Editing Pattern Recognition (novel) (section)

== Major themes ==
{{Essay-like|section|a composite of WP policy-compliant reporting from sources, but adding original research in part|date=April 2025}}
{{original research|section|date=April 2025}}
=== Pattern recognition ===
{{Quote box|width=30%|align=right|quote=<div style="text-align:left;">Parkaboy says you should go to new footage as though you've seen no previous footage at all, thereby momentarily escaping the film or films you've been assembling with, consciously or unconsciously, since first exposure. Homo sapiens are about pattern recognition, he says. Both a gift and a trap.</div>
|source=[[Cayce Pollard]], ''Pattern Recognition'', pages 22–23.}}
The central idea of the novel, seen by [[Toby Litt]] of ''[[The Guardian]]'' as being "plainly stated", is that "Homo sapiens is about [[pattern recognition]]" and that this is "[b]oth a gift and a trap", with the trap being humankind's [[apophenia]], "the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things".<ref name=Litt>{{cite news |first=Toby |last=Litt |author-link= Toby Litt |title=Back to the 80s |work=[[The Guardian]] |date=April 26, 2003 |url= http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,942915,00.html |access-date=2007-12-07 | location=London}}</ref><ref name=Lim>{{cite news|first=Dennis |last=Lim |title=How Soon Is Now? – William Gibson's Present Tense |publisher=[[The Village Voice]] |date=12 February 2003 |url=http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0307,lim,41823,10.html |access-date=2007-11-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071209163515/http://www.villagevoice.com/books/0307%2Clim%2C41823%2C10.html |archive-date=9 December 2007 }}</ref> Followers of the seemingly random clips in the novel seek connections and meaningfulness in them, but are revealed to be connecting unrelated things,<!--IF THE WORD APOPHENIA APPEARS IN GIBSON, CITE PAGE, OTHERWISE PLEASE AVOID USING REVIEWER IDEAS AS BEING "REVEALED" IN THE TEXT. LET THE TEXT SPEAK FOR ITSELF, AND REVIEWERS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.--> as the clips are just edited surveillance camera footage.{{cn|date=April 2025}} Likewise, Cayce's mother turns to investigating [[electronic voice phenomenon|electronic voice phenomena]] after Cayce's father disappears.{{cn|date=April 2025}} Science fiction critic Thomas Wagner underscores the human propensity to [[pattern recognition|recognise patterns]] using a comparison between the film clips and Cayce's search for her father after the attacks:<blockquote>[T]he very [[randomness]] and ineffability of the clips flies in the face of our natural human tendency towards pattern recognition ... [T]he subculture that surrounds "following the footage" ... [is] an effective plot device for underscoring the novel's post-9/11 themes: to wit, the uncertainty of the fabric of day-to-day life people began to feel following that event … [We] as people don't like uncertainty, don't like knowing that there's something we can't comprehend. And if we can't fit something into an existing pattern, then by golly we'll come up with one.<ref name=Wagner>{{cite web |url= http://www.sfreviews.net/patternrec.html |title= Pattern Recognition |access-date= 2007-11-29 |first= Thomas M. |last= Wagner |year= 2003 |publisher= sfreviews.net|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071017102343/http://www.sfreviews.net/patternrec.html |archive-date = October 17, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref></blockquote> Within the marketing world, Cayce is portrayed not as an outside rebel, but rather a paragon of the system. Inescapably within the system, she seeks an [[Epistemological realism|epistemological perspective]] to objectively interpret patterns.<ref name=Wagner/><ref name=Skeates>{{cite journal |last= Skeates |first= Richard |date=April 2004 |title = A Melancholy Future Poetic | journal=City | volume = 8 | issue = 1| pages=135–140}}</ref> The review of the novel in ''[[The Village Voice]]'' calls this search "a survival tactic within the context of no context—dowsing for meaning, and sometimes settling for the illusion of meaning".<ref name=Lim/>

=== Memory of history ===
{{Quote box|width=30%|align=right|quote=<div style="text-align:left;">The future is there ... looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now. ... I only know that the one constant in history is change: The past changes. Our version of the past will interest the future about the extent we're interested in whatever past the Victorians believed in. It simply won't seem very relevant. </div>
|source=Cayce Pollard (echoing the views of Parkaboy), ''Pattern Recognition'', page 59.
}}
Using 20th-century relics, such as a [[Curta calculator]], an excavated [[Junkers Ju 87|Stuka]], Hobbs Baranov, and Voytek's planned [[ZX81]] show, Gibson raises the question of how a contemporary society views past societies. Gibson portrays the past century as dominated by conflict, suspicion, and espionage. Following the disappearance of Cayce's father, a designer of embassy security systems, on September 11, 2001, Cayce is left feeling "ungrieved" until she reviews footage and records of that day tracking his movements until he vanishes.<ref name=Palmer>{{cite journal |last=Palmer |first=Christopher |date=November 2006 |title = ''Pattern Recognition'': "None of What We Do Here Is Ever Really Private" | journal=[[Science Fiction Studies]] | volume =33 | issue =100 |publisher=SFS Publications |issn = 0091-7729 |oclc =1787622 |pages=473–482 |doi=10.1525/sfs.33.3.473 | url = https://online.ucpress.edu/sfs/article-abstract/33/Part%203%20(100)/473/208395/Pattern-Recognition-None-of-What-We-Do-Here-Is?redirectedFrom=fulltext | access-date = 1 April 2025}}</ref>

