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Feed
The trouble is, all the citizens of this future state are connected to the global network with a direct neural link, called the Feed. The Feed connects its users directly to all others, allowing instant access to information and communication.
Like today's Net, however, the flow of information has grown disturbingly two-way: the Feed is owned by corporations, and their agenda to increase consumerism has led to such privacy-stripping "innovations" as predictive marketing (getting "bannered" by merely looking at purchaseable items) and constant interruptions (such as chats being broken by Google AdSense-inspired ads).
Even more sinister, those same corporations bought out the government's role in education, and so Titus and his friends attend School(TM) -- where literacy is not on the curriculum. Instead, students learn how to make purchase decisions and better use their Feed.
Titus' new girlfriend, however, is representative of a growing counter-culture. Violet's education is strictly home-based, and her objections to the mainstream grow increasingly strident, even as she becomes a victim of it. It is perhaps no coincidence that her lack of affluence in this society is tied to her resistance against it.
The citizens of this future America, weaned on the Feed, are shockingly illiterate. Their language is largely incoherent, riddled with "like"s and "thing"s. Poor verbal composition is combined with an almost complete lack of vocabulary, so characters are often caught referring to objects as "thing... uh..." -- pause while they look up the term through their Feed -- "table."
We often attribute poor language skills to teenagers, but the author's willingness to show adults with the same deficiencies is telling. Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated.
Not surprisingly, the inhabitants of this world are incredibly self-absorbed. Titus repeatedly demonstrates a callous disregard for the feelings of his dying girlfriend, although he has the good grace to feel guilty buying a sweater while she confesses her fear of death. It's a culture where citizens are trained to value only what's shiny and new, and to dispose of the old and used. How any relationship can survive in that environment is a mystery only philosophers and Slashdot commentators might dare address.
The author's handling of the characters is both realistic and sensitive. I found myself shaking my head at Titus and his friends, but my disgust was accompanied by a sympathy; like a baby raised by wolves, his behaviour is completely understood, if not acceptable.
In fact, the picture drawn of this future is all too clear, and the author's skill at connecting the dots between today and that time make for some serious introspection. After all, today's Internet is an obvious precursor of the Feed, and as commercial life makes ever-greater demands of our attention online, where does it end?
The gear that makes this future possible is incredibly empowering. It connects all people together, literally, to the sum total of all human knowledge, while providing a complete, instant telecommunications network. But corporate interest is clearly the villain here, with all technology perverted to consumerist ends, ripping away privacy, individual expression and true liberty. In the right hands, the Feed would be more powerful than the agricultural, industrial and communications revolutions put together; instead, the Feed is leading its users to an apocalypse, as the author strongly hints at the end of the novel.
Most savage of all, the citizens of this future America don't see the apocalypse coming. As they increasingly turn a blind eye to how their goods are manufactured and delivered (sound familiar?), they ignore the radiation-induced skin lesions that everyone has, the fact that couples can't reproduce without a "conceptionarium", the glowing green clouds, the dead seas, the ash falling from the sky. In their dome habitats, life goes on, in the malls and upcars and fake lawns underneath the Clouds(TM) -- while the other nations of the Earth vow to obliterate America's corporations by any means necessary.
It's a hell on Earth, but a hell that seems destined to come to a crashing halt. Like the best in science fiction, this novel shows us the worst-case scenario, so we can thoughtfully avoid it.
You can purchase Feed from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
all the citizens of this future state are connected to the global network with a direct neural link, called the Feed.
When will the rip offs of Ghost in the Shell/Matrix end?!!
"Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated..."
Sounds a little familiar.
This book sounds totally unrealistic: "Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated."
This would never happen in real life, you know.
is NOT a porno.
Sorry!
Is that it kills the story. If there is a point that the story is trying to imply, it just kills it. Sometimes, the author is trying to leave something to the reader, but when you get it from another person, it just no longer is there.
...do the characters actually *do* anything about it, or does his rebellious girlfriend die and life goes on?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Set in a dystopian future America...
/snark
In SciFi is there any other kind? I'm still waiting for Manhattan to be turned into a maximum security prison. They're about 7 years behind schedule.
I know, I know, it's redundant... I should have known everyone would catch that one.
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
the Feed is owned by corporations, and their agenda to increase consumerism has led to such privacy-stripping "innovations" as predictive marketing (getting "bannered" by merely looking at purchaseable items) and constant interruptions (such as chats being broken by Google AdSense-inspired ads). This has been shown in umpteens of movies - The Minority Report being the most recent one. It has, actually been put into practice in intellligent homes - Bill Gates' mansion boasts of "Paintings" - screens on the wall which change the picture based on the person who enter's the room.
