No, Bigend is interested in memes, meme propagation and manufacturing.

He finds a natural meme and then replicates it to his own ends. The money is a by product, as he says. Now, he might be unreliable, but I think he;s genuine enough about that bit.

meme is too loaded and dated a term for my tastes. Bigend as a character does not work for me (for all the pros and cons stated by others)- still his role is a driving force. What is his role then? He's the interest with the means to ask questions and pay people to find out. The types of things he looks for are flows of information. Even to Cayce and Hollis, he legitimates his interest with profit. That never rings true, but is true enough to keep them getting paid and on the job. The job is rooting out information flows (like why are all these people interested in the that damned container?). It was, after all, only carrying cash. Its value and interest to Bigend was why and who was interested in it.

How is meme a dated term? The science og memetics is in its infancy. You've been infected by the anti-meme meme.

Bigend was interested in it because he sensed it was "cool" not because of other people's interest. What Bigend does is follow his instincts. he gets involved with something that has a nodal feel and he comes out with something new, but something that doesn't really relate to the thing he initially pursued.

In this book (SC) he gets a a Chinese car commercial with the reunited Curfew and the use of a highly gifted GPS dowser.

Money is ancillary to his character and yet, at the end, he still remains a man who puts fascinating things to pedestrian ends. that's why he represents the zeitgeist, we take magic and monetize it, we take global communication and make porn. the truly wondrous applications are yet to be found because the systems which surround such things yet demand things other.

Bigend is the guy who comes in and takes something unique and possibly fragile and fucks it up. But his intent isn't to fuck it up, he does so as an over-eager child.

Very much of the now.

Even Dawkins moved on from the meme!

I think we are agreed that Bigend's motivation is not monetary profit. In both SC and PR, it is Bigend's interest and his ability to cop up the resources (cash, access, information) that trigger the action. And that action is about information flows (lots of people paying attention).

But without some expressed self-interest, Neither Cayce nor Hollis would accept his offers. His potential vulture interest is his cover in his dealings with C&H. Even the car commercial and gps guru don't justify the wads of cash he is throwing around on his special project. These rewards allow him an entry and exit (in the narrative)- in keeping with the popular fantasy about advertising and how it works. If his motivation were so banal, then his staff of minions could easily throw a bit less cash around for the same.

You are suggesting that Bigend himself has become a coolhunter? And he came up with the container as the next big thing?! Fascinating because people were spending piles of cash to have it, hide it, look for it and so forth, but cool?. All that attention focused on that thing are the drive and the core of Bigend's interest/motivation.

And, let's face it, figuring out why millions of people dig facebook, or myspace (or this forum) does not really inspire the dirty money, mobsters and riled up ex-feds that drive the action. But these masses of productivity, that remain outside the realm of profit are still highly interesting for venture capital. All those people doing stuff has to be worth something someday. And that interest is what Bigend's role is about...

BTW: what drives Hollis in all this - what is her motivation?

quote:

Originally posted by diastar:
Even Dawkins moved on from the meme!

I think we are agreed that Bigend's motivation is not monetary profit. In both SC and PR, it is Bigend's interest and his ability to cop up the resources (cash, access, information) that trigger the action. And that action is about information flows (lots of people paying attention).

But without some expressed self-interest, Neither Cayce nor Hollis would accept his offers. His potential vulture interest is his cover in his dealings with C&H. Even the car commercial and gps guru don't justify the wads of cash he is throwing around on his special project. These rewards allow him an entry and exit (in the narrative)- in keeping with the popular fantasy about advertising and how it works. If his motivation were so banal, then his staff of minions could easily throw a bit less cash around for the same.

We really do not know how much money he throws at these projects and he certainly gets the payoff in the ad revenue he generates. Nearly all creative content is dependent on ad revenue. Lots of money to be had there.

quote:

You are suggesting that Bigend himself has become a coolhunter? And he came up with the container as the next big thing?! Fascinating because people were spending piles of cash to have it, hide it, look for it and so forth, but cool?. All that attention focused on that thing are the drive and the core of Bigend's interest/motivation.{/quote]

Bigend states that secrets are the quintessence of "cool."

And, let's face it, figuring out why millions of people dig facebook, or myspace (or this forum) does not really inspire the dirty money, mobsters and riled up ex-feds that drive the action. But these masses of productivity, that remain outside the realm of profit are still highly interesting for venture capital. All those people doing stuff has to be worth something someday. And that interest is what Bigend's role is about...

BTW: what drives Hollis in all this - what is her motivation?[/QUOTE]

You miss my point. Bigend follows his muse which has led him in the past to fortuitous confluences of talent and product. he isn't expecting the container to be the next big thin, he isn't expecting the footage to change the world, he knows (perhaps unconsciously) that if he pursues shit like this it gets him face to face with interesting people who never would have otherwise met each other under his aegis of purpose.

