He took a duck in the face at 250 knots....

[Deuce 1]

Anybody read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson? It's about a lot of things, but is centered on a website where the posters are preoccupied with a mysterious bit of film noir.

Aside from the actual details, I smiled a lot as the characters travel and meet each other in person all over the world, having only known them over the internet. The bits in London reminded be strongly of the week I spent at Skreamer's place.

It has nothing to do with skydiving, but is an interesting take on the social interation of the web.

[turtlespeed 226]

Quote

Anybody read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson?

is this his new one?

I thought I had read all of his stuff to date. (Well except the educational stuff/documentary stuff)


I really liked Monalisa Overdrive. I almost became a computer programmer because of his work.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[jjiimmyyt 0]

Excellent book, I really identified with the brand phobia bit too.

"This isn't an iron lung, people. You can actually disconnect and not die." -Dave

[Deuce 1]

Quote

Quote

Anybody read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson?

is this his new one?

I thought I had read all of his stuff to date. (Well except the educational stuff/documentary stuff)


I really liked Monalisa Overdrive. I almost became a computer programmer because of his work.

Yeah. It's out in paperback now.

[turtlespeed 226]

Quote

Quote

Quote

Anybody read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson?

is this his new one?

I thought I had read all of his stuff to date. (Well except the educational stuff/documentary stuff)


I really liked Monalisa Overdrive. I almost became a computer programmer because of his work.

Yeah. It's out in paperback now.

I'll be going to B&N at lunchtime then.
I wonder if he has any of them on audio.

I'm not usually into the whole 3-way thing, but you got me a little excited with that. - Skymama
BTR #1 / OTB^5 Official #2 / Hellfish #408 / VSCR #108/Tortuga/Orfun

[QuickDraw 0]

Quote

It's about a lot of things, but is centered on a website where the posters are preoccupied with a mysterious bit of film noir.

Relax Ivan... it's just a book.

-- Hope you don't die. --

I'm fucking winning

[billvon 3,119]

The fascinating thing about this book was the lack of invented technology.

When he wrote his first big book, Neuromancer, most of the technology was made-up. Jacking in, cyberspace, his neurotically detailed descriptions of brand names and manufacturers - all from Gibson's imagination.

His books since then have made an uneasy peace with modern technology. Idoru, for example, started getting away from cyberspace and started embracing modern networking, Japanese pop culture and nanotechnology. The problem (I think) was that modern technology was catching up with his vision, and they didn't quite mesh. What to do?

With Pattern Recognition he's written a book that uses no fake technology. It's all just modern laptop computers, satellite modems, wi-fi networks, web browsers, IP packet sniffers etc. And the amazing thing about it is that there's not much difference between the flavor of the world he describes in Neuromancer and the flavor of the modern-day world he describes in his latest book.

It's easy to forget that we're really advancing as fast as we are. In 2001, everyone lamented the fact that man hasn't gone to Saturn like he did in Arthur Clarke's book. But we have a space station in orbit, we have two robots crawling all over Mars, we have a lander sitting on the surface of Titan that's sent back pictures of the surface, and we have about a dozen planetary/near space probes zipping around at any given time. We even have private companies launching spacecraft, and an investor who's starting a tourists-in-space business. Which isn't too bad, considering how many people thought we'd never make it past the 70's and 80's without nuking ourselves into oblivion.