Why do I get the feeling that if SF writers were in charge of the industrial revolution we'd still all be dairy farmers?
Why does the future always suck, why is that the natural consequence of progress along any dimension? Why do they embrace defeat?
It's always some dark dystopian future and the cure is always either free love or fascism isn't it?
That's why I like PK Dick so much. No happy endings, we all die alone tortured by our paranoias.
Judging by the moderation and post quality, the average age of a slashdot poster is probably 15, while the editors seem to average around 12 judging on spelling, grammar and attention span.
Welcome to a novel form retelling of an Outer Limits episode.
Warren Ellis did it better.
At least they wont attempt to hack into a Gibson Supercomputer with Apple Notebooks. OR WILL THEY!
The consumers of today's America, zombified by television, are shockingly illiterate. That this trend continues doesn't surprise me.
Hmm sounds like most of the books about dystopian future Americas out there... Since this one seems even less likely than the nuclear war caused one in the books I read as a kid, and even THAT one was thwarted by humanity, I'm only wishing kids had more books of inspiring futures than angst-riddled depressing ones. Last think a teen needs, another thing to be depressed about.
I can almost imagine the thoughts of the author as he sat down to write this: "Hmmm... there used to be a lot of fear-the-future books 20 years ago. They sold really well. But we've fixed the threat of world war three, nuclear disaster, and this terrorist thing doesn't seem tangible enough to write about. Guess I'll just have to make up something about a capitalistic conspiracy gone awry and hope no one stops to think about how many people would have to abandon their ethics to participate in setting up this conspiracy."
Blah!
I'm tired of being told to be afraid. Hurray for hope.
he uses google to try to act smart while instant messaging her. yeah, I know this story well.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
I thought one of the most telling scenes in the book was a ride they took to "the country." They found a steak farm that allowed visitors to watch the blood flowing through tubes to irrigate fields of steak, with the occasional horn or hoof sticking out of a hedge of beef. I recall Titus thinking that it was important to visit these kinds of places so people would remember where their food really came from.
Has there ever been a fiction book describing a utopian society that wasn't secretly evil in some way?
I guess we all get off on the sob stories and the apocalypse.
The only thing that i remember about it that the technology that he described (implants in your head to receive commercial shows and trendy fashions) is pretty far off. If I had an implant in my head, the last thing I would want is the inability to control what I receive all the time.
I could understand implanting a cell phone mic into my jaw or a receiver into my ear, but an important note is that I would have to be able to turn them off (and they would have to be removable with no permanent damage).
The last thing you would want would to be recieving spam projected into your brain 24-7.
P.S. The girl dies in the end.
I read this in a few days, with only about 150 pages long during the school year, about 4 months ago. It's diction is pretty light, and is on a 8th grade reading level.
*Tries to remember the story more*
From what I do remember, it was pretty prophetic in describing the commercialization of schooling and teenagers. The reviewer touched on this point a little too. Speaking from a teenage geek's perspective; it's often sickening to see how invasive advertising is becoming in teenagers' lives.
Unfortunately, the advertisers seem to have already won - as I and many others are already 'casted' by other peers as 'outsiders' for not being as consumptious or brand-loyal as them.
Both the main character and I feel torn, as we do not like to befriend/hang out with such a 'phony' crowd [I hate to use Holden's word, but it fits here]; and there's little alternatives for us.
I mean, we really already are a glutinous, self-absorbed, incredibly selfish and illiterate country anyway. If you don't think corporations control educational materials today, you are sadly naive. This novel sounds not so much like a vision of the future, but a stylized version of today.
/rant.
Luckily for us, reality will soon free us from our collective delusion of disconectedness. I find it humourous that in the novel the people rely on their amazing communication system to just look up words, in the same way I am amazed at the lack of overall collaboration (besides open source) that exists on the 'net today.
Or does this book sound like a Jon Katz atricle?
Poor boy. Female engineers become attractive to male geeks at puberty, and remain so until 20 minutes after death. Longer on warm days.
And as an engineer, she's probably way too smart to hang out with a boy named Titus.
We often attribute poor language skills to teenagers, but the author's willingness to show adults with the same deficiencies is telling. Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated.
You really posted this whole story just to say that, didn't you? ;)
Seriously, go outside, go buy a gun. Cheer up.
:(
Frownies.