He gets Volkov as a client from the footage and plugs in shoes ads on YouTube.

He gets Bobby as a talent and The Curfew reunited for his car commercial by prusuing the container.

The objects of his pursuit are incidental.

Look at the end of SC, the great Mongolian death worm through Bigend's flat, that's the way in which Bigend inserts himself in other people's lives, but it's also the way in which his insertion facilitates other people getting into his and using him as well.

Hollis and Inchmale leverage Bigend to get Bobby back on the task of providing a platform for locative art. Art wins there too. Cayce finds the maker of the footage, she has an answer to her mystery and comes out on top without the artist getting corrupted. Art wind here too.

Bigend is interested, ultimately, in the web of talent and people that coalesce around the nodal points, not the nodal points themselves. He's more like Hawking Radiation than an event horizon, if you will.

Nice to see the thread I started in February is still generating traffic...

I just went back and re-read my original question, "what is Bigend's motivation/goal with the contents of the container?"

I think the question was fundamentally flawed since Bigend never really had a goal in mind, except to be in the right place at the right time. Many fortunes are made this way and this is Bigend's skill.

See something interesting happening, throw around a heap of cash and the right (wo)man for the job and make sure you are first there to pick up the spoils and profit from them.

Unfortunately, my enjoyment of SC was (and always is with WG) the richness of the characters and their sadness. Watching their past's unfold as the book progresses and really hoping things pick up for them. I guess this is why Bigend bothers me since his character is not ever really developed in this way, we are always given third party tidbits about him, stories from a friend of a friend and are never really able to connect with him (negatively or positively) as a character since he is quite shallow.

I really enjoyed reading SC, but the (big)ending left me going: "is that it?"

Just a quick one here:

It seems like we kind of agree that Bigend is not after cash or even profit. I am arguing that even his outcomes are too trivial in terms of profit to justify his interest. His ad revenues are the cover for his fueling the action and covering the costs. If all he was after was increasing his revenues, there are much easier ways to go about it (without finding the maker or the container). All that money and mystique to sell shoes rings really flat tome. So why does he play such a fundamental role?

I appreciate the question of his motivation/goal with the container because it is fundamental - none of this would unfold without it. But Bigend as a character remains mostly unknown, unresolved, whatever. Funny that disruntled spooks, junkies and the like create more fodder for characters!

I also think it is interesting that the only character that is actually changed by all this is Milgrim. He moves into a new identity with a new passion that came about by chance. Likely, he would not have read the book had he not been kidnapped by Brown and a left with a lot of free time.

My two cents for the moment.

He plays a fundamental role in the way that all money people play a fundamental role in any creative endeavor anymore.

He's the marketing guy telling the director what the film needs to be about for the one sheet.

He's the editor telling the author that he needs to make his book more like "Tom Clancy."

He's the A&R asshole who decides that he's going to manufacture the Next Big Thing.

Bigend is money-people with the same preoccupied misconception of being one of the "creative" people.

But he gets bored and banal with the creativity pretty quickly.

Bigends make the world go.

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
He plays a fundamental role in the way that all money people play a fundamental role in any creative endeavor anymore.

He's the marketing guy telling the director what the film needs to be about for the one sheet.

He's the editor telling the author that he needs to make his book more like "Tom Clancy."

He's the A&R asshole who decides that he's going to manufacture the Next Big Thing.

Bigend is money-people with the same preoccupied misconception of being one of the "creative" people.

But he gets bored and banal with the creativity pretty quickly.

Bigends make the world go.

But, uh, isn't he exactly NOT those things?

Those are all manufactured. That seems to be rather anti-Bigend-ian.

Wouldn't he find the author who writes exactly like Clancy....but has never read any and doesn't even know the name?

Wouldn't he just *find* the Next Big Thing?

He actually seems particularly clear that he is *not* one of the creative people, that's why he only hires the best in creative people.

I think you are totally backwards on this one.

I'll reassert that Bigend is the sock-puppet of the nascent internet God. The one that works in mysterious ways, ways that are not always clear, even to it. Because that seems to be how Bigend works, mysteriously, in ways that are not even clear to him.

Which seems like the opposite of what you're saying about him.

Wow! This is getting interesting. So if Bigend is the sock puppet of a nascent internet god, or just the guy with the means to make the world go round, where does that leave Brown and the old man? The axis of interests, but what is it? Bigend hires Hollis, Brown kidnaps Milgrim and and the Old Man has Tito. How do those roles play off of one another?

quote:

Originally posted by jbx:

quote:

Originally posted by UberDog:
He plays a fundamental role in the way that all money people play a fundamental role in any creative endeavor anymore.

