We have, on one hand, Cayce allegergic to brands. To the extreme of vomiting at the sight of a Michelin Man logo. She grinds the logos off of her jeans-buttons, and generally avoids anything so over promoted, corporate, consumer oriented. She is sickened by the image of such things, but not so much as the thought or the idea. After all, she makes her living working for such logo driven companies.
Yet she uses Macs with impunity.
How? Why?
OK, I'm not gonna let this degenerate into blatant Mac-bashing* here.
But, face it, Mac's are just about the most over promoted, corporatised and logo-centric products out there. A mac is a single, large, chunky piece of over-corporatised consumer-driven logo its self. Why don't they make Cayce sick?
Ok, a definition here:
Logo: N. A name, symbol, or trademark designed for easy and definite recognition, especially one borne on a single printing plate or piece of type.
If I put a HP, a Dell, a generic PC made by some geek in his room, and a G4, covered the logos and and showed it to, say, my brother, who, quote, "doesn't give a about computers", which PC would he be able to ID?
The Mac. (I actually saw him leafing through a computer mag and he couldn't recognise a dell, but took one look a pink iMac [side on] and pointed it out).
Granted, Macs might be better for graphic design, animation, movie editing (though I've never found it that way).
But when I ask people who own a mac why they bought one?
"They look soooo cool."
It's all a matter of style, really. That's all, especially for people like the engineering student I know who's one of their biggest advocates. They come in purty colours. All the UQ yuppie types I see around the uni's have them solely for the trend factor.
How can Cayce tolerate it? If she can't tolerate the maggot of the Michelin man, how can she stand the Apple it chews through (dodgy metaphor)?
Why didn't Gibson use generic PC boxes running Linux? It wouldn't have allowed this sort of paradox to occur. Something made by some techie working out of a tiny pore of a shop in the mass anonymity of a quiet suburb. Could've even tied in with her job, she could have made a trip to find out what sort of case mods geeks are going for, could've been working for Zalman or Antec.
It's kind of like a someone allergic to peanuts eating a Snickers.
It brings to a few conclusions:
1)She's not really that allergic.
2)She's adapted to it.
3)She's selective about certain brands - whether consciously or unconsciously.
4)A fourth response, one which I'll withhold for fear doing something akin to smoking near a leaky gas pipe.

This thread was spawned from ravasthi's reply to the "What's on Cayce's iPod?" thread:

quote:

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you're kidding, right?

Cayce, with an iPod? What would she do, scratch the engraving off the back? If the iPod (or anything Apple) isn't the most trademarked, pseudo-hipster gadget in existence, I don't know what is.

It's more likely she'd be allergic to it.

Disclaimer: I'm only halfway through the book, so if she does (with my luck, definitely) end up using one later in the book, I apologize in advance for my poorly thought-out response.

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*Though I'm sorely tempted.

You answer yourself. She can bear it because it is cool. It is so cool that she does not mind all the rest.

What makes the Mac cool any different to the 501 cool? Isn't it all one big bout of logophobia?
I know she mainly uses it not because owns one, but because Damien does...
On the other hand, Gibson doesn't come from a geek background like Stephenson, who has two homemade PC's at the moment. So I can forgive him for that.
It's been a while since I read the novel, though I have manage to find a e-version of it since mine book got nicked. I know her allergy varies, though, but is she immune to somethings?

A couple thoughts:

1. Both Macs used by Cayce in the book belong to someone else. The cube belongs to Damien, as you pointed out, and the iBook is provided by Blue Ant. So Cayce hasn't displayed a conscious preference for the Apple brand.

2. The design of Macs is a little more organic than that of a Dell or an HP or other similar beige-box machines. They seem to fit into the landscape of a room a little better than one of those others. Perhaps this allows Cayce to tolerate the logo.

3. Cayce handles Starbucks with no problem. In any Starbucks one is confronted with thousands of logos in every glance. More than that, the atmosphere of the place is a brand itself. If she can tolerate that environment, why not an Apple iBook with one logo on the cover? Why isn't Starbucks a nest of vipers for Cayce?

4. A novel without tension or paradox would suck mightily.

quote:

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Originally posted by lithos:
What makes the Mac cool any different to the 501 cool? Isn't it all one big bout of logophobia?

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Time and exposure. And breaking the third wall, author's own preferences (he is partial to Apple and Starbucks). He uses Levi's, but they are not cool, they are a brand.

It is not the Levis logo she hates, in my opinion, but being "branded". Even though most she uses belongs to a brand.

In a way, I feel Cayce is the character that shows more clearly the author behind (although Rydell may come close too). At least in terms of likes and dislikes.

Well, OSX is not much more than a Macified veneer overlaid on UNIX. And you don't get much more generic than UNIX, but the Mac GUI is kickass.