It's a culture where citizens are trained to value only what's shiny and new, and to dispose of the old and used. How any relationship can survive in that environment is a mystery only philosophers and Slashdot commentators might dare address
This is what I've been trying to figure out for years! HOW!?!!??
THE ANGST!! I CANNOT STAND THE ANGST!!
Go read Greg Egan's works, or something else like the 4 books of Hyperion.
May you live in interesting times.
Read the Otherland series if you want a good, future, dystopian society where everyone has a direct connection to the Net. Extremely deep and broad world, where heroes find out that in RL they're young,old,opposite gender, etc. I'm not saying that this new book isn't good, but this stuff has been explored already, in depth, by masters (Neuromancer anyone?)
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Season 3, epsidoe 5: "Streams of Consciousness"
Outer Limits was such a great show. The same thing happened to another episode - the same premise got turned into a movie called, "The Truman Show." *yawn*
At least this one is a novel, plus I guess there are only so many storylines available. *shrug*
Wha...I thought this was a futuristic story!
----
WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
When I saw the word "Feed" I got excited and thought maybe it was an article about nanotechnology... maybe someone had created The Feed from Stephenson's Diamond Age?
But alas, not yet... not yet.
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
We are seeing in the debates over the Japanese and Singaporean education systems the pressures being brought to bear by modern information, science and technology based industries upon the education system to turn out more creative, less regimented, adults.
If the mass illiteracy future happens, it ain't going to be because that's what companies want.
Douglas -- All speeling mistaks shoud be consedered intentionel irony
IBM Pollyanna Principle: Machines should work. People should think.
Adam T associated statement: I will happily think. I just don't want to work.
My mom knows this guy. He had dinner at her house a couple of weeks back. Haven't read this book but people speak of it very highly.
Awesome to see some "children's cyberpunk" if that's not an oxymoron. I should pick this book up.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
At least the part about the language skills.
Example (And I'm going to preface this with a solid "I have absolutely minimal input in this situation though I'm trying" statement)
My stepson is a frickin pod person thanks to DSL and a father (who he lives with) who literally refuses to pull the plug. The kid comes home from school (not School(TM) yet but soon I'm sure) and goes online. He stays online until he goes to sleep. When he's at our house (every other weekend, his dad got custody and then prompty opted to let the net and television handle most of the chores) it's a war to get him to do anything that doesn't involve a video game. We have broadband too but we try to keep him from spending the entire weekend on it. What's two days though every two weeks when he lives online the rest of the time (admittedly outside of school).
He seems to me to be a pretty bright kid and makes ok grades but his communication skills are almost non-existent. Getting more than a couple of sentences out of him at one time is a triumph and if they're understandable then that's a bonus. He's got to use the English language at school (doesn't he?) so you would think he'd know a few words. A noun or two here and there? Maybe? If that's the case though then he doesn't exhibit any sign of it that I can see.
At his age (Almost 16) I was trying to figure out how to earn enough money to get a car, trying to get laid (with little luck), and had interests in music, books, sports, and a pack of friends all thinking about much of the same things.
The idea of this kid working anywhere is laughable. He doesn't even mention cars or driving and to the best of my knowledge doesn't know what a girl is (and I check his browser cache when he leaves so we're not even talking about hitting the porn here). He doesn't read, he doesn't listen to music, and he doesn't even want to go outside much less actually do something that might require sweating. Friends? Hell if I know.
I wonder how many other kids are already hooked up to "The Feed" for all practical purposes?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
B.F. Skinners utopian vision.
Although there are some who will find it depressing.
uh...
uh...
good.
--riney
Anyone know where I can find a decent quality image of Ingignogdt giving the earth the finger out of the window of his Mooninite spacecraft?
It's linux related, so it's OK to ask - mod me up! I want to make a silent bootsplash where the "progress bar" is ignignotds' finger getting longer and longer.
On second thought, I'll just start a sourceforge project and wait for someone else to come along and do it for me.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
On the main character, Titus:
In my mind's eye I imagine him to carry a blue water sword and voice-over annoyingly.
On their language:
"Hey Marge, where's that uhhhhhh, thing you use to ummmmmmmmmmm..... dig?"
"Oh, you mean a spoon!"
"Yeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeah!!!"
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Same reason newspapers are full of awful events - that's what's interesting, and what stands in contrast to the "mundane" workaday world of our own lives. Plus, SF dystopias are cautionary - they're waving red flags about present or incipient problems and rabble-rousing to try to inspire corrective action. The only world in which forward-looking, concerned people aren't presented with doomsday scenarios...is the happy-face worlds depicted BY those scenarios (no dark dystopian visions would be allowed/distributed by The Feed, for example).
