(2010-09-10) Viceland Gibson Interview

Vice Land interviews William Gibson at the launch of his Zero History.

Bigend’s world brushes up against another 21st century growth industry: the private military (PMC). And what’s all the fuss about? Pants. And how compelling is it? In the hands of Gibson, it reads and feels like a matter of life and death. It convinces one that we might be heading for a world where the right to market quasi-military pants is as fiercely contested as national borders once were.

When you get a bunch of people displaying those goods in a pressure cooker like Tokyo, what they start to notice is that they’re all wearing the same shit. They may be differentiated by their ability to spend the price of a small car on a pair of pants, but they’re all wearing the same pair of pants. So the original idea of exclusivity has gone out the window. The Secret Brand-s idea says, “You’ve got a lot of money, but you can’t have this shit because you don’t have the right information.” It suddenly becomes exclusive again. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be about very expensive luxury goods. It works because it gives people a powerful sense of individual involvement. (Personally, I find this concept silly/lame, because you're just putting more effort into consuming for the game-badge of being "unique".)

WG: And when I go into JCrew, I’m walking through this astonishingly complex act of quotation. But almost none of the stuff is as heavy or as well made as the real thing. It’s all simulacra. It’s like they’re singing an aria over the score of this very traditional American dream thing. It fascinates me because what they’re doing has become like a traditional act in American culture. Ralph Lauren did it. He really invented it. V: At one point Bigend says that the military invented branding, and another character says that the military find themselves ‘competing with their own historical product, reiterated as streetwear.’ And then you refer to the civilian wearing of military clothing as a form of cosplay, and you also invoke the actual military term “gear queer,” which refers to people outside of the service who like to dress as if they’re soldiers.

V: How do you use Twitter? WG: I follow less than 100 people. I use it to keep in touch daily with a few friends. The rest of it, for me, is just an incredibly powerful aggregator of novelty. I’ve chosen to follow people who are themselves keen and very active aggregators of novelty. And it all tends to present the highest quota of pure, random amusing novelty of any medium that I have access to. Every once in awhile, I glance over at—but do not open—the trending topics and I go, “Oh, ew. That’s horrible. That’s foul.”

V: Garreth says that Terrorism is almost exclusively about Branding. WG: He’s speaking from one or another of the theories of Asymmetric Warfare. What we call terrorism is always asymmetric warfare. You’re a small group with no reputation, and you start covertly blowing up or murdering the people of a big group, like a government or a nation-state or a whole race. And you can’t just do it and then go and do the next one. You have to do it, and then go and do your PR... The scariest terrorists would be guys who keep doing terrible shit, but they never call anybody. Like the Secret Brand of terrorism. That would be really, really bad because you wouldn’t have any way to find them.

V: And also, the first question that’s asked in response to a terrorist act is, “Why?” With these guys, there’d be no why. WG: Gee, I never thought of this before. That’s scary and interesting.