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Originally posted by Corso:

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Originally posted by ArkanGL:
Why does Bobby never sleep in the same grid section twice?

Did you ever see Real Genius?

Yes, that's right. A laser shot from space.

A rather silly, way out there theory, but I enjoy it.

Haha, was that the one with Val Kilmer?

I think his sleeping habits are just one of those character defining things that Gibson likes to give to his more eccentric characters. Once you learn that about him, you instantly get the impression that he's paranoid, nervous, constantly moving. And it's kind of like he lives in both worlds, the here and now, and the world formed by the GPS grid that the rest of us are unaware of. I think his actual reasons for sleeping in different spots every night are irrelivant.

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Interestingly, when I read "grid", I thought "matrix". It's not difficult to imagine a continuing story or sub-plot about how the concept of the grid leads to development of THE matrix. Could Bobby be a link between the current book series and the central idea of the original masterpieces?

I too got the impression that a lot of this locative art stuff, VR attatched to real locations, could easily blossom into what becomes the matrix in Gibson's future.

A basic superstition... everyone has one. Milder ones can be disregarded as simple 'ticks' in a personality. I knew once a perfectly sane, functional, intelligent person who would freak out at leaving an uncapped marker around. 'Fumes'. Oh well.
In Bobby's case, maybe an extrapolation from his work... he knew he was delaing with dangerous situations. Felt safe by not staying in a place he could be found. Even if it was just an illusion.
Before reading the book, thought it meant he didn't sleep on the same place, as in room. Much harder to accomplish.

and only military grade GPS is accurate to within a metre.

Fuzzy logic and paranioa

Remember that 'chombo', the software, from which Bobby took his name, is basically for conducting computations on a grid in a dynamic rather than static way. So it could be as simple as he is mirroring this in his behaviour... but yeah, I got the feeling that it was one of those things that may have started as a game, then gained some kind of superstitious force (like 'lucky socks' for sportspeople) and become impossible to break.