----
WWJD...For a Klondike Bar?
Non-existent communication skills.
He's a teenage male, right?
Congratulations, he's normal.
---
"At his age (Almost 16) I was trying to figure out how to earn enough money to get a car, trying to get laid (with little luck), and had interests in music, books, sports, and a pack of friends all thinking about much of the same things."
Aha. You're really a guy. This like a sitcom. But sad and pathetic. Which is like a sitcom.
As I was reading the review the first thing that came to mind was, "This is about the future? This is how things are now!"
Matrix, meet Today
Today, meet Matrix
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I agree. This scares me stiff. I trust that people's inner clock/inner pendulum can detect this stuff and avert before actual doom, but I'm not quite as sure about that as I used to be. This election, not to over-reach, might be an interesting test of my theory about that. Gees, I hope my daugthers arent mind-controlled robot billboards.
Poor verbal composition is combined with an almost complete lack of vocabulary, so characters are often caught referring to objects as "thing... uh..." -- pause while they look up the term through their Feed -- "table."
Nowadays, we call that "lag".
This is a typical result of lazy programming. Never underestimate the value of caching a local copy of your data for faster look-ups.
"Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated."
Duh...But tell us more about the book!
Just kidding. This sounds interesting. It would seem that in a universe such as the one this book describes technology must be liberally balanced with conscience, something we as (computer) scientists often forget.
"Here's a spoiler: You're will die alone."-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
Damn to late the future is now. You do use some big words, googled for them? Pity you can't google grammar eh?
Just messing with you, not like I could do much better but then english ain't my first language.
As for advertising and american education, the rest of the world is just a few years behind, I once saw a documentary on kids in an american school being forced to watch commercials. The companies who owned the ads had paid for the lessons so if you didn't watch you were BANNED from class. It was a few years ago and I only saw half of the program so it could have been a spoof. It was supposed to be in one of the more depressed areas of big city.
Anyway we have long since passed the point of sponsored kantines and sponsored school books. We can bitch all we want about it but as long as we allow campaigns that promise tax cuts and don't gas people that vote based on this we can't expect anything else. He who promises the biggest cuts gets the power, to make the cuts he needs to cut money to schools. Then "industry" steps in but they don't do it for free.
Someone else commented how this kinda of future requires a lot of people to overcome their ethics. No it doesn't, it just requires everyone to make a tiny little adjustment of their ethics every couple of years. That is presuming people have ethics anyway. Look at how easily people turn to butchering their neighbours and perhaps the human race has about the same amount of ethics as a cat.
The book review talks about the "hero" having little feelings about his girlfriend dying while he is shopping. But as we shop for candy and luxury goods and speculate on the latest ship or bitch how camera phones are crap PEOPLE ARE DYING FROM HUNGER. Do we give a damn about them? I don't. Oh sure when you corner me on the street and shove a tv-camera in my face I will say I care but really I don't. If I did I would do something about it and I don't. None of us do. Well at least not enough of us to make any difference.
Oh well at least you and I feel torn about it. Better then some of the posters who prefer books that say "everything is going to be alright". We are all consumer slaves but at least some of us are aware of it. Like alcoholism the first step is admitting you got a problem. The real problem is all the steps that come after it. Looks like a long journey, better have a drink first to encourage us.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I remember her. She was definitely waaaay smarter than me. Every time I tried to touch her, she smacked me. *sigh* I miss Legend of the Red Dragon
I don't get it. If everybody has a direct neural Feed, why talk at all, except through it? Seems like it would revolutionize society in ways too hard to write about...oh, now I get it.
See Alfred Bester's famous novel The Demolished Man for an interesting take on a future in which just a subset of folks are telepaths. Highly recommended.
Sounds exactly like a book I would like to buy.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
Ok, I'll dare to address the question of how any relationship can survive in such an environment: Frankly, it doesn't need to. In The Future®, relationships are superflulous and unnecessary as all human reproduction is handled by a corporation formed from the merging of the sperm bank, planned parenthood, and artificial insemination clinics. Certain males, selected from the gene pool after application and carefull screening, are permitted to make a 'deposit' in the sperm bank, where their 'funds' remain anonymous but are catagorized by physical characteristics. Certain select females are granted a license to reproduce when deemed necessary in light of population statistics, the desired qualities of new members, etc (do we need more scientists, hair stylists or equipment operators) and permitted to conceive (unlicensed conception is severely punished). After birth the newborn begins to spend more and more time in corporate training centers (day care) where s/he is raised to fulfill the role in society ordained for him/her.
