'Spook Country' and the Nature of Reality

William Gibson probes the nature of reality with far more acumen and style than I ever will possess, and yet, to some extent, we are pilgrims on the same path, venturing forward (and backward) into worlds of perception constructed by ourselves and by others, linked both by illusions and solid edifices, by technology and ritual, by habit and memory.

His primary subject in his fiction always has been technology and it has been said that in a sense, he is the father of 'Second Life', and all shared virtual realities in cyberspace. The seed sprang forth from his imagination perhaps to be caught and nurtured by other minds and finally brought into 'being', as far as anything in cyberspace can make any claim to 'be'.

In a recent work, 'Spook Country', a conceptual artist recreates historical moments at the locations where they occurred. His art exists only through the conduit of cyberspace. The work cannot be experienced unless you have the technology. Among other things, in Hollywood, he has re-created the death of River Phoenix, the heart attack of Fitzgerald... If some one had the technology and the co-ordinates, he or she could embark upon a virtual tour of Hollywood's celebrity trauma histories.

I am not a techie and thus cannot convey all the details, but it involves something akin to a GPS system and, as is the case in most of Gibson's fiction, there is far more to this than meets the eye. It is not a novel simply about the aspirations and accomplishments of an artist but is a rich tapestry where spies and politics are interwoven with Gibson's own musings about the essential nature of reality, a philosophical action novel as it were.

From 'Spook Country':

'The world we walk around in would be channels... and given what broadcast television wound up being, that doesn't sound so good. But think about blogs, how each one is actually trying to describe reality...

'But when you look at blogs, where you're most likely to find the real info is in the links. It's contextual, and not only who the blog's linked to, but who's linked to the blog...'

'We're all doing VR, every time we look at a screen. We have been for decades now. We just do it. We didn't need the goggles, the gloves. It just happened. VR was an even more specific way we had of telling us where we were going. Without scaring us too much, right? The locative, though, lots of us are already doing it. But you can't just do the locative with your nervous system. One day you will. We'll have internalised the interface. It'll have evolved to the point where we will forget about it. Then you'll just walk down the street...'

In another chapter, he describes the altar of a woman who practices Santeria as follows:

'Her altar there was a maze of objects, charged with meaning. Vials of foul water, the half-assembled plastic kit of a Soviet bomber, a soldier's felt shoulder patch in purple and yellow, old bottles with bubbles trapped within their glass, air from days gone a hundred years or more. The things comprised a mesh, Juana said, about which the deiteis were more easily manifest.'

William Gibson appears to have an ongoing fascination with Santeria. The religion has been explored in earlier novels as well. The idea that there are 'two sides to the coin' where these deities are concerned is only part of it. For some reason, this particular religion has grown deep roots in his imagination. I have known Wiccans who became obsessed with Santeria. Raymond Buckland, who originally explored his own Northern pagan heritage became fascinated with Santeria as well.

Originally an African religion, it was imported to the Americas with slaves and there married with Roman Catholicism to create a new synthesis of deities and practices. Perhaps one reason why it appeals to Europeans is the way that it incorporates the symbols of European Catholicism (so influential in our civilisation for 2000 years) into a system of belief that is very primal.

The goddess Ochun adopts the persona of Our Lady of Charity, Le Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, patroness of Cuba.

Ochun has been said to be 'the unseen mother at every gathering'. In the original Yoruba mythology, she was the sole female among the 16 original deities or forces. Without her participation, all attempts at creating the world were fruitless. Cuban tales of Ochun portray her, inter alia, as a woman who was willing to become a prostitute in order to recover her children. She is the primal driving force of fertility and of motherhood. She is the essence of beauty and harmony, mother of Elegba, the Trickster.

As Ochun, Our Lady of Charity assumes the mantle of St. Mary Magdalene to some extent. The sexual aspects of Our Lady in Christianity are suppressed. She is portrayed as the Eternal Virgin, pure and 'undefiled' by human sexual desire or experience. In the Santeria traditions, sexual energy is part of the power of the deity, akin to electricity. In fact, many of the rituals are designed to 'tap into' that energy.

