"Closer to our own time, philosophy has encountered many new rivals. To start with, the human sciences and especially sociology wanted to replace it. But because philosophy, taking refuge in universals, increasingly misunderstood its vocation for creating concepts, it was no longer clear what was at stake. Was it a matter of giving up the creation of concepts in favor of a rigorous human science or, alternatively, of transforming the nature of concepts by turning them into collective representations or world views created by the vital, historical and spiritual forces of different peoples? Then it was the turn of epistemology, of linguistics, or even of psychoanalysis and logical analysis. In successive challenges, philosophy confronted increasingly insolent and calamitous rivals that Plato himself would have never imagined in his most comic moments. Finally the most shameful moment came when computer science, marketing, design, and advertising, all the disciplines of communication, seized hold of the word concept itself and said, "This is our concern, we are the creative ones, we are the ideas men! We are the friends of the concept, we put it in our computers." Information and creativity, concept and enterprise: there is already an abundant bibliography. Marketing has preserved the idea of a certain relationship between the concept and the event. But here the concept has become the set of product displays (historical, scientific, artistic, sexual, pragmatic) and the event has become the exhibition that sets up various displays and the "exchange of ideas" it is supposed to promote. The only events are exhibitions, and the only concepts are products that can be sold. Philosophy has not remained unaffected by the general movement that replaced critique with sales promotion. The simulacrum, the simulation of a packet of noodles, has become the concept; and the one who packages the product, commodity, or work of art has become the philosopher, conceptual persona, or artist. How could philosophy, an old person, compete against young executives in a race of the universals of communication for determining the marketable form of the concept, Merz? Certainly, it is painful to learn that the Concept indicates a society of information services and engineering. But the more philosophy comes up against shameless and inane rivals and encounters them at its very core, the more it feels driven to fulfill the task of creating concepts that are aerolites rather than commercial products. It gets the giggles, which wipe away its tears. So the question of philosophy is the singular point where concepts and creation are related to each other."(Gilles Deleuze, What is Philosophy?)