So, all the sentiment about 'love', 'relationship' , 'romance' is completely unnecessary and dangerous to the established order and prone to produce troublemakers who don't 'fit in'. The only relationship necessary is that between the individual and the corporation.
And they have flying cars.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
To be honest this sounds interesting, I think branding it as another Matrix etc rip-off is probably missing the point, and I think slating it for using ideas that have occurred in other SF novels is probably doing the same. No novel is ever entirely original in all aspects: if you're going to nitpick about the reuse of ideas you may as well give up now and never read another book in your life.
However:
The citizens of this future America, weaned on the Feed, are shockingly illiterate.
The fact is that for most of human history, most of humanity, most of the time has been shockingly illiterate. Even today, if you look at literacy throughout the world, rather than looking at just the U.S.... it's quite shockingly low (America is not and never has been representative of the world at large). But the reasons are different and tend to be a reflection of the rich / poor divide, rather than because education is controlled by powerful corporations. The difference is that many people who are illiterate today would give almost anything for an education and some decent opportunities in life, whereas the characters in this novel just don't care.
Gee, I dunno... could School(TM) really be worse than School(Govt-Spec-12-5129-00917)?
How about a pilot program?
--- Ban humanity.
You are well into the realms of pure fantasy. No basis in real life whatsoever. Women being able to avoid men that are bad for them. Yeah right you are even incapable of it yourselve. You reject him just because of his name. That is rational. We all know you can tell the wifebeaters by their given name.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It is one possible solution to such problems
"the narrative follows a 14-year-old boy named Titus as he hangs out with his friends"
14-year-old geeks don't have friends.
Nice try at an anti-government jab, but the School(TM) is vastly different than the (sometimes oversold) private schools in real life. I would take nearly any real world school, public or private, over the ones portrayed in this book! That is speaking as a student, parent of a student, or even just a general member of society.
Industry may need workers, but the workers don't need to think, because a corporation can always spend some of its ill-gotten profits hiring somebody to think for their employees, so nobody on the payroll actually needs to think at all.
Leaving aside the quasi-libertarian dogma, the only solution to the problems described in the book is a series of well-considered government programs designed to address what's really wrong. I'm sorry, but you simply can't trust private enterprise to solve these things, because they are driven by incentives, rather than ethics and laws. With the proper legal structure, government programs must, by definition, achieve their goals. The only indispensible requirement is that the lawmakers be ethical people, and that's easily achieved once you have a properly educated electorate. The people can be trusted to make the right decisions, once they understand the issues. Fostering a full and proper understanding in the voters will indeed require us first to break the back of corporate media and replace it with something consistently objective, but this is not insurmountable.
You can see a program taking shape here: First, a free media, out from under the thumb of corporate ideology. Once the corporations aren't drowning the public in their own version of reality, their power will evaporate and their very existence will sooner or later follow.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
It's a bait-and-switch, see, originating in the 1950s. The 1950s were supposedly the halcyon days of apple pie, clean (too cheap to meter!) nuclear power and robots that would clean your house---any day now! The 1950s were also a time of paranoia, McCarthyism and of course the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation.
To reflect this duality, take Asimov and PKD. Asimov's stories reflect the attitude that technology will save us, that robots will do our bidding and be our Fuzzy Friends. PKD's view is that aliens, or maybe robots, or maybe mutants, but in any case something utterly inhuman, will supplant and replace us. (See the short stories "The Golden Man", "The Hanging Man" or "The Father-Thing" for some really top-drawer examples of that.)
If you've been reading solely PKD, no wonder you think it's all doom and gloom!
Let's look at the last few SF books I read. "A Fire Upon the Deep" (Vernor Vinge), "The Left Hand of Darkness" (Ursula K LeGuin), "The Turing Option" (Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky). Hmm---not a dystopia to be found. (Though that last books was a damned waste of time.)
Hell, Vinge writes about ubiquitous computing in a way that doesn't lead to suckness and defeat. (See "Fast Times at Fairmont High" or the upcoming "Rainbows End".)
Also---you say that "the cure is always free love or fascism". Aside from Norman Spinrad trying to make a point ("The Iron Dream"), when is fascism recommended? When is "free love" recommended as a cure for a dystopia? The only free-love-proposing book I remember is "Stranger in a Strange Land", and that was hardly set in a dystopia.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
OK. In this book, the US is a nation of dunces--but somehow all the infrastructure to keep the Feed, the high-tech GM food functions. The people who run that clearly can't be the mindless, attention-span-of-a gnat zombies that the author posits the general public has become...and they can all be counted on, or coerced to, not object to the hell that life has turned into.
