PATTERN RECOGNITION

Mystery and/or spy genre of fiction

This novel at many points in the story seems like a mystery or spy novel. There are many mysteries that are unsolved that perplex and confuse the people trying to unravel these mysteries. The main mystery in the novel is the odd appearance and uploading of random pieces of video. These videos do not seem to have any relevance to each other, until more research is done and a pattern forms. Cayce travels the world to unravel this mystery in hope of taking one more step forward to answering the questions these videos put forth. It seems like a spy novel in the way Cayce and Boone keep their findings away from their boss, Bigend. They need to keep the information in a tight knit group without informing those outside of their answers. It almost seems like a Sherlock Holmes story in the way they pick up clues one by one to bring them all together in the end to have an answer.

Marketing and/or commodification

Cayce, the main protagonist of Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, is a advertising counselor that the company, Blue Ant, uses to figure out if their logo is “cool.” It is quite ironic that Cayce is a “coolhunter” when she is almost allergic to brand names and labels. She creates CPU’s, Cayce Pollard Units, which are her clothes that consist of black, gray, and white colors that have all of the brand labels cut off and covered. For a person that consults on brands that will sell well, it seems odd that she would herself be scared of some of these brands. But it is odd in the way brands become popular and how they become products that sell well. In the novel, Cayce uses pattern recognition to check and see if the product will do well in the market. In today’s market, if the product is endorsed by someone famous, the product will most likely succeed. It is no longer about the product being durable or well made, but by who endorsed it and how much it cost.