More Gibson Reading
We have no future because our present is too volatile. We only have risk management. The spinning of the given moment’s scenarios. Pattern recognition.
-William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Mark, I highly recommend Pattern Recognition. Sure, Neuromancer is influential and everything the Wakoski brothers hoped to create in the Matrix, but Pattern Recognition stunned me due to its exceptional descriptions of the highly volatile and disruptive environment of our 21st Century lives.
I’ve also read All Tomorrow’s Parties, The Difference Engine (co-authored with Bruce Sterling) and just finished Idoru. All Tomorrow’s Parties has some interesting examinations of autonomous zones and their relationship to culture:
‘Alternative subcultures. They were a critical aspect of industrial civilization in the two previous centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternative social strategies… But they became extinct.’
‘Extinct?’
‘We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain critical growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters. They went the way of geography in general. Autonomous zones do offer a certain insulation from the monoculture, but they seem not to lend themselves to recommodification, not in the same way.’
I found The Difference Engine to be a delightful introduction to steam punk, but hardly earth-shattering. I enjoyed Idoru, but didn’t encounter any passages that compelled me to underline them.
Ultimately, it is Gibson’s powers of trend identification and cultural forecasting that draws me to his work. He spins out the implications of alternative pathways with internal coherence and immediacy. Pattern Recognition was the work that made me realize this, and therefore if Mark is going to read one more Gibson book, then it ought to be that.
…of course, I haven’t gotten my hands on Spook Country yet, so all of this might be amended…
” Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters”
Whoa…straight out of Howard Gardner’s description of ” maker” Extraordinairy Minds ( Einstein, Freud..etc.)-developing on the periphery of great civilizational centers - access to, in which to counterpoint/contrast/be inspired to challenge but not enough attention from to be smothered before the new paradigm is finished gestating.
Comment by zenpundit — August 26, 2007 @ 1:43 am
Nifty. Some nice Thomas Kuhn connections to be made there as well, I’d expect. Gibson excels at wrapping very deep dynamics into his novels.
Comment by Wiggins — August 27, 2007 @ 5:06 pm
Ah, I like that opening quote. I don’t remember it, but it relates to something else I recently posted on D5GW, concerning the Cheaters, Suckers, and Grudgers of our modern world. Primarily, that today’s Grudgers have too much difficulty deciding if others in the world who are affecting them are Cheaters, Suckers, or Grudgers, and thus are always caught in the present.
Very weird, the sudden corollary, which I’ll have to post at D5GW.
Previously, Arherring and I had a very interesting discussion of Pattern Recognition in terms of the subject of 5GW. (Later cross-posted to D5GW.)
Comment by Curtis Gale Weeks — August 29, 2007 @ 5:33 am
For me, it’s the money quote of the book. Comes in a brilliant passage where Bigend expounds on the consequences of an increasingly volatile now.
Comment by Wiggins — August 29, 2007 @ 12:23 pm