Discussion of Santeria, however, was not my original intention. What interested me most about these two quotes in juxtaposition was the way that religion and magic mirrored the technology of cyberspace and virtual reality. This is a comparison that William Gibson has made in other novels as well.

A truly potent ritual links the believer with a spiritual 'network' that is far more than global in nature as it reaches upward and downward into all other realms, ensnaring the gods and other powers in its links. Or perhaps the Goddess could be perceived as the ever-weaving spider at the very centre of the web, and the believer catches hold of one of the sticky gossamer threads to become part of the construct that distributes power throughout the universe.

In his comment about blogs, he states that the reality contained in them is 'contextual', and that the real information is in the links. In other words, the creation of a post is nothing more than the portal through which writer and reader ultimate connects to the world. Nothing exists in vacuo.

In cyberspace, it is navigation that is the key to power. You can link to the internet and remain ignorant if you cannot find the right links, pinpoint the correct goals. The sheer volume of information in cyberspace can be as much of an obstacle to enlightenment as a blank page might be. The experts are those who possess the power of navigation and at speeds that are dazzling or mind-boggling.

The same is true with respect to magic or religion. Creating a sacred circle or space and conjuring a demon or power within it is only a beginning. Having the ability to control the power or to use it rather than being destroyed by it is the key to success or indeed survival in many cases. One could make a similar analogy with respect to the use of hallucinogenic drugs. Mind-altering experiences, whether drug-induced, ritually-induced or cybernetically-induced can be dangerous to a careless or inexperienced user.

Our relationship with our technology: An unequal partnership

Philip Dick wrote about it. William Gibson centred much of his fiction on it. What is our relationship with our technology? People like to think they are the Masters or Mistresses and that their machines do their bidding but I think it is the other way round. I perceive this partnership as essentially an unequal one, with the balance of power favouring the technology.

It can be as simple an interaction as an attempt to communicate with a bank or the people who deliver bottled water. 'Voice-recognition' or 'voice-activated' software, often touted as the ultimate advance with respect to communication is a nightmare.

I recently overheard a conversation between a girl and her cellphone. I cannot recall the exchange verbatim but it went something like this:
Cellphone: 'What listing?'
Girl: 'Harriet'.
Cellphone: 'You want to call Home?'
Girl: No. 'Harriet'.
Cellphone: 'You want to call Rick?'
Girl (speaking louder and more distinctly): No, Harriet.

And so on and so forth, the girl becoming rather bitter in her seemingly circular argument with her own servant machine!

I have had the same conversation dozens of times with merchants who have the same sort of software.

They cannot get it right. I eliminate my 'accent', attempt to flatten my delivery and the machine still does not comprehend.

Ultimately, there is only ONE solution in every instance: to simply repeat, again and again, the words, 'Customer Service' until the machine untangles its translation and sends you to a REAL human being.

I cannot imagine what horrors will be in store for users who eliminate their keyboards on their computers in order to use 'voice-activated' software. Give me a keyboard any day, although a keyboard on a computer is subject to the same glitches and quirks as any technological item.

For example, on my laptop, when I am typing, very often the machine inexplicably will jump to a previous paragraph and insert my text there. Worse than that is the programming that causes the machine to highlight a paragraph or portion of a paragraph quite without my permission and then DELETE it! Fortunately, I discovered that 'Undo' SOMETIMES if not always can be applied here to restore the cut text.

When I contacted the makers of the laptop, I was told that this is unavoidable, caused somehow by the close proximity of ALL the keys and the sensitivity of the keyboard. I attempted to change the sensitivity to make the keyboard as insensitive as the worst lout and cad, but in vain... Yes, I type very quickly, but I never had this trouble in pre-computer days.

My laptop turns itself on and off without my permission, installs programmes without my permission, all under the guise of 'protecting' me from harm and danger. I try to limit its autonomy but one reaches points constantly where the machine refuses to act, saying that updates are required...

