Pattern Recognition Brainstorm

In Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, we can see two floating motifs that set the center of the characters’ world – advertising and globalization.

Voytek’s sister, Magda, is involved in advertising for Trans, which is affiliated with Blue Ant, This is an addition to her job of designing and making hats. Magda describes her responsibilities as to “look sorted, go to clubs and wine bars and chat people up”(84). The purpose of the conversation was to “mention a client’s product, of course favorably”(84) and “attract attention of favorable sort”(84) while she is at it. The company’s form of non-advertising advertisement aims to arouse public attention to a pattern they’ve created and spread themselves. It seems that the work later comes to recognizing such patterns and seek the purpose behind them. To me, this responsibility ties back to Cayce’s job in detecting and examining symbols that impact people’s lives and behaviors. Also, Voytek is entering the advertisement world as he collects Sinclair ZX 81 personal computers. Once he revealed to Cayce that he is friends with Billy Prion, who owns a gallery so Voytek has “space to show ZX 81 project” (81) as part of his patronage business. The Internet, too, can help cyberspace advertising. For example, the leak of footage #135 becomes the target of many to decipher the code and meaning behind the fragmented clip. The circulation of this footage has been pretty widespread that the people whom Cayce meet with all confirm its existence and mystery. It turns out that they too, were members of the Blue Ant agency.

The concept of globalization is prominent throughout the first 120 pages we’ve read because each character introduced so far in the novel has come from a different background. Yet they all play a part in the industrial world because they each take on the responsibility according to their specialization. This includes the integration of global networking and technology as a form of communication between international economies. We have been introduced to a variety of workers who gets involved from different parts of the world that works in different branches under he Blue Ant agency. Whether it is directly under the company’s influence, or through online networking and cross-cultural contact, the point is to see the bounded connection and interaction that flows across the globe. Below is a list of the many other characters that contribute to the Gibson’s depicted world of globalization.

Cayce	New York	Investigate the maker of footage #135
Bigend	Belgium (graduated from Harvard)	Founder of Blue Ant
Parkaboy	Chicago	Researching footages and member of the online forum F:F:F
Darryl (Musashi)	Californian fluent in Japanese	Aids Parkaboy in translating kanji and discovers the watermark in footage #78
Boone Chu	Chinese-American	Hired by Bigend after his previous company that specialized in security failed. He assists Cayce in her investigation
Damien	Soviet Russia	Recording footages of the process in digging up and excavating sites of firefights of WWII in Russia