meh
"pattern recognition is kinda slow"
i have to agree with kim gordon. this page isn't meant to discuss plotlines, but this one is consciously weaved into itself: pynchonesque, perhaps, but maybe more like an episode of the x-files from scully's perspective. it seems like the entire thing was an attempt to test the strength of a security system. a war game, if you will.
the plotline is complex, but inconsistent, and not always as informed as it could be. for example, there's an insignificant twist where gibson speaks of western oil companies taking control of russian oil as a reaction to the instability in saudi production, presenting the implication of a shift of alliances towards russia. that seems laughable here in 2013, and should have seemed no less absurd in 2002, as the project for the new american century kicked in - neither was the russian state about to hand over or sell it's resources to western firms, nor was the west about to blow the historic opportunity to take control of areas in the russian sphere of influence. what is pushed here is a sort of an american-centric, unipolar, cnn-penned type of narrative that very much upholds the status quo perspective about the triumph of capitalism (for better or for worse) at the end of history but is in truth completely oblivious to the complexity of a deeply multipolar world, where events have causes rooted in multiple perspectives. i suppose that gibson touches on this theme of paranoia, but it seems like it's largely to push it off as too rigorous to account for reality. the result is a sort of coffee-shop pop literature loaded with superfluous references to the vapidness of american capitalism, but low on any real understanding of the world outside america's borders.
the thing is that i don't really care about plotlines or how consistent or realistic they are. a larger problem is that the text lacks any kind of measurable depth, and that the actual ideas that gibson conjures are invariably lost almost immediately. his brief exploration of advertising as an every day activity (and humans as cogs in the advertising machine) was interesting, but not remotely expanded upon. he makes some interesting observations about the back-stabbing, self-interested careerism of life in a corporatist system, but reduces them to the characteristic traits of the rather cartoonish villain, rather than as systemically enforced ideals. there may be an attempt at absurdism in making computers old-fashioned collectibles, but it really isn't particularly absurd...
so, it's a vapid text without much to explore beyond the basic plot, which doesn't even really add up. that's not to say it isn't moderately fun, it's just to say that it doesn't hold up as serious writing.
related media:
http://dghjdfsghkrdghdgja.appspot.com/categories/books/congress/PS/3557.I2264P38/index.html