One of AOL's 'updates' in the past year or so added nasty advertisements to their site AND forced me to include them in my emails. Under the guise of 'improving' performance or 'security', it appears to me that most of these 'updates' and changes are motivated by greed, thinly disguised as a concern for the user's welfare. AOL became a 'free service' after all the advertising was added. I personally would have preferred to pay a minimal fee to keep my life free from these intruders.

There are few programmes that do not require 'updates', sometimes shutting down the computer at an inopportune moment. Yesterday, I was working on a document and had been writing for almost two hours. I had to step away from the laptop for a moment. When I returned, it was 'recovering from an unexpected shutdown'. All my work was LOST.

This caused me to think about the relationship we have with these machines and how much of our time is spent waiting for them to respond or installing 'updates' and 'improvements' that seldom improve anything for the machine's human user. Furthermore, how many of us really know what our machines are DOING???

It is not only hackers who assume control of our computers. There are countless outside influences that dictate the actions of our machines at any given moment. You may be doing NOTHING at all when the machine begins to work furiously at some hidden task... Go into the Task Manager menu and you may or may not understand what application is being used or what programme is involved...

It is not computers alone that bedevil our lives. Telephones are extremely sophisticated, including all sorts of programming that prevent any simple interaction. You have to spend at least half an hour with ANY new machine to programme it or make it ready to function on YOUR behalf.

There is a part of me that loves technology. It is akin to magic, really. On the other hand, any adept in magic knows that allowing the jinn to escape from the bottle, or conjuring a demon or spirit is dangerous... Control and vigilance are required on a constant basis. Otherwise, the power will take matters into its own hands to perform actions that are part of its own hidden agenda... It is no different, I would say, with technological 'powers'.

N.B. Photograph of what may be the most utterly cool cellphone in the world... I don't know, never having seen it 'in the flesh' as it were... By 'servants' like this are we seduced and yet... and yet... For all the little wonders it promises to deliver, how much time would be spent serving IT?

The Futures that never Were

William Gibson has to be one of the most brilliant thinkers and writers of our age. 'Neuromancer' in particular blew me away when I read it. Most novels can be read effortlessly and one never has to ponder a sentence or an image. If one chooses to slow down, to reread or to pause simply to savour a beautifully crafted sentence or an exquisitely framed landscape, it is a matter of choice rather than necessity.

William Gibson is one of the few novelists who write prose that forces me sometimes to stop briefly and reread a sentence, because of the intricacy and depth of some of his concepts and descriptions. That is not to say that he writes deliberately convoluted prose or ostentatiously crafts obscure words and images into a tortured form. There are writers who do and I abhor them. Gibson is a consummate storyteller whose images are crisp and unforgettable and whose concepts always have been on the cutting edge of reality or beyond. Even so, his sheer brilliance can necessitate a pause to think carefully about a sentence he has written once in awhile.

This is above and beyond the ordinary pauses and rereading of a phrase or paragraph from admiration and delight of the skill of a wordsmith. Gibson forces me to use my brain. He challenges me a little, and that always is a thrill. There are thousands of books that challenge me intellectually or academically, but they are non-fiction, technical treatises for the most part in one arcane subject or another. For a novelist to be able to challenge the mind in such a fashion while managing to create a fast-paced exciting tale has to be one of the ultimate literary achievements.

For an individual like myself who tends to try to ignore the writer behind the work for the most part, I have been reading quite a few interviews with favourite writers recently, all quite by accident, I have to admit.

William Gibson, in an interview about his most recent novel declared:

'I'm sure I must have readers from 20 years ago who are just despairing of the absence of cyberstuff, or girls with bionic fingernails. But that just the way it is. All of that stuff reads so differently now. I think nothing dates more quickly than science fiction. Nothing dates more quickly than an imaginary future. It's acquiring a patina of quaintness even before you've got it in the envelope to send to the publisher.'

