At the beginning of the semester, the entire class mapped out the difference between reading verse navigating the web. The discussion showed that for the most part the class viewed reading as a solitary experience while navigating the web was seen as communal in nature. In my opinion, Gibson’s text affirms this belief. I think Gibson’s novel shows that although in actuality navigating the web is not a communal experience, it is seen as one by its participants. The World Wide Web is seen as communal, because it promotes discourse. For instance, Cayce can’t help herself from visiting her favorite forum F:F:F in order to discuss the latest footage. Cayce even goes as far as saying that the online forum is her second home, a place she feels comfortable to freely express herself. The idea of spoilers is also mentioned in the text by Cayce, and this simply shows another aspect of the convergence culture. More or less, individuals are so invested in the footage that they actively search for answers before they are willingly given up by the show’s producer. I find it interesting how Cayce differentiates the different bloggers on F:F:F. She seems to separate them into two different groups, the completists and the progressives. According to Cayce, Parkaboy is seen as a progressive; this is because he feels that the footage consists of fragments of a work in progress, something unfinished and still being generated by its maker (46). Mama Anarchia, on the other hand, is seen as a completist, for she is convinced that the footage is comprised of snippets from a finished work, one whose maker chooses to expose its piecemeal and in nonsequential order (47). I’m not sure if I am reading too far into this, but in my opinion the progressives represent the new while the completists represent the old. Essentially, Parkaboy believes that the fragments of footage represent an original creation. More or less, Parkaboy is under the impression that the maker of the footage is creating something out of scratch, and as a result of this, snippets are shown to viewers once they are completed. Mama Anarchia, on the other hand, believes that the footage reflects an already finished work. Cayce also mentions that Parkaboy hates how Mama Anarchia incorporates theory, such as Baudrillard, into her posts. As a result of this, I couldn’t help but view Mama Anarchia as the traditional literary canon. This is because Mama Anarchia, similar to other completists, operates under the notion that contemporary artists merely mimic the work of the classics. In addition, due to the fact that Mama Anarchia holds theory in high esteem, she believes that theory is keeping the arts alive.
The idea of copying the original is also seen in Cayce’s descriptions of her surroundings. Cayce suggests on multiple occasions that she is living in a mirror-like universe, where everything is a reflection of the past. I read this as Cayce implying that nothing is real, because the world has been tainted by extreme capitalism/consumerism. On Cayce’s second day in London, when she meets the group of men selling the grenades, she tells her audience that she is in desperate need of coffee. She wants Starbucks, but it is still closed. One of the men selling the grenades, however, takes her to buy what she describes as the “white” coffee. Cayce finds the “white” coffee disgusting, and she ends up throwing it away in order to buy a Starbucks coffee. She then describes the Starbucks coffee as being a mere replica of the original “white” coffee. It seems as if everything in Cayce’s world is label intensive, and all of the small businesses and industries have been dominated by the larger monopolies, such as Starbucks. As a result of this, everything in Cayce’s world possesses hints of what came before, but the large institutions of power have taken full control.
Last, I find it really interesting how Gibson writes Pattern Recognition in the present tense. This is a fiction writing technique that I do not often see, and I admire it. I find myself reading Gibson’s words extremely closely, because I am monitoring his text in order to see if there are any slip ups in tense. I am not yet done reading the text, but it seems that thus far Gibson has done an excellent job of maintaining his tense.
Well that’s all for now, see everyone tomorrow!
Hey Cassie-
I also took notice of how Cayce enjoys going to FFF because it’s like going home for her. That struck me as very odd. She feels ‘at home’ when she is visiting a particular site. Additionally, a few pages before that scene, when Cayce first logged onto the internet, she said she was looking for friends, enemies, news etc. Her stomping grounds for finding new friends is on an internet site, not actual footing. I thought Gibson was making an interesting point there.
I agree with what you are saying about the net being communal. I think we see this communal aspect with sites such as Myspace. For some people the accumulation of friends is the most interesting part. The competition becomes part of community growth.
I also liked the mirror-like images you discussed. I think that’s what drew into this book. Cayce seems bewildered when she first arrives in London. Her “soul” has not caught up with her yet. She is suffering from jet lag and the mirror like image London creates in contrast to America. (From such things as coffee and food.)