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the technological sublime II
I'm still thinking about William Gibson's Idoru, still working on fitting it into the context of his overall work. (I haven't read the other two books from this trilogy yet, but they're on the list.)
One of Gibson's most lauded abilities is his ability to represent the informational relationships and processes as a space: a field in which action can occur. This is most obviously apparent in the cyberspace of the Sprawl novels and stories, but it is equally true of Laney's exploration of "nodal points" in Idoru.
Less remarked upon is Gibson's treatment of technology as an arena in which a new kind of spirituality can occur. (The loa that emerge in the matrix in Count Zero, for instance—check out the final eight paragraphs of this essay for an in-depth review of the way they function in that narrative.)
There are no obvious gods appearing in Idoru, but Laney's facility with information (pattern recognition) casts him in the role of oracle, traditionally an individual based in a specific locality (in Laney's case this locality is data-space) who receives transmissions from gods.
A related reminder here that I really should make more of an effort to read Gibson's blog regularly. |
Friday, June 27, 2003
12:15 PM
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