudrillard, cultural theorist and philosopher, passed yesterday in Paris. Best known for poststructural and postmodern critiques of society, Baudrillard was one of the most influential thinkers to examine and theorize mediated communication. His seminal work Simulacra and Simulation, introduces the idea of hyperreality, "the simulation of something which never really existed," and famously describes Disneyland as "the first great toxic excrement of a hyperreal civilization."

January 2006 interview with Baudrillard in Télérama [fr].

Here the NYT and Libération obituaries.