Fragments of a Hologram Rose

For week 11 I read Fragments of a Hologram Rose by William Gibson. In this reality, it is clearly the future and technology is much more advanced. There seems to be a power outage probably due to overuse of electronics and other technology. I have to be honest I didn't quite grasp the point of this story. My first reaction was that I didn't like it but it's really that I didn't understand a lot of the vocabulary being used. Even upon reading it a second time, I'm still not sure of how to make sense of it. ASP stands for Apparent Sensory Perception, so I guess that this holograph technology is similar to virtual reality. I thought it was interesting when it said, "Roughly a quarter of all ASP users are unable to comfortably assimilate the subjective body picture of the opposite sex. Over the years some broadcast
ASP stars have become increasingly androgynous in an attempt to capture this segment of the audience." I wonder why this would be a problem. Especially if whatever content these people were watching was not pornographic. Perhaps it's a lack of understanding the opposite sex. Then there's the rose which somehow Parker, the main character, was able to destroy into a thousand fragments which I don't really understand because its a holographic rose so it shouldn't be able to be destroyed. But at the end of the story Parker comes to the conclusion that perhaps he and this woman from his past, most likely his lover, were fragments of each other. Being able to see each other from another angle. I found it really profound when the author said, "...is she closer now, or more real, for his having been there?" I could be wrong since I don't fully understand the author's intentions with this story but I interpreted that quote as him saying that your story can be told through other peoples memories. Or that a person can feel like they are there with you through your memories.  

 
 


 

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