When asked if his shift in writing were due to less current interest in imagining a future world on his part or the change in the actual world, he responded:

'I think it's actually both. Until fairly recently, I had assumed that it was me, me being drawn to use this toolkit I'd acquired when I was a teenager, and using my old SF toolkit in some kind of attempt at naturalism, 21st-century naturalistic fiction. But over the last five to six years it's started to seem to me that there's something else going on as well, that maybe we're in what the characters in my novel Idoru call a 'nodal point,' or a series of them. We're in a place where things could just go anywhere. A couple of weeks ago I happened to read Charlie Stross's argument as to why he believes that there will never, ever be any manned space travel. It's not going to happen. We're not going to colonise Mars. All of that is just a big fantasy. And it's so convincing. I read that and I'm like, 'My god, there goes so much of the fiction I read as a child.'

I always perceived science fiction as prophecy to some extent and writers like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson have been truly prophetic in describing a series of futures that have merged into our present reality in the early 21st century.

For all the true depictions of the future, there are as many if not more false futures in the realm of science fiction. On the other hand, it is only in one way that they are false. Even if humanity never colonises Mars in reality, the history of Mars' colonisation has been a long one in literature and film and that has become a part of our collective unconscious for better or worse. In the same way that the vampire culture has been founded and built upon generations of literary and cinematic imaginings to coalesce finally into what amounts almost to accepted 'fact' in terms of their history, habitat, food sources and relationship to darkness and light, there is another Mars that exists apart from the planet that rotates in our skies.

Humanity builds as much upon its fantasies as its realities. Science takes as many leaps by way of imagination's stepping stones as any novelist and although it is the job of Science to fill in the gaps ultimately, very often the pioneers who took those initial leaps were writers of fiction.

Yes, there is a 'patina of quaintness' when we read an old science fiction novel that attempted to depict our contemporary culture and we focus on the little discrepancies and absurdities... but how much of what we live and breathe was conceived initially and brought into being by a vision like that?

Tolkien always averred that he simply rediscovered the 'lost' culture of the British Isles, that what he wrote was not fiction as much as a reconstruction of the myths and tales that would have thrived were it not for the influence of foreign invasions.

What is history after all but the remembrances and prejudices of many individuals painted on a fragile skeleton of 'fact'? How many actors and politicians have become an image fleshed out by the media, the realities of their lives compressed and ultimately lost beneath a weight of popular pseudo-facts that are created over the course of time about any public figure?

'We're in a place where things could just go anywhere,' Gibson declared. How much technological advancement can there be before our species or Nature wipes it all out in some cataclysmic event? Is there a point beyond which our collective stability cannot be trusted, a point at which our weapons outrun our defences, whether in the area of 'weapons of mass destruction', 'biological warfare' or some natural or mutated 'Black Death' or 'AIDs' type of plague?

The 'end of the world' always is floating at the edge of human consciousness. The end of our individual world is death but the end of an era is an end of the world in a way to those who knew a certain way of life. Thus, each new technological revolution marks the end of a world. Mechanisation has put an end to many worlds, from horse-drawn transport to handwritten communications. There always have been those who have believed that mechanisation was not a movement forward but backwards in terms of human philosophy, value and ethics.

The phoenix rises from the ashes of its own pyre. Change both is destruction and the agent of creation. It is possible, of course, that we will continue to advance in technological terms, that we will find replacements for our fragile, human cases or 'live' ultimately in worlds like Second Life that have been fashioned by machines and our minds while our bodies rest quiescent in coffin-like beds all over the globe.

And yet... even in this age, the drive within us to return to Nature is strong. 'Organic' fruits and vegetables, meat untainted by hormones, water that has not been processed... it is not simply a whim on the part of the rich for that which is rare. It is something quite fundamental within us that responds to our roots. Those who long have dreamed of a world where Nature no longer figures as a force will find it difficult to erase humanity's need for our ancient Mother even if we somehow overcome our tendencies towards self-destruction.

Incidentally, for those who may be interested in the intersection of worlds, I have posted a brief video of William Gibson's appearance in Second Life as well as his own opinions of the virtual reality in Second Life. You will find it on my Second Life page at:

William Gibson and Second Life