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more thoughts on william gibson's pattern recognition
apophenia
"making connections where none previously existed . . ."
Cool Hunting
"Stuff from the intersection of design, culture and technology"
patternhunting.com
"tracking the spread of ideas, technologies and social change" --again?
Dave Karlotski Review
"In 'Pattern Recognition' Gibson finds this same beauty in the present, in our real, actual, non-fictional present: the beauty and wonder of a G4 Cube, of a black mechanical Curta calculator, of Google, of a meticulous reconstruction of a WWII jacket, of a lonely man falling in love with a made-up woman on the Internet, the beauty of brands and products and shifting subcultures, the unabashed beauty of our actual strange, sad, spinning world."
Pattern Hunter
"tracking the spread of ideas, technologies and social change"
fan site
"William Gibson fans
An Entertainment & Arts tribe
For fans of the author william gibson"
William Gibson Bibliography / Mediagraphy
"The chronology of the 'Sprawl' series is Johnny Mnemonic short story - New Rose Hotel short story - Burning Chrome short story - Neuromancer - Count Zero - Mona Lisa Overdrive. Other stories in Burning Chrome fit more or less tightly into the imagined future of the series. By the time Gibson wrote the Skinner's Room short story - virtual light - Idoru - All Tomorrow's Parties sequence set closer in time, the near future had turned out different from the 'Sprawl' future."
The Face Detection Homepage
"This page is focused on the task of detecting faces in arbitrary images.
It is a tribute to Peter Kruizinga's Face Recognition Homepage."
Fundamental Study on Pattern Recognition by a New Experimental Method [f:f:f]
"Principle of displacement 3
Amount of displacement of boundary (F) is proportional to displacement force (F'= F+ + F- ) and inversely proportional to stability"
Ankle Biter [f:f:f]
"The footageheads, of course, were equally fascinating, mostly because I've already had such an experience. The fact that Gibson hadn't heard of the A.I. game before writing the book only added to my interest in his treatment of the F:F:F community. He actually captured the experience pretty well- the flame wars, the frustration with newbies, the watching and waiting for new updates, the obsession with each tiny detail, the drive to figure out just Who is behind this, anyway. It all sounded so familiar and comforting to me; since the A.I. game, there hasn't really been a project that held my attention in the same way, probably because the later efforts have lacked something that Gibson's footagemaker and the A.I. puppetmasters actually managed to get- vast resources for production without the expectation of profitability."
Mercurial on Curtas
"...these little Curtas are then magnificent: they provide a glimpse of a space in which the technology does not depend on the magic over electrons, but on a mastery over common tools, levers, springs, wheels. It is something approachable and tangible, a somber contrast to the ethereousness of an iMac, the gaudy design of a blog."
babblogue [review]
"PR, I've just realised, is an ironic shorthand for the book when you consider its focus. The protagonist, Cayce Pollard, is a "coolhunter", someone who brings what could be the Next Big Thing to the attention of the marketing droids so they can market and package it."
kwc blog [analysis]
"Parallel between Cayce's cathartic digging of the grey muck at the dig
and 9-11 rescuers searching for survivors in the WTC rubble. Digging
for her father. Also similar to Nora's quest to map the t-shaped
detonator in her head."
Ian Simmons [review]
"Cayce Pollard, has a grounding mantra: 'He took a duck in the face at 250 knots'; Gibson's writing serves to remind us that these days we are taking the future in the face at 250 knots."
disconcertingdotnet with Andy
"I'd just like to point out that the cover of my copy of Pattern Recognition looks much better than the US cover that the MT-Amazon plugin shows down there. Also, my Ian Rankin book covers are much better looking than the US versions. I'm not sure why Americans get such cheesy looking covers."
Scott 2.5 [duck in the face]
"I wish I had a mantra like that. Something to help me cope with lifes little nasties.
Blown fuse?
Duck in the face
Humilliated in airport security check?
Duck in the face
Gruesome traffic accident, computer breaks, parking ticket? More ducks, more faces, all intersecting at speeds of exactly two hundred and fifty knots."
VOYAGE TO THE RED CONTINENT by Terry Bisson
"Paul was invited last summer by the VOLGACON
organizers, Igor Tolokonnikov and Boris Zavgorodny, who
liked his Sugar Rain; he suggested they invite me. The big
stars, Bruce Sterling, Bill Gibson, Fred Pohl, Lucius
Shepard, Locus publisher Charles Brown, Brian Aldiss, have
cancelled."
Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping [footage]
"Many will feel uncomfortable to learn of Underhill's underhanded research methods -- he studies hours of retail surveillance camera footage as if it were the Zapruder film, his observations bolstered by the notes of in-store trackers who, unbeknownst, stand beside mall rats and observe them in situ. But take a little comfort knowing that we are fickle beasts, and according to Underhill, 'Shopping, for all we know about it, remains a mystery.'"
f o o t a g e
"Peter Weir is attached to direct the thriller PATTERN RECOGNITION, based on the novel by William Gibson, for Anonymous Content and Warner Bros. Weir will co-write the script with David Arata. The story follows the adventures of a marketing expert who finds herself in a dangerous puzzle when she's hired to track down the source of a strange collection of video footage on the Internet."
Narr@tive: Digital Storytelling 2/2 [footage]
"The obsession with the footage in Pattern Recognition — from print and film critical perspectives, not new media ones; and also from code-cracking ones — provided a view of several new ways that works in digital media are experiences, even when they don't do computation, select from a database, or otherwise act interactively."
Stranded in the Jungle--33 [footage]
"The scene is a crowded bar, where various shady deals are going down. Everything is murky and fragmented. The lighting is low and indirect, sometimes red, sometimes blue. There are no establishing shots, so we cannot see the room as a whole. Instead, there are closeups, in shallow focus. The actors' profiles barely emerge from the shadows. The space behind them is flat and fuzzy. Their glances don't match as they are supposed to."
A Requiem for the Fall of the Petal
"With the repeated media footage in which the two airplanes crashed toward the World Trade Center and the collapse of the towers, every person inevitably put oneself in the position to find a meaning or theory to understand the incident. In his first 'post-millennium' novel, Pattern Recognition, William Gibson makes his female protagonist witness this unforgettable historical incident along with the concurrent micro-event of 'a single petal fall' (135) at the display window of an antique shop in SoHo."
Conquering Consumerspace
Marketing Strategies for a Branded World
"Teenage girls in Japan exhibit what science fiction writer William Gibson calls 'techno-cultural suppleness'--a willingness to grab something new and use it for their own ends--matched by no other group on earth."
Singularity [poetry]
Near the end of chapter 15, Gibson gives Cayce a brief epiphany in the midst of the attack on the World Trade Center:
As the elevator doors
close behind her,
she closes her eyes
and sees the dry petal,
falling. The loneliness
of objects. Their secret
lives. Like seeing
something move
in a Cornell box.
Cyberpunk Literature
Professor Alex Reid (suny Cortland) weblog-- He also advises neovox--
Outlandish Josh blog entry
headscan
"He introduced in the '80s many concepts and ideas that are now common in popular culture. He coined words like the matrix, cyberspace and microsoft. The movie The Matrix is strongly influenced by his work. Gibson's unique writing style, invented vocabulary and dark future world all combined to impress us."
Lost in Translation parallels PR?
Compare Bob Harris' journey in Lost in Translation with Cayce's trip through Tokyo. Same feeling? Or maybe Charlotte's experience in Japan is closer to Cayce's experience. Same tone? Seems authentic as Gibson's vision is authentic.
Collecting things drives Virek in Count Zero and Bigend in PR. Juxtapose the ending of Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark with the ending of Citizen Kane then compare the urge to collect--one by a government and the other by a millionaire--then, see Virek and Bigend's pursuit in new light. Do they want to deprive the masses? Exclusivity versus inclusiveness--there is this in both CZ and PR where Marly is in the know and Cayce is in the know: Knowing versus knowledge. Both are savvy rather than smart.
Marly in Count Zero and Cayce in PR are immersed in stuff: Marly in artsy things and Cayce in fashion. Cayce operates within context of consumables she hates--she rejects the aquisition of these things and cuts off tags and logos from her wardrobe. She wants footage author who has depleted video of particularity and detail--the urge to specify versus the universal or anonymous.
Bryan Alexander's wiki on PR
Bryan Alexander's blog entry on PR
Concise listing (with links) of many reviews
"In Pattern Recognition, William Gibson (author of Neuromancer) leaves the science fiction of the future and brings us a novel set squarely in the present. Cayce Pollard is a 'coolhunter,' someone who is physically attuned to logos and patterns and is a freelance marketing consultant. She's hired to find the source of mysterious clips of movie footage that have appeared on the internet to see if they can be used for a marketing campaign. Cayce is also trying to solve the disappearance of her father during the Sept. 11 tragedy. Her search takes her from London to Tokyo to Moscow. It's a trip through both modern technology and the human soul and the interactions between the two. Most reviews of this book have been positive. The San Francisco Chronicle says of Pattern Recognition, 'It's his best book in a long time, and perhaps his most accessible one ever.'"
FREDRIC JAMESON on PR in the New Left Review
FEAR AND LOATHING IN GLOBALIZATION
"Has the author of Neuromancer really ‘changed his style’? Has he even ‘stopped’ writing Science Fiction, as some old-fashioned critics have put it, thinking thereby to pay him a compliment?"
Gil Williamson's collection of scenes
Gil's images are intended to give a sense of place to locations in William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition".
David Hiltbrand interview with Gibson in Philly Inquirer
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