Final Thoughts on 'Pattern Recognition'

Welcome back to the philosophy of technology book club. Today, we’re finishing our discussion of William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.

Next month, we’ll be reading Lewis Mumford’s Technics & Civilization.

The reading schedule can be found in that post, but I’ll also include it here:

• August 3: Chapter I, ‘Cultural Preparation’

• August 10: Chapter III, ‘‘The Ecotechnic Phase’

• August 14: Members-Only Zoom Call, 8 PM Eastern

• August 17: Chapter IV, ‘The Paleotechnic Phase’

• August 24: Chapter V, ‘The Neotechnic Phase’

• August 30: Members-Only Zoom Call, 3 PM Eastern

• August 31: Chapter VIII: ‘Orientation’

We’ve now come to the end of Pattern Recognition. Looking back at the discussion – including the first and second Zoom calls – I would say that the reaction to Gibson’s novel was mixed. Some said that they had difficulty getting into the language of the novel. Others seemed to find the ‘brand allergy’ (Cayce’s reaction to certain brands, logos, and trademarks) unbelievable, perhaps unnecessary. Others didn’t say anything, but I could tell from the amount of comments that many people opted out of reading this one—which is fine, as the book club functions so you can dip in and out as you like throughout the year.

I’d say my final reactions to this were also mixed. Before we get to the thematic content, and thus the philosophical topics, let’s talk about the novel on a more aesthetic level.

First, I agree that Gibson’s prose is jarring. I am sure some of this is intentional, as Gibson is trying to create a sense of movement, jerkiness, and disorientation, yet some of it felt stilted with very little reason to be. This is only the second Gibson novel I’ve read, and it didn’t make me want to immediately read another one, though I could see myself continuing the series at some point in the future. The dialogue is the weakest part of the book, in my view, with each character speaking more or less the same, though the Russians are distinctive for their slightly broken English; however, each Russian speaks like every other Russian. So, I would not say that you need to read this novel for its prose.

Second, I found the plot to be fine. Not great, not terrible. Fine. I made a bold prediction in the second Zoom call, calling Dorotea a red herring. And I was very wrong! I was about as wrong about her as you can be. I suspected Gibson had another trick up his sleeve, but he didn’t. I found the plot to be fairly predictable, with things sort of falling into place in convenient ways; it was a fine reading experience, but not a great one.

Still, I am glad we read this book, because it fits perfectly into our theme for the year. I certainly appreciated it more given that we just read The Ethics of Authenticity, especially. So, let’s turn to some of the themes explored and discuss how they are related to our shared philosophical inquiry.

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First, we have the reflections on branding, identity, and the mirror-world.

This is the clearest parallel between Pattern Recognition and the other texts we have read. Cayce’s talent is to spot not what is cool but rather what will be cool, and this means that she can sell this information to corporations who will then take these nascent trends and productize them. This becomes important if we think about the way that these brands allow us to communicate our identities—they might be that ‘shared poetic language’ that Taylor speaks of. What Cayce shows us is how this comes to be. Sure, it is dramatized and likely simplified – anyone who works in advertising or marketing can tell you there will be more committees involved in every decision, so they won’t rely on a single freelancer at a consultant like BlueAnt – but it is a fictional depiction of a real process.

I think we’d want to call it inauthentic, though we now have to be careful with that language. Taylor stressed a dialogical model of authenticity where we define ourselves in conversation with others; there’s no reason to think that we can’t use clothes and fashion as part of this, or at least to signal this. A better word might be inorganic.

In yesterday’s Zoom call, we talked a little bit about the concept of the ‘mirror-world’ which appears within the novel. I think Cayce’s experience of the mirror-world is made most clear late in the novel, when she’s gone to Russia:

She stops, staring at the streetscape of this old residential neighborhood, and is acutely aware of her mind doing the but-really-it’s-like thing it does when presented with serious cultural novelty: but really it’s like Vienna, except it isn’t, and really it’s like Stockholm, but it’s not, really . . .

The mirror-world is supposed to be a reflection of our world and, in Cayce’s case in particular, New York. But there’s something off about it, the way that a mirror can invert our image. The branding provides a sense of familiarity wherever Cayce goes, which means that she’s living in a permanent uncanny valley of sorts. This only happens if the branding is truly global—so, it only happens if corporations like Cayce’s employer do their job.

Cayce is partly responsible for her own sense of dislocation in the mirror-world.

We’ve created a global, homogenized world defined by consumption, and the result is that every place is like every place, but not really.

And of course, the internet is a major part of this, given the way trends can spread so quickly.

Source

Second, we have some very interesting depictions of the ways that the internet has shifted over the past twenty years. Gibson wrote this novel when forum culture was still alive and well—while this still exists to some degree, it has been greatly diminished, and now the internet runs on several large sites rather than many small ones.

What is so interesting about this culture is that it was a place where weirdness could thrive, and I mean this positively. It was a place where obsessives could come together to obsess over the object of their obsession. The F:F:F site is our key example. It’s on these sorts of sites that anything we could call ‘internet culture’ was created. Gibson may have been thinking of these forums as a respite from the mirror-world and its homogenized, branded imagery; this was a place that could be different, fun, unique.

This is why I didn’t find it so unbelievable that the footageheads would obsess over the footage; they’re a niche group on the internet, and that’s what niche groups do.

But as we saw with the internet in reality, the internet in Cayce’s world is slowly being taken over—thus, Bigend wants to find some way to potentially monetize the footage. In this way, I found the ending of Pattern Recognition quite sad, as I saw it as Cayce losing this very special online space that will not be able to survive an influx of newcomers and the advertising model.

This raises some questions, like (i) do we have spaces like that anymore?, (ii) could we bring them back?, and (iii) how is our online behavior affected when we move from these local (it’s weird to use that term, yet fitting) groups to these more global, universal online platforms?

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Those are my thoughts. If you read Pattern Recognition with me, please let me know what you thought. I’m excited for one last discussion of this novel with all of you, and I look forward to reading Technics & Civilization with you next month.