He's the marketing guy telling the director what the film needs to be about for the one sheet.

He's the editor telling the author that he needs to make his book more like "Tom Clancy."

He's the A&R asshole who decides that he's going to manufacture the Next Big Thing.

Bigend is money-people with the same preoccupied misconception of being one of the "creative" people.

But he gets bored and banal with the creativity pretty quickly.

Bigends make the world go.

But, uh, isn't he exactly NOT those things?

Those are all manufactured. That seems to be rather anti-Bigend-ian.

Wouldn't he find the author who writes exactly like Clancy....but has never read any and doesn't even know the name?

Wouldn't he just *find* the Next Big Thing?

He actually seems particularly clear that he is *not* one of the creative people, that's why he only hires the best in creative people.

I think you are totally backwards on this one.

I'll reassert that Bigend is the sock-puppet of the nascent internet God. The one that works in mysterious ways, ways that are not always clear, even to it. Because that seems to be how Bigend works, mysteriously, in ways that are not even clear to him.

Which seems like the opposite of what you're saying about him.

My point was that Bigend, for all his posturing to the contrary, eventually turns out to be incredibly banal as a human being. he says that he's disappointed in Boone Chu becuase for him it "really was all about the money." And yet Bigend takes the footage and turns it into a YouTube shoe ad edit of old movies.

He gets wind of a conspiracy at high levels and a super geo-hacker and he repurposes that node to get an old 90's band to do a car jingle.

Bigend really is that guy, despite what he likes to fancy himself.

yes, he may be a marketing genius, but he ultimately uses his genius to the most mundane of ends.

quote:

Originally posted by diastar:
Wow! This is getting interesting. So if Bigend is the sock puppet of a nascent internet god, or just the guy with the means to make the world go round, where does that leave Brown and the old man? The axis of interests, but what is it? Bigend hires Hollis, Brown kidnaps Milgrim and and the Old Man has Tito. How do those roles play off of one another?

Marketing runs the world.

Everything is marketing.

The Old Man believes the commercials that say the good old USA used to mean something.

brown follows the commercials that say the good old USA must be protected from people like the old man at any cost.

Although, on my fourth reading I got this idea that for Brown and his handlers, it really is only about the money and not the jockeying for power.

He goes off on the state of America and Arabs and the like, but I think at the end of the day brown is only involved to get a cut of the cash.

My first three reads I had assumed he thought he was doing something patriotic and helping to protect great men.

This time I got the feeling he was just a merc with an expressed philosophy.

Which I suppose most of them are.

The difference between Bigend and the others are that Bigend traffics in ideas and memes. he is on a higher food chain of causality (in my mind.) The Old Man and Brown traffic in the real world fallout of said ideas.

Bigend's got broader pattern recognition.

quote:

The difference between Bigend and the others are that Bigend traffics in ideas and memes. he is on a higher food chain of causality (in my mind.) The Old Man and Brown traffic in the real world fallout of said ideas.

Bigend's got broader pattern recognition.

That is one way of looking at things, but doesn't that kind of trivialize the books a bit too much? If that is all there is to them, then there isn't much use for any discussion.

What about the Volkovs. Gibson is not writing anything in a bubble (unless we talk economy). There are couple of unmistakable paradigm shifts going on: cold war to warm war, analog to digital. And these are the frame for all the action. This is what defines the now of now.

The conflicts at the core of both PR and SC get played out along these lines. There is the state interest in IT, with all its attendant spooks, and the commercial interest, with all its corporate espionage. Did I hear echelon? The Volkovs have a split between the old & new school spook culture, this comes more into focus with Brown and the Old Man. They come from totally different intelligence circles with conflicting agendas and modes of operation. Throw in a bit of organized crime along with some advertising dollars and we have global capital. But which model is going to win out? These are the interests in what happens with information technologies. What is with facebook? Commercial interest or state interest? Why or what's the difference?

And each of our dear protagonists in the service of one of these ideological forces (for totally different reasons). The voices we hear are all conflicted to some extent by their passive role in this. But why is the narrative built up around this conflict of interests? Is it worth discussing this further?

I didn't say that is all the books were about.

I said that Bigend speaks from a certain kind of zeitgeist perspective.

The other players speak from their own vantage points. I simply find Bigend's to be the most emblematic of what I believe his future historians will look back and think of us.

Of course Bigend (via Bill) points out the impossibility of knowing what the future will think of us (if at all.)

Yet I think that all the same, the future will see the 200's as Bigend and Spook Country. More so Bigend, once the monolithic war against obsolescence passes between us and the Muslim fundamental world.

