Editing Pattern Recognition (novel) (section)

=== 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>