Gibson is a stylist rather in the Joycian tradition instead of the Proustian writers I usually love. But more importantly Gibson is the voice of our times. His previous masterpiece, Neuromancer, is set in the future and is a violent and male world where the Internet is a place rather like a country. Gibson coined the word cyberspace to describe this "country". Pattern Recognition, his latest work, is set in our times and is non-violent and female but still about the Internet, in this case how its culture is affecting our culture, how the two are merging so to speak.
Here is a quote, slightly elided:
"Of course," he says, "we have no idea of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile." ... "We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition."
The book has several themes, all connected to the net. One is the nature of friends made over the net, long time friends that is, that one has had many many deep conversations with. These friends have something of the nature of childhood friendships which have survived into adulthood in so far as the people are known for their verbal impact rather than for their image or sociological impact. Children (and dogs) see people in a different way -- they see an inner essence and cannot be fooled by such trappings as wealth, beauty or circumstance. We would call the way children see an "interface" and the way adults see a different interface. Net friendships of long standing have something of the children's interface because what one "sees" is the projection of intellect and emotion in words, in this case words on a screen instead of words on paper.
Another theme is what is called "the footage" -- brief scenes from a strange and compelling film that are posted anonymously to the net. Here is a description:
"How much time have you spent with the actual footage?'
"Not much."
"How do you feel when you watch it?'
He looks down at his noodles, then up at her. "Lonely?"
"Most people find that that deepens. Becomes sort of polyphonic. Then there's a sense that it's going somewhere, that something will happen. Will change." She shrugs. "It's impossible to describe, but if you live with it for a while, it starts to get to you. it's just such a powerful effect introduced by so little actual screen time. I've never felt convinced that there's a recognized filmmaker around who can do that, although if you read the footage boards you'll see different directors constantly nominated."
"Or maybe it's the repetition. Maybe you've been looking at this stuff for so long that you've read all this into it. And talking with other people who've been doing the same thing."
"I've tried to convince myself of that. I've wanted to believe it, simply in order to let the thing go. But then I go back and look at it again and there's that sense of . . . I don't know. Of an opening into something. Universe? Narrative?"
Cayce (the female protagonist, pronounced "case" in analogy to the protagonist of Neuromancer) eventually finds an email address connected with the footage and sends this message to that address:
"Someone showed me one segment and I looked for more. I found a site where people discussed it, and I began to post there, asking questions. I can't tell you why, but it became very important to me, to all of us there. Parkaboy and Ivy and Maurice and Filmy, all the others too. We went there whenever we could, to be with other people who understood. We looked for more footage. Some people stayed out surfing, weeks at a time, never posting until someone discovered a new segment.
We don't know what you're doing, or why. Parkaboy thinks you're dreaming. Dreaming for us. Sometimes he sounds as though he thinks you're dreaming us. He has this whole edged-out participation mystique: how we have to allow ourselves so far into the investigation of whatever this is, whatever you're doing, that we become part of it. Hack into the system. Merge with it, deep enough that it, not you, begins to talk to us. He says it's like Coleridge, and De Quincy. He says that it's shamanic. That we may all seem to just be sitting there, staring at the screen, but really, some of us anyway, we're adventurers. We're out there, seeking, taking risks. In hopes, he says, of bringing back wonders. Trouble is, lately, I've been living that."
So these are some of the themes, all of which have to do with our experience of ourselves as part of the net which means that we experience ourselves as part of something that is virtual. And this, ironically enough, causes us to value those parts of ourselves that are the most human, the most emotionally connected. And we find this, more and more frequently, with those we converse with over the net.
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Paranoia, he said, was fundamentally egocentric, and every conspiracy theory served in some way to aggrandize the believer.Highlighted by 178 Kindle readers- Far more creativity, today, goes into the marketing of products than into the products themselves, athletic shoes or feature films.Highlighted by 142 Kindle readers
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Top reviews from other countries
Gavin Sheedy
Most excellent. Starts out as one beast and morphs gently into something else.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 4, 2024
Devika
Like Neuromancer, Pattern Recognition creates a culture
Reviewed in India on June 19, 2017