Why hate Apple more than Dell? Cause they have aesthetic sense?

In the WG blog, there's an explanation for the Starbucks' non-effect on Cayce. Basically, like you all have posted here, it's a cop-out, a liberty take by the author.

Or maybe Cayce isn't an OS-snob weirdo zealot

[MC battle spectator]Ooooohhhh, snap![/MC battle spectator]

quote:

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Originally posted by Pauline:
Well, OSX is not much more than a Macified veneer overlaid on UNIX. And you don't get much more generic than UNIX, but the Mac GUI is kickass.

Why hate Apple more than Dell? Cause they have aesthetic sense?

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Actually, I hate 'em equally.

i tend to be labelphobic my self and i own an overly pollished apple iBook and iPod. why? because it isnt as annoying and trendy as the "dell guy" or the constant sony logos i see on tvs, videogames, in town, and every where else. yea, it might me a needless emphasis on aestetics, but it makes me happy to have one, popular or not. i enjoy its simplicity.
perhaps cayce enjoys the macs because she takes pleasure in their simplicity, as she does with her ground down pants, weather or not a logo is engaved on it. after all, all of her articles are significant because of their prevelant brand names, she just dosent want to advertise that, aparently. so unless she was wearing her power book as an oversides ghetto style medalion, its relevancy to her phobia of having logos splashed at her is off set by its painstaking attention to simplistic detail.

(i know, many spelling errors, its 4 am where i am, and i am way to tired to spell or check back over it)

FYI, I typed this topic on Digitalstar laptop, and the hunk of beige sititng next to it was knocked up by some twelve year old in the city. The case doesn't even have a sticker on it.

Once again I would like to remind folks that Cayce's logophobia does not extend to ALL logos or brand names. She said herself that sometimes things affect her and sometimes they don't. The things which affect her strongly and in an adverse manner are typically the things which the mass markets would eat up like sushi. The stuff that has no effect on her at all either isn't mainstream enough or it simply falls below her "radar." But not everything affects her.

And I would like to state, for the record, that Levi 501's are indeed cool. They're kitten's mittens. And if I could afford them, I'd wear them... when I wasn't wearing beige or olive green, nondescript cargo pants, that is.

I'm wearing my Powerbook as an oversized ghetto style medallion today. It sure is heavy.

Y'see, Pauline? That's what you get for kow-towing to the mass-consumerism market. If you want lightweight functionality you shoulda gone with the Sony Vaio slimbook.

"Walk-N-Wear computing for the hacker on the go!"

quote:

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Originally posted by NightShadow:
... when I wasn't wearing beige or olive green, nondescript cargo pants, that is.

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Ah, yes. How I love the olive green cargoes. Good for all occasions, fit anything and the pockets and great for getting stares from Security in CD stores. Mine are getting a bit tatty, though.

How well do you guys tolerate newbies?

Just finished the book this morning, and thought I'd chime in with a thought -

Cayce's worst brand phobia seems to be Tommy, because ( i think ) it's a repetition of repetitions of previous brandings - generic and derivative. Starbucks may not affect her the same way (?) as it's just a simple logo.

So Macs may fall into the same category (despite the fact they nabbed the name from The Beatles, and are being sued at present for using it with iPods...)?

Doesn't offend or conflict with a panic disorder as it doesn't offend her notion of "cool", which she hunts, professionally?

That's how I read it, anyway.

red: We welcome noobs just fine here. We were all newbies once.

As for your idea of what may trigger Cayce's logophobia... yours is as good as the few-dozen-odd other ideas I've seen, but I sorta like it better.

It seems to me that you're saying: Cayce doesn't react poorly to just ANY logo, but the ones which are overly (and overTly) derivative set her off like a 4-alarm fire. I could buy that.

I think we should try to keep in mind that Cayce is 'sensitive' to logos, but not all logos trigger attacks, just most of them. The intention seems to be that this is mostly random, but as WG said himself, he sometimes cheated and made Cayce allergic to things he doesn't like, and unaffected by things he does like.

Alternatively, one might think that Cayce's sensitivity is an overblown and quite shallow subconscious judgement of the cool, or not, of a given brand. She has a sickness that is very common in the world today, placing an over-importance on brand, logo, naming and marketing, until the substance disappears "in a mist of Milano-Japanese minimalism." The difference between her and most of us is that this sickness has gone to the point of making her physically ill. Perhaps her body has been trying to tell her something all these years? Perhaps behind all this is a kind of self-hate, which gives her a special power, something like Case in Neuromancer now that I think of it. Ooh, look how clever I am.

Colin, clever one, could you explain that self- hate point, me stupid don´t get it...