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I shared this mostly because of the Gibson quote enclosed, and if you don't want to read the article, here's the quote, which involves a coolhunter who can visc

I shared this mostly because of the Gibson quote enclosed, and if you don't want to read the article, here's the quote, which involves a coolhunter who can viscerally sense cool and uncool evaluating Tommy Hillfinger: "This stuff is simulacra of simulacra of simulacra. A diluted tincture of Ralph Lauren, who had himself diluted the glory days of Brooks Brothers, who themselves had stepped on the product of Jermyn Street and Savile Row . . . . But Tommy surely is the null point, the black hole. There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul."

stochastic_monk 8y ago
There’s a picture from Radiohead’s original OK Computer website which this reminds me of. “DENY OXYGEN There is nothing I can say which will come as any sort of surprise to anyone. There is no work I can produce which hasn’t been done before. There is no music I can listen to which doesn’t remind me of something else. There is nothing I can do that isn’t documented in weekly magazines. My life is essentially a last-minute rush to reorder trivial, pointless, or stolen ideas into a primitive semblance of originality. Most of my time is spent crying in darkened rooms trying to remember who I was.” The Gibson quote also reminds me of Synecdoche, New York, a stunningly beautiful film I probably can’t fully recommend because it’s so brutally depressing.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  I think that partly this is simply an effect of accumulating experience as you get older. For example, these days it feels like I don't find as much good novel music as I did before. But of course if I haven't heard any music at all, everything will be novel, and so looking where I have already looked plenty before will not turn up as much novelty. I mean, I can still find plenty of novel thing if I look outside of the top lists of the UK and the US, or look longer back in time, so its not simply that my tastes have narrowed but rather I just have a better overall knowledge, and what I would have found novel before I now recognise as inspired from something else.
- JamisonM 8y ago
  A link to the "DENY OXYGEN" image: http://www.radiohead.com/rh0021.html http://www.radiohead.com/rh0021.html
roymurdock 8y ago
Great quote...reminiscent of a world where machine learning and linear regression have been applied ad nauseam to everything. regression upon regression. As the article points out, it seems this is happening in the pop movie world, with superhero movies and rehashes, remakes galore, including star wars (franchise ended for me with Battlefront and KOTOR 2). Always be on the lookout for sparks
maze-le 8y ago
Interesting quote, but this can also be applied to the novel "Pattern Recognition" from Gibson itself. After devouring the Neuromancer Trilogy, I anticipated some of the same vision and greatness in this book. Sadly, this is one of Gibsons "most derivative, most removed from the source, most devoid of soul" Work.
- akanet 8y ago
  I strongly disagree. Pattern recognition broke new ground for Gibson. It was a novel examining the role of information and aesthetics have in shaping a very near-future society. Neuromancer is a grand, outer-space cowboy adventure, with all sorts of interesting technological ideas, but it's certainly distinct from what pattern recognition achieved.
  - WalterSear 8y ago
    IMHO, still his most derivative and soulless. Moreover, it doesn't say anything new about the subject, and the main plot devices artifice were so implausible that I frequently stopped reading to wonder whether Gibson was really just phoning it in, or actually that out of touch/practice.
  - pasbesoin 8y ago
    I, as well, found it and its two sequels quite engaging. It's a different space -- in some ways -- from the Neuromancer trilogy's space. But Gibson approaches it with the same attention and insight. And these days, good lord, "image" is such an enormous factor in our -- increasingly global -- culture.
ShabbosGoy 8y ago
It’s unsurprising because Disney itself is a simulacrum. "The Disneyland imaginary is neither true or false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It's meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusions of their real childishness."
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
  Well, it's also a sane business practice. When you have limited abilities to predict what is going to be successful, you are tempted to use the schemes that worked well in the past. You take the ingredients that are known, combine them using aesthetic means that are attractive in a given period, and promote it well. In this way you minimize the chances of failure. Experimenting with novel things is not a safe strategy when you repeatedly invest millions, and your way of doing it works. That's why you have, for example, a remake of the Beauty and the Beast (and many other), both by Disney. They know the target group will go and watch it and enjoy anyway.
vidanay 8y ago
I think this quote can be applied to 99% of television and Hollywood.

