Any unique image that you desire probably already exists on the internet or in some database... the problem today is no longer how to create the right image, but how to find an already existing one.
Lev Manovich... while in theory digital technology entails the flawless replication of data, its actual use in contemporary society is characterized by the loss of data, degradation, and noise; the noise which is even stronger than that of traditional photography.
Lev Manovich... what is faked [by the computerization of image-making], of course, is not reality, but photographic reality, reality as seen by the camera lens. In other words, what computer graphics have (almost) achieved is not realism, but rather only photorealism - the ability to fake not our perceptual and bodily experience of reality but only its photographic image.
Lev ManovichOnce we came to accept the photographic image as reality, the way to its future simulation was open.
Lev Manovich