For that matter, somehow this country of imbeciles can afford to buy the latest gewgaws. How? What can they trade for money? Organs? Blood plasma? Drool? (Doubtful, given the genetic technology implied.)
I don't think the author has thought things through; probably didn't figure he or she had to--after all, he's pushing all the fashionable buttons for the Rage Against the Machine set.
It must be rough knowing someone with different interests. I recommend spending all your time with your "pack of friends all thinking about much of the same things" to avoid such difficult encounters in the future.
I think School(TM) Could be vastly worse - Government run things are generally just sluggish and ineffective. But a corperation run school where they were allowed to pull every subliminal trick in the book on you? Scary stuff.
Personally I think it would backfire though and people would just become hardened to the ads.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Slashdot is for all manner of discussion, whether you and your groupthinking friends believe it or not. The mod system, like today's GOP, serves primarily to stymie the discussion of interesting ideas in favor of those of the group.
There's a good reason for reading dystopias. Heck, there are lots of 'em. See, any good story has to have conflict in it. I'm in the middle of reading "A Deepness in the Sky" right now---not a dystopia, but it features what I consider pretty damned scary bad guys. If they weren't as sinister as they are, the book wouldn't be exciting. Who wants to see Fluffy Bear out-cuddle Slightly Less Fluffy Bear?
Now, I'm not defensing dystopias which are unimaginative or poorly written. As another reply to you put it, People so often read these kinds of books and then talk about how "1984ish" our world is today or how we are heading towards a "Brave New World." I wonder how many people who make those comments have even read the books. How many of them could name the main SF elements in each book (two-way television and a genetically engineered caste system, respectively)?
A good dystopian novel will make you consider elements of the society you live in, see it in a different way. PKD didn't have alien marauders secretly replacing humans left and right in his town, but that doesn't mean that "The Hanging Man" isn't a good read.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
*cough Negative Utopia cough*. Not distopia. Difference? In a Dystopian society everyone knows it sucks. It's usually a degenerative advanced In a negative utopian socity/future, everyone *thinks* it's great because no on knows any better, but a dark underbelly shows itself and the reader is let in on the flaws on the Utopian society.
Dystopian -> Blade Runner
Negative Utopian -> Brave New World
Dystopian-> Lord of the Flies
Negative Utopian -> 1984
Once upon a time the distinction was used more often. It seems this day, literary people use the same term for both. But to me that's as disgraceful as calling Sci Fi a branch of Fantasy.
click me
Indeed, we should campaign for equal rights for pod people who piss away their lives playing Everquest! Clearly that's just as valid as making friends, or creating something, or writing...
Ass.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Remember when the Internet was going to be so damned good because it was going to be an interactive medium, where people talked back, and wrote, and would gain a voice as a massive, unruly, democratic whole?
Oh, wait, for the vast majority of users, it's television with higher resolution and more porn. Even the games require the smallest possible level of thought or strategy. (I tried an MMORPG once---the WoW beta. Possibly the most stultifying gameply ever. Walk over to a bad guy whose level is less than or equal to yours. Hit 'auto-attack'. Wait about sixty to ninety seconds. Pick up Six Rusty Copper Bits. Repeat.) (Not to bust on Warcraft. I had a damned good time playing WCIII and the expansion.)
Damn, you know, I spend five or six hours a day in front of a computer, but I write (for myself), I edit Wikipedia, I blather on Slashdot, I read, I write mail to people that uses complete sentences and capital letters... hell, I instant message using complete sentences and capital letters. Hell, I even go outside sometimes, exercise, read a book.
How did this kid end up so different from me? I was a dork; I didn't really have friends, but I wasn't so... passive.
I am so not having kids of my own for a long, long time.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Didn't say teens WERE depressed a lot. I said there's a lot to be depressed about. There are lots and lots of ADULTS who are plenty depressed. Plenty of teens, too. The book's targeted at "Young Adults", that's why I mentioned teens.
Also, I'm only 30 and not suffering from memory loss, so I remember plenty of times my friends or I were depressed between ages 13 and 20. We had a lot of genuine happiness, too.
I is not sick
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
The book is for people like you, who think that we've fixed the threat of world war three and nuclear disaster, among other dusty old SF threats.
