William Gibson Books www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com PATTERN RECOGNITION Is 'Pattern Recognition' a joke?
www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com PATTERN RECOGNITION Is 'Pattern Recognition' a joke?Page 1 2
Topic Closed|
Go
|
New
|
Find
|
Notify
|
Tools
|
Member |
Yeah... in terms of morale, it will be like the "fall of Rome". When an isolated event carried by a small group of ravaging psychos allowed another small group of "aristocratic people" to jeopardize the concept of Democracy and Freedom. ---------- Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill ??? |
|||
|
Member |
Then please allow me to disagree with you : I don't get that impression at all. The way I see it, 9/11 is more of an obvious symptom than a cause for the change. _____________________________ Albert's path is a strange and difficult one. |
|||
|
Member |
I should clarify: 9/11 is undoubtedly important as a nodal point or demarcation, but I don't think it is *the* nodal point or demarcation. PR actually presents a fairly comprehensive litany of such things: Hobbs-Baranov's collecting and memorializing the Curta -- thus memorializing at least one experience of the Shoah; the Timex-Sinclair computers as a nodal point for British programmers; the Footage itself as a nodal point for viral video distribution if not avant la lettre then at least simultaneous with it; the way the Dig handily literalizes a whole host of the metaphors Deleuze and Guattari used in their philosophical works, particularly stratification, and presents a nodal point for Russian youth and their relationship with the historical events of WWII. 9/11 is central to PR because Cayce is American, witnessed the second plane hitting, and lost her father on the same day. I think such an arrangement privileges the personal nodal point over and above the global/historical nodal point, though I think the latter is also important. If nodal points are to remain a theme in Gibson's work, I think it gets more complex as he thinks it through in relation to the way he writes novels himself. Thus, there isn't really a single nodal point in either PR or Spook Country the way there was in ATP (there are a series of them, but they really culminate in Rei's becoming corporeal and liberating nano-scale production tech), but instead a series of accumulations which may or may not have an over-arching narrative we can put in place after the fact. If 9/11 is a nodal point, I think it is the point when the US, even post-Vietnam and post-New World Order, finally lost the illusion of safety it had spent so much time and energy maintaining. I think Splitcoil said as much a couple of years ago, and much punchier. But nonetheless, 9/11 is only one of a more global set of changes (for good or ill), the rate of which has been accelerating. I agree, as ArkanGL and cbaretto suggest, that such events are also symptoms. But symptoms often motivate treatment. »» "Forget infinity. I've got books waiting for me to read them." — colin »»"Speculative novels of last Tuesday." — William Gibson |
|||
|
|
Member |
Agreed !!! ---------- Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill ??? |
|||
|
|
Member |
But I think that despite being cause or symptom, 911 is a NP because in this date the perception of US people and all western countries in respect to security (at the personal level) changed.
It is a nodal point because just after 911 people in these regions of the planet agreed to throw away their freedom and accepted to engage in wars against other populations (usually XX century wars spanned around ideas as Democracy vs Nazism, Democracy vs Communism, etc). Now, there is a war on Iraq, but it was never proved that this country or its people had any involvement in the events of 911... it is not a war against ideas, it is a war against the Iraqi people in order to get their oil. Previously there was a war on Afghanistan and the country became the biggest producer of heroin in the world... Afghanistan people is just as screwed as they were under Taliban (which is reappearing in Pakistan borders). What is the price of 911? For Americans, their freedom. For us in Latin America, the revival of old communist menaces (like Chavez and Evo Moralez). In Brazil we are luck that Lula is more a dangerous gangster than a political leader... he keeps committing crimes (murder included in the package) and is more interested in making his family and "friends" rich than in create a populist left wing party (in fact he destroyed his own party). For the Europeans... well, the bombs in Madrid and London brought a ghost from the 60ies and 70ies... ---------- Why oh why didn't I take the blue pill ??? |
|||
|
Member  |
It doesn't have to be causal to be a nodal point. It isn't the fact that it caused anything that will resonate but that its semiotic propensity is in overdrive. Look at the tsunami in 2004. 225, 000 dead, all but forgotten on the cultural radar of the west. 9/11, 3000 people die but the cultural aftershock is still felt. It isn't about causality it is about semiotic demarcation. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
|||
|
|
Member |
9/11 is still the nodal point because it sums up the emerging changes. Technology, propting connectivity allowed the event to happen. in this way it is an extension of the Curta, which is a computer, which allowed cell phones and air trafic control and et. al. which led to 9/11. It is symbolic of the paradigmatic shift of the nation state to the fourth generation warfare of the ditributed ideology. It is, in this reagrd, similar to WW I in the 20th century which largely resulted in the end of centuries old empires due to technology. Whether or not the war itself is causal in this regard, it is clearly an expression of the way technology altered the map and the way in which the industrial revolution saw it's climax of effect. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
|||
|
|
Member |
So, given how much discussion we've managed to generate (and how much has already happened), I guess the answer is:
PR isn't a joke. »» "Forget infinity. I've got books waiting for me to read them." — colin »»"Speculative novels of last Tuesday." — William Gibson |
|||
|
Member |
If _PR_ is a joke, then the joke's a knife carving even closer to the core as _Spook Country_ ; that's for sure.
