the chutry experiment

But, honey, every day is "Short Attention Span Day". Now if only there were related sales...

Couldn't agree more.

Um, what were we talking about?

Did I say something about short attention spans? What sale?

'ales, 'tention 'pans
'attern 'ecognition

Jameson in conflates two scenes (description of wingbacked chairs in a cafe with description of furnishings in a hotel room).
Jameson's conflation serves to support a claim that Gibson regards the fictional Russion world as backward in terms of design aesthetic.

Jameson spends some time comparing Gibson to Sterling.
A student picking up Pattern Recognition could do well to compare it with the novel that Sterling & Gibson co-authored The Difference Engine

Jameson also seems to forget Molly from Neuromancer when he sets up a comment on a shift in Gibson's treatment of gender. Though I did like the remark of homeopathy versus antidote but hey isn't all fiction homeopathic?

S A S
P R

those are the letters elided in

(s)ales (a)ttention (s)pans
(p)attern (r)ecognition

and it is the e-cognition aspects of the novel that Jameson reduces to mere insider-outsider group dynamics. it is way less dichotomous in the novel
the ecology of cognitions and the economy of capital can overlap but why would one want to declare a one-to-one mapping?

I haven't read Gibson's novel yet. Now that it's in paperback, I'll try to buy a copy soon. I'm intrigued by your question about Jameson's reworking of cognitive mapping as it applies to Gibson (I almost said cyberpunk, which would have been a conflation of my own).

I'll admit that I'm often taken by Jameson's assertion of the economic as the prime determinant in interprertation, but I need to read PR and the Jameson essay closely before making any definitive claims.

Chuck, Have you read the paperback yet? I wonder if it conatins the same typographical niceties that at least one print run of the hardcover did?
See
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/sd/sd0015.htm

Francois, I read it several months ago, and while that scene is certainly familiar, I don't remember seeing the typographical oddity you describe. I am teaching Pattern Recognition in my composition class this spring, so I'll try to remember to look for it.

Interesting for this particular blog entry to return from the archives at such an appropriate time.