[HER, SYM]
The scrap of printed silk in Linda Lee's hair serves as a representation or symbol for something: but what? Does it symbolize technology, or the urban environment? The pattern is ambiguous. The way in which Case confuses the microcircuit with the layout of a city (the two do look strikingly similar) sets up a blurry boundary between technology and the actual geographic entity of a city. This confusion asks the question: where, in Case's universe, falls the distinction between cyberspace and actual space? Which is the "truer" space?
This is a question which is never fully resolved but is rather extensively explored in the rest of the novel though Gibson's descriptions of Case's experiences within cyberspace and through rhetorical twists like "city of data" (Gibson, 248). In this way, the printed silk is simultaneously a symbolic and a hermeneutic code - symbolizing an enigma.
No comments:
Post a Comment