Just finished reading Spook Country and I quite enjoyed it. Left feeling a little flat at the end, but also satisfied.

One thing I did wonder was what the hell was Bigend's motivation with the contents of the container? Was it really just curiosity? Or was his goal just to get The Curfew to do a jingle for a client?

I kept expecting it to be his money (the 100) in the last few pages or something and the Chinese car ad thing to be just an excuse to keep Hollis and Inchmale around for some nefarious reason.

I don't really get Bigend, is he evil or just selfish? My guess is both.

Cheers,
Jeremy.

Spook Country as a criticism of this administration's handling of affairs would fail if the money was from some rich Belgian.

We have had a couple discussions on this, but this is the closest to this subject.

You have to remember that what we almost never see Bigend's full attention on things (except at the end of PR). The novel events are always one among several pots that he has brewing, very important for Hollis (or Cayce in PR) but peripheric for Bigend, at least till it resolves and it is time to harvest any benefits.

quote:

Originally posted by norkmeister:
One thing I did wonder was what the hell was Bigend's motivation with the contents of the container? Was it really just curiosity?

If you had seemingly unlimited resources, wouldn't you do the same thing? And we have to understand that as much cloak & dagger the container affair seemed to be, in the end is just another commercial movement. Dark markets are the ones involved, of course. Flow of resources. The need to know which side of the table those chips would end up is nothing but due diligence.

Actually, Bigend follows his instincts because they lead to marketable leaps.

He gets interested in a thing then finds out why he was interested in it after the fact.

In this case it was because of Bobby Chombo and the reunion of The Curfew.

One could suggest that the Macguffin is rather merely the catalyst for Bigend's own expansion as a pseudo-persona.

Bigend being, to my mind, more of an incarnation of market forces rather than a fully independent human being.

Which is why he's one of the my favorite characters and highly realistic.

He's a bit of the ultimate meme host, devoid of interiority and wholly contextual.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
Actually, Bigend follows his instincts because they lead to marketable leaps.

He gets interested in a thing then finds out why he was interested in it after the fact.

In this case it was because of Bobby Chombo and the reunion of The Curfew.

One could suggest that the Macguffin is rather merely the catalyst for Bigend's own expansion as a pseudo-persona.

Bigend being, to my mind, more of an incarnation of market forces rather than a fully independent human being.

Which is why he's one of the my favorite characters and highly realistic.

He's a bit of the ultimate meme host, devoid of interiority and wholly contextual.

/That's what I said.

Quote:

Bigend is the internet.

The internet becomes self-aware first, of course, and then it would become aware that these other things are using it's body\mind\universe to send data, store things, watch porn, and then the internet needs to learn about us. The aliens from outside it's world of self.

Bigend is an avatar of the internet, learning whatever he can for no reason but to know it.

Spitzer does whore, we see pix of whore later same day.

Girl, 18, dies getting breast implants, we see pix of pre-surgery bust same day.

Stuffwhitepeoplelike, posts a link about a guy in Seattle, he has a wikipedia page later the same day, plus links to his own blog.

Becca Manns? Same thing.

If he's "amoral" then the internet is "amoral". But it's more likely he's beyond good and evil isn't it?

In the age of looking at pictures of people in their underwear, because of a link to a link to a link, is there any kind of static morality left? Particularly in Gibson world? Seem unlikely in the extreme.

Bigend is a viral-meme-bloodhound avatar of the self-aware internet.

Like the best things in the world today he doesn't need to realize this for it to be true either.

I am not suggesting all that. Even facetiously.

Though he is metaphorically related to those things.

Oh, ok, fine.

I'm sayin' he's the next iteration of the "horse of Danbala" stuff from CZ and suchlike.

"Ridden" by the internet, unaware of this "possession".

Well, that'd be more Cayce I think.

He's not maifested by the zeitgeist so much as on to it.

Cayce too.

Rei Toei is the only manifestation of the zeitgeist I can think of in his work.

Maybe Harwood.

ain't harwood & bigend fruits of the same tree?

If they are, they're two temporal sides of a coin. Bear with me:

Harwood, while he senses the coming "node" of ATP and can, perhaps, see the needed pieces, is more interested in maintaining his status quo on top of whatever the status quo of capitalism is. Limiting capability of the nanofaxes being installed at Lucky Dragons worldwide is part of maintaining his hold on the means of production.

Bigend is perhaps similarly tuned in to Harwood's and Laney's way of seeing history, but he's along for the ride. He's not interested in a personal status quo so much as in adapting to the world. There seems (to me) to be less control involved in Bigend's philosophy: play with everything, find a way to make money from it. Which I hope is clearly enough a flipped ethic, the obverse of Harwood's control everything to make money from it.

Bigend is what Harwood wanted to evolve into but failed.

true.

bigend's elusiveness makes him a mesmerizing character.

i dream that gibson would place his next book in the cold war era (if there's trilogy a-coming), and we could peek at the bigend's roots and then maybe understand his cryptic motivations a little better.

You know how a state trooper's advice for surviving a collision ahead of you is to drive straight for it since it will most vlikely be dispersed when you arrive where it was?

I think bigend does something the reverse of that.

There was an eccentric British composer of the early 20th century who liked to drive his car wearing a mask that showed him looking backwards.

quote:

Originally posted by Buell:
true.

bigend's elusiveness makes him a mesmerizing character.

i dream that gibson would place his next book in the cold war era (if there's trilogy a-coming), and we could peek at the bigend's roots and then maybe understand his cryptic motivations a little better.

He's talking like he's going to write a Civil War novel.

That would be on par. Lots of new tech threr and new tech changing the way the world works therein.

Plus, early daguerreotype porn!

making connections with tito's and bigend's and pollard family.

in me head. for me own amusement.

and

i'm going to write 16 civil war novels.

You only get to wear the stupid hats after the seventeenth.

Sorry.

dang!

i've had me eyes on those accessories since 1918

I think some Napoleonics fanboys might lend you a tricorn.

no lend. own. tricorn is stupid enough.

alzo want me a white furhat like mannerheim wore in finland's latest civil war.

and that helmet thingie bobbies wear in england.

and a fez.

and a 10 gallon stetson.

and that towel saudis wear.

Hmm. I got the impression that Bigend's role is to perform new economy. He deals in information and looks at how to monetize the flow (not the actual info). This is new economy - advertising seems more like a shorthand with iconic figures that should be venture capitalism. His role seems more about legitimating the fascination with social phenomena made visible on the internet - advertising = profit = motivation seems simplistic.

Facebook, myspace, etc... There is gold in them thar social networks! Extracting the gold from the ore is still an open question.