Spook Country Question #2

Personally, I feel that Gibson uses specific product names in “Spook Country” in order to make the story seem more believable. If he were using product names that were made up or simply not using product names at all, readers would have a harder time following, but when you read the word “Bluetooth” or “Ipod” or ‘Lego” or “Astroturf”, these are items which the typical person is familiar with and can easily relate to.
While looking at the webpage for the Mondrian hotel in Los Angeles I was struck by how “modern” this motel appears to be. A good amount of the furniture is very curvy and modern looking. This hotel is very pricy, not to mention the extremely good looking girls they have posing on every page of the website.
On the other hand, the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles, while still very adequate looking, in my opinion, pales in comparison to the Mondrian. It still has that curvy modern look, but the rooms do not appear to be as big. The prices are also significantly lower, which may be exactly what someone is looking for, but when renting a hotel room, you get what you pay for, so a cheaper room usually means a worse room.
I feel that using modern technology terminology and including hotels and technological items that exist in real life helps Gibson’s cause. However, some people, maybe more of the older generation, would say that using modern terminology is bad because it confuses them when he mentions an Ipod or something that they do not know what he means, but figuring out what some of these items are can simply be achieved by looking at a computer for 5 minutes. Even with those people in mind, they are a small minority of the general public in today’s world, so therefore using modern terminology is a bigger plus than it is a minus.