MITH’s first Digital Dialogue of the spring 2006 semester will be a discussion of William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition (2003), on Tuesday, Feb. 7th at our usual 12:30 time in the MITH seminar room. Anyone with an interest in the book is welcome to attend.
Pattern Recognition has been widely received as Gibson’s most significant and prescient work since he coined the term “cyberspace” in 1984. “We have no future because the present is too volatile,” observes one character. “We have only risk management. The spinning of a given moment’s scenarios. Pattern recognition.” But how do we tell the difference between pattern and coincidence? Is pattern recognition enabling or constraining? What kind of patterns emerge in a novel about digital art, Web memes, global capital, viral marketing, a postmodern advertising agency, cool hunters, and collectors of antiquarian computing equipment in settings from London to Tokyo to Moscow to post-9/11 New York? Our discussion will be the basis for three additional Digital Dialogues, to be held at intervals throughout the semester, each of which will explore the general theme of “pattern recognition”–a heuristic for much of MITH’s current research–in varied contexts. We look forward to seeing you at any or all of these.
In addition to the pattern recognition sessions, we have speakers and events planned for Digital Dialogues for just about every Tuesday in the spring semester–always at 12:30. Plan to make Digital Dialogues a part of your intellectual week and watch for the full schedule very soon.