As I *said*, how about a ***pilot*** program. You know... TRY IT OUT instead of making ideological prejudgements based on scare tactics of subliminal advertising and other urban myths? Can we at least TRY and be scientific by running an experiment?
Personally I think it would backfire though and people would just become hardened to the ads.
Do you have a actual factual basis for this conclusion other than "business = evil"?
Can people not set aside their political prejudices once in a while so we can actually try something new? This is actually the main problem facing this country these days. If a solution can be shown to not be 100% perfect, it gets tossed away even if the new solution is 80% effective versus the 40% effectiveness of the incumbent system. It's madness.
--- Ban humanity.
Maybe he doesen't like cars and fast women!
God, is this the Fifties again...?
Just because you're "antisocial" doesn't mean there's something wrong with you!
Yeah. Terribly unfocused. Those hostages, stuck in Iran... it's good that we had the moral clarity of Reagan, who, you know, sent the Iranians arms in exchange for hostages. And look, our current chimp^Hpresident has the same kind of moral clarity! Sweet!
No it's not rough really. See since his different interest (You can't say "different interests" because that implies that there's more than one) involves sitting in a dark room all of the time staring at a monitor while trying to find a key to open the blue door without setting off the explosive it's not hard to avoid an encounter.
I spend plenty of time online myself. I game, participate in a couple of discussion boards, and like to surf as much as anyone. I don't do it all the time. There's nothing wrong with online games or the internet but if you do anything exclusively all the time you need to step back from it.
"Well rounded" You familiar with that idea?
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Ultra Veal
(let the food fight begin)
Letter To Iran
Congratulations.
I'm 20, and I've only really though about getting a car for a year or so now.
So he's a DSL-absorbed teenage male.
Have you talked to him about music, and why he doesn't listen to it?
Ditto for reading.
As for going outside and sweating...sweatings not fun.
Especially if one doesn't have friends to share the pain with.
Sounds like you, as step-father, need to take the poor fellow out for a talk and get a actual /.
relationship going instead of whining on
Especially as his real father has abdicated responsibility.
If he enjoys computers that much, why don't you buy him a compiler and a introduction to
programming and a intro to game programming book?
That way he can start putting his enjoyment of computer games into something educuated.
I mean, we really already are a glutinous, self-absorbed, incredibly selfish and illiterate country anyway. If you don't think corporations control educational materials today, you are sadly naive. This novel sounds not so much like a vision of the future, but a stylized version of today.
Don't you think maybe, just maybe, the author is maybe trying to make a point? That the future described by this book is what will happen to us if we don't change what's going on today {of course the future is stylized compared to today}? Kind of like a large amount of other good sci-fi books {1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, The Giver, lots of PK Dick, etc.}?
also, if your worried about corporate control of text books,etc., I recommend some books.
done
While I am definitely not a Communist (nor is much of anyone else in the past 10 years, as you'd notice if you'd check out a news source besides Fox News Channel ;-) )
China is. I think the most populous nation in the world counts. Also North Korea and Cuba.
Communism is not dead! It's just... resting... after a prolonged squawk, you see.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
"Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated." This is set in the future, you say? I guess some things just don't change.
There is another example of the same idea, though not dystopian like this one, written by Stephen Baxter. I believe it was Manifold Space, and in it a large group of people are voluntarily given implants which link their brains directly together in sort of an organic beowulf cluster. Good reading.
Best possible things he could try is some kind of Dance (NOT Ballet, but partner dance).
Tell him you'll pay for any of the following: Salsa/Mambo Class, Swing Class , Tango Class
Lots of people get hooked on these dances, and they go from total geeks -> social people in less than two months.
My personal view is Salsa/Mambo = "look at me", Swing = "look at us", Tango = "Stop looking at us so we can have sex."
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The idea of this kid working anywhere is laughable. He doesn't even mention cars or driving and to the best of my knowledge doesn't know what a girl is (and I check his browser cache when he leaves so we're not even talking about hitting the porn here).
So what does the kid read when he is online? Maybe you can use this knowledge to tear him away from the PC for a while?
I wonder if there's any significane to the fact that before I had finished this article, I had five other windows open:
- google search for 'the feed'
- bn.com
- amazon.ca
- chapters.ca (use all three for cost comparison)
- local library web page (why buy, when you can borrow)
I feel fed already, perhaps I don't need the book.
Agreed.
Though, my deal was once I got a job then I could get a car.
So what's in the browser cache? The things that he is interested in may be available in the real world too.
I didn't start listening to music until about 5 years ago.