stochastic_monk 8y ago

There’s a picture from Radiohead’s original OK Computer website which this reminds me of. “DENY OXYGEN There is nothing I can say which will come as any sort of surprise to anyone. There is no work I can produce which hasn’t been done before. There is no music I can listen to which doesn’t remind me of something else. There is nothing I can do that isn’t documented in weekly magazines. My life is essentially a last-minute rush to reorder trivial, pointless, or stolen ideas into a primitive semblance of originality. Most of my time is spent crying in darkened rooms trying to remember who I was.” The Gibson quote also reminds me of Synecdoche, New York, a stunningly beautiful film I probably can’t fully recommend because it’s so brutally depressing.

SiempreViernes 8y ago
I think that partly this is simply an effect of accumulating experience as you get older. For example, these days it feels like I don't find as much good novel music as I did before. But of course if I haven't heard any music at all, everything will be novel, and so looking where I have already looked plenty before will not turn up as much novelty. I mean, I can still find plenty of novel thing if I look outside of the top lists of the UK and the US, or look longer back in time, so its not simply that my tastes have narrowed but rather I just have a better overall knowledge, and what I would have found novel before I now recognise as inspired from something else.
JamisonM 8y ago
A link to the "DENY OXYGEN" image: http://www.radiohead.com/rh0021.html http://www.radiohead.com/rh0021.html

roymurdock 8y ago

Great quote...reminiscent of a world where machine learning and linear regression have been applied ad nauseam to everything. regression upon regression. As the article points out, it seems this is happening in the pop movie world, with superhero movies and rehashes, remakes galore, including star wars (franchise ended for me with Battlefront and KOTOR 2). Always be on the lookout for sparks

maze-le 8y ago

Interesting quote, but this can also be applied to the novel "Pattern Recognition" from Gibson itself. After devouring the Neuromancer Trilogy, I anticipated some of the same vision and greatness in this book. Sadly, this is one of Gibsons "most derivative, most removed from the source, most devoid of soul" Work.

akanet 8y ago
I strongly disagree. Pattern recognition broke new ground for Gibson. It was a novel examining the role of information and aesthetics have in shaping a very near-future society. Neuromancer is a grand, outer-space cowboy adventure, with all sorts of interesting technological ideas, but it's certainly distinct from what pattern recognition achieved.
- WalterSear 8y ago
  IMHO, still his most derivative and soulless. Moreover, it doesn't say anything new about the subject, and the main plot devices artifice were so implausible that I frequently stopped reading to wonder whether Gibson was really just phoning it in, or actually that out of touch/practice.
- pasbesoin 8y ago
  I, as well, found it and its two sequels quite engaging. It's a different space -- in some ways -- from the Neuromancer trilogy's space. But Gibson approaches it with the same attention and insight. And these days, good lord, "image" is such an enormous factor in our -- increasingly global -- culture.

ShabbosGoy 8y ago

It’s unsurprising because Disney itself is a simulacrum. "The Disneyland imaginary is neither true or false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real. Whence the debility, the infantile degeneration of this imaginary. It's meant to be an infantile world, in order to make us believe that the adults are elsewhere, in the "real" world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is everywhere, particularly among those adults who go there to act the child in order to foster illusions of their real childishness."

dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
Well, it's also a sane business practice. When you have limited abilities to predict what is going to be successful, you are tempted to use the schemes that worked well in the past. You take the ingredients that are known, combine them using aesthetic means that are attractive in a given period, and promote it well. In this way you minimize the chances of failure. Experimenting with novel things is not a safe strategy when you repeatedly invest millions, and your way of doing it works. That's why you have, for example, a remake of the Beauty and the Beast (and many other), both by Disney. They know the target group will go and watch it and enjoy anyway.

vidanay 8y ago

I think this quote can be applied to 99% of television and Hollywood.