Book Review: Pattern Recognition

Book Review: Pattern Recognition

Author: William Gibson

Book Statement 

The novel, Pattern Recognition, was written by William Gibson and published in 2003 by Berkeley Books, a division of the Penguin Group in New York, New York. The novel’s ISBN is 978-0-425-19868-1.  

Purpose and Intended Audience 

In Pattern Recognition, William Gibson takes the reader through a thrilling journey of human’s tendency to search for meaning through patterns, with the constant risk of apophenia. Apophenia is the proclivity to mistakenly perceive connections and meaning between unrelated phenomena. The intended audience of this techno-thriller is the general public. William Gibson, through many of his novels, has been able to predict certain trends about humans' relationship with technology. He predicted the popularity of reality tv, viral videos and the minimalism movement, and has coined terms such as cyberspace and the matrix. In this book, he seems to be speaking to everyone about our tendency to always connect the dots in the plethora of data we face, especially in the digital world. This tendency, I would argue, is an accurate prediction of his. We are constantly trying to unscramble and decrypt the truckloads of data through pattern recognition. Though often helpful, this tendency can sometimes leads us to incorrect assumptions and false meanings, a human behavior known as apophenia.  

Book Theme 

Pattern Recognition is a fictional, futuristic novel set right after the September 11th attacks in New York City. William Gibson cleverly uses this event as a motif for the book. The 32-year old protagonist, Cayce Pollard, is directly affected by the event, as her former CIA father disappeared in New York the day of the World Trade Center attacks. For the past year, Cayce and her mother have been living in uncertainty about whether her father is still alive or dead. As Cayce watches the towers collapse on tv, she describes the moment as “an experience outside of culture” (Gibson, 140). It was a time where people’s perception of the world had changed dramatically, where nothing would ever be the same. This pivotal time in history, a transition from the 20th century to the 21st, was a time where people were seeking answers to difficult questions, often looking at patterns and developing their own theories as to why events were occurring.  

The central theme of Pattern Recognition is to illustrate human’s tendency to search for meaning in patterns, with the constant risk of apophenia, in other words, finding meaning in meaningless data. It is a cautionary tale of one of our very human, innate qualities: pattern recognition. The plot line focuses around Cayce tracking down the creators of a series of underground viral video clips. Cayce, a "coolhunter” marketing consultant, allergic to corporate branding, possesses the ability to predict trends and brand success. She is hired by Blue Ant, a marketing firm, to track down the anonymous creators of "The Footage," a series of viral video clips, found online that have a cult following. Cayce herself is an avid follower of these clips, participating in an online forum discussing the clips meaning, validity and who the potential creators are. Blue Ant has less ethical reasons for wanting to discover the creators, as their intentions are to use the popularity of the videos as a marketing tool.  

Cayce, with abundant resources provided by Bue Ant, travels from London to Tokyo to Moscow, eventually discovering the creator is the niece of a Russian Mafia member. Though Cayce and other footage followers have been seeking connections and meaningfulness in the video clips, they conclusively become victims of apophenia.  The video clips do have a fascinating origin story, being a platform for a brain damaged patient to express herself, but, in the end, the clips are simply edited hospital footage. Furthermore, we find that Cayce’s father did indeed die during the September 11th attacks. Her mother experienced her own form of apophenia. She believed her husband was still alive and communicating with her and her daughter through sounds collected by electronic voice equipment.  

Analysis of Thesis 

Overall, I agree with William Gibson’s thesis that humans tend to find patterns and apply meaning to them. It is based on a survival tactic, our tendency to want to understand events, even if it means sometimes settling for the illusion of meaning. It is part of our human nature to detect patterns and weave narratives around those patterns to bring them to life and give them meaning. After all, that is how scientific theories are made and many stories of myth and religion. Sometimes these patterns, such as DNA and hereditary traits, or fossils and evolution, do represent reality, but sometimes we misinterpret patterns and give them false meaning.  As one of the main characters Parkaboy, a fan of the clips, contributor to the forum and aid in the search for the clips’ maker, succinctly says, “Homo sapiens is about patter recognition . . . both a gift and a trap” (Gibson, 23). It is a gift because sometimes we need to detect patterns to help us survive or advance as a society, such as making a quick decision if you are in danger or believing in patterns found in medical research. It is a trap however, because we often actively seek out connections in events that are not related and apply our own meanings to them, such as seeing the face of Jesus on a piece of toast and believing God is sending us a message.  