Following this line of thought Gibson raises the question of how the future will view today's society. The novel "adopts a postmodern [[historicism]]"<ref name= Easterbrook/> perspective, through the arguments presented by Bigend, Cayce, and Parkaboy. Bigend and Cayce's view of history are compared to those of philosopher [[Benedetto Croce]] in that they believe history is open for interpretation when re-written from the frame of reference of another society. Parkaboy rejects this view, believing that history can be an exact science.<ref name=Easterbrook>{{cite journal |last=Easterbrook |first=Neil|date=November 2006 |title = Alternate Presents: The Ambivalent Historicism of ''Pattern Recognition'' | journal=[[Science Fiction Studies]] | volume =33 | issue =100 |publisher=SFS Publications |issn = 0091-7729 |oclc =1787622 |pages=483–504|doi=10.1525/sfs.33.3.483 }}</ref>

=== Originality and monoculture ===
The book explores a tension between originality and monoculture by focusing on the artist's relationship with a [[commercialized]] world and its [[marketing]] of free art and [[consumer product]]s.<ref name=Zeidner/> Critic Lisa Zeidner argues that the artist's "loyalty and love"<ref name=Zeidner/> involved with creating originality counters Bigend's assertion that everything is a reflection of something else and that the creative process no longer rests with the individual. Commercialism is portrayed as a monoculture that assimilates originality. The [[Tommy Hilfiger]] brand is used as an example, "[[simulacra]] of simulacra of simulacra. A dilute tincture of [[Ralph Lauren]], who had himself diluted the glory days of [[Brooks Brothers]], who themselves had stepped on the product of [[Jermyn Street]] and [[Savile Row]] ... There must be some Tommy Hilfiger [[event horizon]], beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul."<ref>Gibson 2003, p18.</ref>

One critic points out that the marketing agency Blue Ant is named after the wasp [[Blue Ant]]: "it's a wasp with a painful sting. The female hunts for a ground-dwelling cricket. She paralyses it with a sting and lays her egg on it. The still living yet immobile cricket becomes food for the wasp's young. What a clever metaphor for the process of targeting, commodifying, and marketing cool."<ref name=Lieb>{{cite web |url= http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3622545 |title= Pattern Recognition: Marketing's Mirror World |access-date= 2007-11-29 |first= Rebecca |last= Lieb |date= February 7, 2003 |publisher= ClickZ Network |url-status= dead |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20071012135522/http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3622545 |archive-date= October 12, 2007 }}</ref> On the other hand, as [[Rudy Rucker]] notes, while new art is constantly threatened by commodification, it is dependent on the monoculture for its launching point and uniqueness.<ref name=Rucker>{{cite news |first=Rudy |last=Rucker|title=Logomancer |publisher=[[Wired (magazine)|Wired]] |date=February 2003 |url = https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.02/play.html?pg=9 |access-date=2007-11-27}}</ref> Gibson's product positioning language and Cayce's analysis of consumerist trends show that society is not a victim of consumerism, but rather its creator who helps shape it without ever stepping outside it.<ref name=Smith/>  Alex Link argues that rather than a simple attack on consumerism outright, the novel outlines a complex interrelationship between art, brand design, and terrorism as varying attitudes to history, terror, and community.<ref name=Link>{{cite journal |last=Link |first=Alex |title=Global War, Global Capital, and the Work of Art in William Gibson's ''Pattern Recognition'' |journal=Contemporary Literature |volume=49 |issue=2 |date=Summer 2008 |pages=209–31 |issn=1548-9949 |url=http://130.102.44.247/journals/contemporary_literature/v049/49.2.link.html |access-date=2011-01-18 |doi=10.1353/cli.0.0023 |s2cid=161992641 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120202033201/http://130.102.44.247/journals/contemporary_literature/v049/49.2.link.html |archive-date=2012-02-02 }}</ref>

=== Branding, identity, and globalization ===
The novel's language is viewed as rife with labeling and product placements.<ref name=Jolis/> Postmodern theorist [[Fredric Jameson]] calls it "a kind of hyped-up name-dropping ... [where] an encyclopaedic familiarity with the fashions ... [creates] class status as a matter of knowing the score rather than of having money and power".<ref name=Jameson>{{Cite journal | last = Jameson | first = Fredric | author-link=Fredric Jameson | title = Fear and Loathing in Globalization | journal = [[New Left Review]] | volume = II | issue = 23 | publisher = New Left Review | date = September–October 2003 | url = http://newleftreview.org/II/23/fredric-jameson-fear-and-loathing-in-globalization }}</ref> He also calls it "postmodern nominalism"<ref name =Jameson/> in that the names express the new and fashionable.<ref name =Jameson/> This name-dropping demonstrates how commercialism has created and named new objects and experiences and renamed (or re-created) some that already existed. This naming includes nationalities; there are eight references to nationality (or locality) in the first three pages. Zeidner wrote that the novel's "new century is unsettlingly transitional making it difficult to maintain an individual identity".<ref name=Zeidner>{{cite news |first=Lisa |last=Zeidner |title=Netscape |publisher=[[The New York Times Book Review]] |date=January 19, 2003 |url = https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9903E2DC113EF93AA25752C0A9659C8B63 |access-date=2007-11-27}}</ref> One character argues that "there will soon be no national identity left … [as] all experience [will be] reduced, by the spectral hand of marketing, to price-point variations on the same thing."<ref>Gibson 2003, p341.</ref> This is juxtaposed against the footage that contains no hints of time period or location.<ref name=Hollinger/> Globalization is represented by characters of varying nationalities, ease of international travel, portable instant communication, and commercial monoculture recognizable across international markets. As an example, Gibson writes how one 'yes or no' decision by Cayce on the logo will impact the lives of the people in remote places who will manufacture the logos and how it will infect their dreams.<ref name=Suzuki/>