This is a book I can't stop thinking about. It was published in 2002 before text messaging was common and the Internet was in its adolescent stages. Cell phones were toddlers waiting to erupt with applications and face-to-face chat a la Skype. Now we have augmented reality applications like Yelp that tell us what we're looking at, ratings on the restaurant or product, and other pieces of information. There are new barcodes called QR codes that can contain a seemingly infinite amount of information on a product and all one needs is a phone with the app capability to find all of this out.
And then we have Feed. I did the math and the book seems to take place about sixty or seventy years from right now. It seems like a strange reality, a world where babies are no longer conceived by womb, but rather grow. Sound familiar? That's because this is becoming a real possibility. We are growing animals in petri dishes and consuming them. It is certainly a feasibility.
There is also 'Feednet' from which the book takes its name. Feednet is a type of alternative Internet that attaches to the human brain and allows users to connect with one another and communicate without speaking. It also displays to its users, or rather consumers, prices and information of products as they are looking at them. This isn't far off at all. We have text messaging now, where texters in a room together can communicate instantly without speaking and can go unbeknownst to others in the room not involved in the text conversations. We have the aforementioned augmented reality apps as well. Anderson's future is not far off at all. One thing missing from Feednet in society: the attachment to the brain. However...if we all carry our cell phones around with us at all times and often feel 'naked' without them, how is this much different? Take a walk through a stretch of downtown Chicago, or a college campus, and most people will probably have their cell phones in hand. We have become androids without even knowing it. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the repercussions can be damaging.
These repercussions are evident in Anderson's text: they become so reliable on Feednet that if it is 'hacked' it can malfunction and thus is fatal as it is attached to the brain. Although the loss of a cell phone is not fatal, it certainly is emotionally damaging. The other ramifications are the loss of vernacular. In the text, Titus, the central character, barely can hold an intelligent conversation and when speaking to his love interest Violet's father, does not understand a word he is speaking. I have thought about this a lot lately and I experience this myself. I start saying thing and that and using non-definitive pronouns in place of the words used to define the items or places or what have you. People do this all the time. Instead of searching for the absolute correct word in their brains, they just come up with whatever they think of, maybe trying to explain it, but often we just have to assume, and miscommunication can become rampant.
This is certainly a dystopian work, but also a poignant and necessary one. Students need to read this to understand where their generation can head if we become too dependent on technology and consumerism. It is important that texts like these be written so we can make ourselves more aware of our future and understand the implications that come along with advents in technology.
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