It strikes me that both of us are very much like that Amazon tribe, shooting arrows at the strange flying Gods above.

quote:

Originally posted by diastar:
Wow! This is getting interesting. So if Bigend is the sock puppet of a nascent internet god, or just the guy with the means to make the world go round, where does that leave Brown and the old man? The axis of interests, but what is it? Bigend hires Hollis, Brown kidnaps Milgrim and and the Old Man has Tito. How do those roles play off of one another?

They each represent a period of life and kind of idealism (tho the ideal might by cynicism).

Tito(teens)
Brown(20's)
Hollis(30's)
Bigend(40's)
Milgrim(50's)
Old Man(60's)

Tito\Old Man are idealists. Tito is how do to things In The Now. Old Man is how to do it like we used to do it. In the Golden Age.

Brown\Milgrim are cynics. The tunnel-visioned hard-ass testosterone laden cynicism of the young in Brown. The past-your-prime seen-all-this-shit soft fuck-it cynicism of Milgrim.

Hollis\Bigend are pragmatists. Seeing where things go.

isn't that the age progression? I could have it wrong.

Anyway, I think they each form a dominant partner\subservient partner, tho of course those roles change in various ways over the book.

Old Man pays Tito in personal currency
Bigend pays Hollis in real money
Brown pays Milgrim in violence

I think maybe even Chombo and Alejandro can be made a pair in the same way.


It's about how you define your opposition by your own absence. Musashi's book of Void, similar examinations of the principle appear in the Art of War and the I Ching.

Us Americans bring about the existence of our Islamist foes. Cops create drug dealers. Addicts create pushers. People shipping 40ft'ers of cash around create the Old Man to play radioactive pranks on them.


That would be one way to look at it at least.

I see where you get the idea of pairs, but I disagree with you.

First of all we haven't any reason to believe that Milgrim is in his 50's or Brown in his 20's. I'd be inclined to say you are wrong on both ages.

And Tito being an idealist?

Don't see it at all.

A little bit in the Old Man, but not in Tito.

Tito is more how you categorize Hollis, going with the flow. In his case, the will of the Orishas, or at least their path.

It strikes me how people read completely different novels.

Time for a thread perhaps?

quote:

It strikes me how people read completely different novels.

Time for a thread perhaps?

Yes to a new thread - please about the roles and/or motivations of various characters!!!

I found the age line very interesting. Personally, I would exchange Milgrim and Brown, and bump them up a generation, sort of. Otherwise, a fascinating way to break this down into interests by generation. Very Gibson, no?
Niche niche.

I would suggest that Brown pays Milgrim in Drugs rather than violence, but very interesting line of thought. More details on why which characters are like that would be interesting for me.

d

quote:

Originally posted by diastar:

quote:

It strikes me how people read completely different novels.

Time for a thread perhaps?

Yes to a new thread - please about the roles and/or motivations of various characters!!!

I found the age line very interesting. Personally, I would exchange Milgrim and Brown, and bump them up a generation, sort of. Otherwise, a fascinating way to break this down into interests by generation. Very Gibson, no?
Niche niche.

I would suggest that Brown pays Milgrim in Drugs rather than violence, but very interesting line of thought. More details on why which characters are like that would be interesting for me.

d

Age line/motivation analysis:
Yup, nice idea.

As for Milgrim:
Drugs, too. But I think that Brown pays Milgrim also in 'motion', by pushing him around: Finally, something is happening! Milgrim can feel change in his life, while temporarily keeping up his 'life in a bubble' state, so the transition is not too abrupt. Also, his expertise is needed: Good for his self-esteem. My take would be that Milgrim slowed his life to a halt when Brown found him and that his 'Brown-experience' is what enables him to become more active at the end of the Book.

Could something similar be said for Hollis/Bigend?

Tito, on the other hand, doesn't feel so passive, more 'animal' like:
His 'going with the flow' feels more deliberate to me: His obedience to the Orishas is part of his family 'culture', his subservience to the old man is rooted in admiration and loyalty to his family.
It also fits with his music: To go with the flow is what musicians call 'being in the groove' - that's hardly something passive.

quote:

Originally posted by Billy Billions: Also, his expertise is needed: Good for his self-esteem. My take would be that Milgrim slowed his life to a halt when Brown found him and that his 'Brown-experience' is what enables him to become more active at the end of the Book.

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quote:

Originally posted by Billy Billions:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by diastar:
[QUOTE] It strikes me how people read completely different novels.
Tito, on the other hand, doesn't feel so passive, more 'animal' like:
His 'going with the flow' feels more deliberate to me: His obedience to the Orishas is part of his family 'culture', his subservience to the old man is rooted in admiration and loyalty to his family.
It also fits with his music: To go with the flow is what musicians call 'being in the groove' - that's hardly something passive.

Not passive then, but he does have a Taosit mentality as represented by the Orishas, the forces which move the world which Tito allows to move him as well.