I came across this book for the first time back when I was in seventh grade and decided to come back to it a couple summers ago, fascinated by the concepts and unusual writing style of Anderson. The book follows Tidus, a teenage boy, and his relationship with Violet, an odd girl he meets on a trip with a group of friends. Sounds normal enough, right? It would be if the trip wasn’t to the Moon and Violet, Tidus, and all his friends didn’t have tiny chips in their brains called Feeds to sate all their technological hunger pangs. In Tidus’s society nearly everybody has a Feed and it’s impossible to live without one. Every thing is done on the Feed. You can play games, watch TV shows, chat with friends, order a new shirt, check the stocks. The possibilities are endless.
To me, this book has come to represent much of what we’ve studied so far this year. The Feed society has lost their ability to function without the technology that is literally a part of who they are. Anderson has an interesting way of showing the reader the slow death of language, giving way to the silent online chatter that we ourselves are becoming increasingly accustomed to. The book also makes clear the tremendous affect that advertising is having on us as individuals. In our world, we feel as though we cannot escape advertising because it is constantly bombarding us through commercials, billboards, telephone calls, and internet ads. In Tidus’s world, this reality is even more obvious: the advertisements are in his head 24/7, haunting his dreams and stalking his thoughts. The ads are personalized, tracking his buyer history and his interests. So what is this society but an extreme version of our own?
I believe this book has a lot to offer the reader beyond what I’ve mentioned here and I strongly recommend giving it a try.
This book sounds really interesting. There are so many book and movies that we have come across that warn us of the same technology obsessed future and the dangers of this kind of society--The Truman Show, Brave New World, The Joneses' Movie (Emma C. blog) and 1984. The "slow death of language" that you describe is very similar to newspeak in 1984 and the online language that we use. The personalized ads was the scariest part of your description, but in the years since this book was published, it has become reality. As I read or watch these examples of our future, they seem far away, distant and unrealistic. But it is slowly beginning to sink in that this is much closer to our reality than we think.
ReplyDeleteIt's scary to think that our society is basically a version of the Feed society, but without the chips (but maybe one day?). Technology and the media has essentially become a part of us, "haunting our dreams and stalking our thoughts", as the advertisements in Tidus's head. The fact that they keep track of his buyer and viewer history is even more haunting. It reminds me of the article that Mr. Guth brought in about Mary and the Zappos shoes, and how the advertisements of her last purchase/view online kept following her from website to website. The fact that technology has gotten so advanced is great, but the fact that it's beginning to track almost our every more is quite frightening. Like Emma said, it's another society like the ones portrayed in The Truman Show, The Joneses, Brave New World, and 1984. Also, the "slow death of language" and comparing it to newspeak reminds me of how everyone is trying to become more efficient and get more done in life. Too much multi-tasking is making life too short. Even thinking about the future: if everything goes by this fast now, what will happen next year? Five years from now? Ten? How much our society is willing to do in so little time is very overwhelming!!
ReplyDeleteIt is a scary thought that their exists a fictional society where technology is literally part of a human's brain. This sounds familiar, maybe to our own society. People are constantly on phones, computers, facebook, and can no longer even imagine a technology-free world. The concept of something called a feed in the brain seems so far fetched to me, but upon thinking about it, with new technologies out there like plastic surgery which would have seemed far fetched at earlier times, I'm beginning to think this might be a representation of our world at later times. Could this be a metaphor for how technology is affecting people today, like with the ads being customized and the concept of ads following you around websites in our world, or possibly even a warning for the track were on and what we're headed towards?
ReplyDeleteThis book has such an interesting concept. I completely agree that it relates almost identically to our society, who knows that might actually be our society in a few dozen years? Or unfortunately maybe even sooner. The fact that the advertisements are based exactly on his interests reminds me of Facebook and how it advertises based on what you "like". It creeps me out, how it knows exactly what interests me. I am even guilty of clicking on the advertisements that gain my focus. When will this suffocation of the advertisement world end? Will it ever end? How far will the industry go to capture our attention? We are basically just as bad as the character in "Feed" because we are heavily brainwashed without even needing the handicap of it being placed into our heads. It's already there.----Johanna Seitenbach
ReplyDeleteI might be saying much of what the other comments have, but it really is true: our society is a lot like Feed, even if it isn't completely there yet. In fact, all the book seems to do is project our problems into the future in a more radical form.
ReplyDeleteWe polluted the Earth so much you have to wear a full body suit to get near the ocean.
We killed all the fish through pollution and over-fishing. In order to still have fish on the menu, Filet-Mignon farms have been created, where Filet-Mignon literally grows in chemicals.
The chemicals in all the artifical foods people eat are causing their skin to fall off, but they don't realize this is a bad thing, and rather they see it as a fashion statement.
Rather than being just on bulliten boards, advertising companies send you whispers of ads in your brain as you pass stores you like, or there are deals on the products you usually buy.
When you feel sad, all you do is buy things.
Everyone is selfish. Even when Violet is dying, Titus doesn't keep the memories she sent him because it's too painful for him. He doesn't stop to think about her feelings, or the feelings of her father, who might want to keep those memories somewhere.
Without the feed, people can't function or imagine living.
Horrible things are going on around the world, and Titus doens't know what they are. The book doesn't even mention what the government is like, since, I'm guessing, the teenagers don't know.
In school they only learn how to use their feed, and actually seem uneducated because of it.
While this book may be a radical representation, it is true of what our future may look like if we continue on this path. After all, we may be slightly brainwashed now through advertisements, but not so much that we know nothing else. We can still think about things, have opinions and care about things other than the next fashion--we can think.
In my opinion, this book is merely a wake-up call, saying: Look what will happen! You should do something now, while the world around you isn't controlled by advertisements.
Sorry, Filet Mignon isn't fish. I was just tired, cause I responded in the morning, and ended up combining two points. One about overfishing, and one about the creepy filet mignon farm.
ReplyDeleteScary. I have never read this book but it bring up really interesting concepts. The characters are feeding into the need for technology by using these feed chips. In our society, we feed into the need for technology, too. Although we may not have computer chips in us, how far are we from it? For example, when I had an instant messaging craze in seventh grade, I spent so much time typing my thoughts instead of pronouncing them that I actually starting using computer lingo all the time. If I heard something funny, I would not simply laugh out loud, but would say "LOL". Looking back just a few years ago, I'm disgusted that my daily means of conversing were made that much more technological.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. I read it in fifth grade because for some reason it was there and had a cool cover, and of course I understood none of the consumerist implications. Now that I look back on it, I realize just how radical the concept is. Kind of like a cross between a hypercapitalist society and Ned Vizzini's Be More Chill, it goes one step beyond what our society is today, and gives us a glimpse of what we may become. Another parallel is to Brave New World, except instead of soma being the drug, the feed is the pacifier that calms the restless masses.
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