Part of the reason behind human’s tendency to seek patterns and apply meaning to them is based on another innate quality, human’s aversion to uncertainty. The human mind is uncomfortable with ambiguity, so we quickly generate plausible explanations. If we can’t fit something into an existing pattern, then we may come up with one ourselves. When we do, we give it value, and hold on to it. This “cognitive closure” feels good but prevents us from seeking more information and results in personal biases towards the meaning or explanation we give to data. When Cayce describes the footage, she says that “the mystery of the footage itself feels closer to the core of her life” than humans, and though you can’t explain the feel of the mystery, “it matters, matters in some unique way” (Gibson, 78). Cayce cannot fathom that the clips have no meaning behind them, so she, and other footage followers, convince themselves that they must.  

Ironically, though she has an aversion to corporate logos, and refuses to own items that are branded, in her line of work as a marketing consultant she has the ability to discern which brands will be more successful, in other words, which brands carry more ‘worth’ or ‘meaning’ to customers. She knows brands do not carry any meaning and are used more to sell an idea about something or someone. The Blue Ant marketing firm describes marketing as making people “aware of something they don’t quite yet know – or have them feel that way   . . . and think they’ve thought of it first” (Gibson, 65). Blue Ant marketing firm is also metaphorically named. Blue ants are not even ants, even though upon first glance one would assume they are; instead they are wasps that hunt ground dwelling crickets, stinging and paralyzing them so that they can lay their eggs on them. This is a nice metaphor for marketing, as it is the process of targeting and brainwashing people to believe something is “cool’. This firm wants to exploit the viral aspect of the video, as Bigend, the head of Blue Ant says ““the footage is the cleverest example of marketing the century’s seen so far” (Gibson, 288). 

Relation to Information Management 

Though the book was written in 2003 and references Hummers and Hotmail, I would argue that it is still relevant today, especially in public management. It is less written as a science fiction novel and more so as a critique on social tendencies. As such, it was a very interesting read, and was fun to see what predictions about the future did come true (viral videos, minimalism, internet discussion boards). As public administrators, we are bombarded with and actively seek data in order to guide us on how to better perform our jobs, make decisions and serve our communities. In many ways this data, often in the form of big data, can be useful to public managers, if patterns are accurately defined and analyzed. Ultimately finding accurate patterns in data can empower leaders and result in positive policy changes.   

Implications for Public Administration 

The broader implication of the book is that public administrators should be cautious with the data they receive that informs their decisions. Oftentimes, finding patterns in data is very useful for public administrators. One example would be Geographical Information Systems (GIS). GIS uses hard data coupled with location data to reveal patterns and relations, such as seeing if there is a relationship between higher poverty and lower test scores, food desserts and health problems, traffic jams and poor infrastructure, etc. When we really trust the patterns based on empirical evidence, we can develop artificial intelligence (AI) that can improve aspects of our society. Examples include self-driving cars that help make better drivers or provide a mode of transportation and independence for those that cannot drive. Other examples would be AI helping farmers track weather and get insights into soil and plant growth, or AI helping doctors accelerate the diagnosis and treatment process of cancer patients. However, public administrators do have to be cautious when it comes to pattern recognition, especially in the field of research. Researchers want to find order, regularity and explanations in their findings, but the truth is research is never perfect and variables can be manipulated to reach desired associations or patterns. This can and has led to researchers publishing erroneous results, even in top, peer-reviewed articles. 

       Information is essentially data plus meaning, with meaning encompassing people, time and context (Haque, 2015). Since meaning is subjective, it is different for every person. In the book we see footage followers trying to find meaning in the footage clips, when really the meaning is only known, and will only ever be known, by the sole creator. Without the personal value-added portion of information, we do not understand the information in its entirety.  Often the “value of information is demand driven” and depends on how many “hits” it has, when really the true meaning lies in accounting for both the formal and informal information (Haque, 2015). We must seek out the more formal information that is data-driven, quantifiable and transferable, and the more informal information that is customized to people, time and place. With both types of information, we then can discover if patterns we recognize truly carry meaning. 

Gibson, W. (2003). Pattern Recognition. New York: Berkeley Books. 

Haque, A. (2015). Surveillance, transparency, and democracy: Public administration in the information age. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.