______________________________________________________________ ...after all you can chuck bones in an envelope -- remotepush "Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor not an animator!" -- Thal ...if it's that small a world, it starts to smell funny -- CayceP |
|||
|
|
Member |
Yes, and we could've told ourselves that without all the debate. How academic of us. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
|||
|
|
Member |
September 11, 2001, he says, was one of those events. "In some ways September 11 was the true beginning of the 21st century," Gibson says. He's speaking from Chicago late in the afternoon, one of his pit stops in a gruelling tour across the United States to promote his new book, Spook Country.
"And at this point it is still perhaps only our narrative. But the way we have responded to it is changing things for other people in the world, too. So it is now becoming part of their narratives and their narratives will have different versions of the cause and its effects of the event. "So it is like this seismic shock, one whose waves are still moving up the time line. At its epicentre is 9/11." http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=lifes...83705&category=books Haha! I was right! I demand my gold star and pinking shears, sirrahs! --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
|||
|
|
Member |
9/11 wasn't a nodal point. The nodal point was much before that (I'd say when the US withdrew their support of the Taliban and let them get slaughtered). Possibly the real nodal point was much earlier, but it's hard to tell.
Don't confuse loud bangs with nodal points. Loud bangs are just the effects long after decisions have been made. |
|||
|
Member |
I would say that tipping point and nodal point are two different things, and I think it's clear that 9/11 is a nodal point, and submit that what you are referring to, guest1, is actually the tipping point that drove the actions that effected the nodal point.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: theminx, _____________________________________ ::swoon:: |
|||
|
|
Member |
Duder, the man who popularised nodal points, as we are here referecning, called it a fucking nodal point. You're very entitled to co-opt the term, it's part of how culture works but I find it kind of on par with people who tell Gibson: "But Molly doesn't look like that!" It's kind of like telling Dawkins that a meme isn't a meme. Not that I think Gibson would mind, but it's funny to have such clear opinions about someone else's fiction. Also: Molly really doesn't look like that. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
|||
|
|
Member |
Speaking of jokes, funniset line in Gibson's work (yes low brow, but still makes me smile): "Go lick a dog's ass till it bleeds."
--- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
|||
|
Member |
Uberdog isn't uberdog.  |
|||
|
Member |
Ceci, n'est pas un post.
|
|||
|
|
Member |
You're right. --- Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing - more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. |
|||
|
| Previous Topic | Next Topic | powered by eve community | Page 1 2 |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
|||
| Site | www.williamgibsonboard.com | ||
| Servlet | eve2da019 | ||
| Version | 1.2.22 build 9062 | ||
| Module | Forums 4.0.3 | ||
| Stylesheet | "Default Style" | ||
| Wordlet Set | "Default Wordlet Set" | ||
Topic Closed
William Gibson Books www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com PATTERN RECOGNITION Is 'Pattern Recognition' a joke?
www.williamgibsonboard.com www.williamgibsonboard.com PATTERN RECOGNITION Is 'Pattern Recognition' a joke?© Copyright 2005, AuthorsOnTheWeb.com