Anyway, I think that if you could work with his interests, it would help out a lot.
thats a really good suggestion. I love seeing the 'kids' {young adults} at dances whos goal was to pick up girls and they ended up getting good at dancing from going to so many.
But related to the kid, they force social interaction.
done
Hey, just trying to get in as many as I can before they're outlawed.
And there are inanimate bricks lying under a bridge in the outskirts of Rio that knew I wasn't talking about the schools in the book.
ObDuh: Duh!
--- Ban humanity.
If the popups lead to better educated children, I have absolutely no problem with them at all.
As I *said*, how about a ***pilot*** program. You know... TRY IT OUT instead of making ideological prejudgements based on scare tactics of subliminal advertising and other urban myths? Can we at least TRY and be scientific by running an experiment?
Personally I think it would backfire though and people would just become hardened to the ads.
Do you have a actual factual basis for this conclusion other than "business = evil"?
Can people not set aside their political prejudices once in a while so we can actually try something new? This is actually the main problem facing this country these days. If a solution can be shown to not be 100% perfect, it gets tossed away even if the new solution is 80% effective versus the 40% effectiveness of the incumbent system. It's madness.
The problem with this philosophy is that "education" is not the same as a scientific theory, no matter how complex a theory. Education is two parts knowledge, one part teaching someone how to think. No, I'm not a tin-foil hat wearing paranoid, or a rabid anti-capitalist, I am just speaking the truth about all systems of education, good or bad. If you treat a group kids like part of an experiment, you must be prepared for the consequences. For a change that is as potentially drastic as this, I'm against subjecting anyone's kids to it.
I believe that any "good" education would include things like critical thinking skills, championing the ability to stand by what you believe in even if it is unpopular, etc.... Now maybe a school run under such corporate sponsership discribed in the books might be supportive of such values, but I just don't see any reason for them to be.
Seriously! This is one of the most constructive posts I've seen this week.
I just waant to try something new. WHY DOES THIS ATTITUDE ALWATS ENCOUNTER RESISTANCE EVEN FROM THE MAN (geek) IN THE STREET (Internet)?
People are also just tossing out strawman arguments against the idea. That's what I mean by releasing your political prejudices for a while. All I implied was private sector schools (TM). It should have been obvious I don't mean the robot mills described in the book review, just the general concept. School(TM) in the real world does not automatically imply it's completely unregulated.
Everyone and his brother thinks they know exactly what will happen without a single scrap of empirical experience to back the opinion up, and that's just frigging annoying as all hell.
--- Ban humanity.
Have you tried beatings? If it doesn't work, at least it's exercise.
Well, for you that is.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
As far back as I remember (the '70s) "cool" characters in books, television and films are always cynical pessimists. We're at the point today where people can't get excited about something like the X-Prize whereas less than a century ago people got so excited about Zeppelins they actually designed buildings with mooring masts on them (i.e. the Empire State building).
Whatever happened to optimism about the future? Well, my thought is that fiction saying that "things might not be so good no matter what you do now" will sell better than "look everything will be bright, shiny and better"...
crazy dynamite monkey
Haha, everyone knows that Rudy Ray Moore is really going to win.
If you have a talented author who is able to work with interpersonal issues, relationships and so on, they write "respectible" fiction. SF only get the stories written by no-talent hacks or the stories by good authors that *can't* be told as non-SF.
I disagree, but would like to include a brief and admittedly vague anecdote. Ursula K LeGuin, who became famous for her SF exploring sociological and anthropological themes---but could The Left Hand of Darkness have been told without genetically engineered androgynes?---and later tried to distance herself from her SF roots, to be more palatable to The Literary Establishment. She ended up writing a lot of bad work.
You say, That said, I'd be happy to read a SF novel which focused on interpersonal or other "non-SF" sources of conflict, where the future is just a scenery choice. There's plenty of work that does just that. It's not SF; it's a Western or a crime drama with the word 'boat' crossed out and replaced with 'transgalactic skipship' or some similar verbal frottage.
SF is about hwo technology changes us. Vinge's "Realtime" series for stasis fields, "The Left Hand of Darkness" for a lack of gender, "1984" for two-way television and "Brave New World" for a genetically engineered caste system. I say that no really great work of SF could be re-cast in what you call a non-SF locale.
SF isn't just scenery. A lot of it is crap, but that can be said for general fiction as well. It's been unfairly ghettoized, its authors shunned until after their deaths, then grave-robbed for buzzwords and plot points. (See: Philip K Dick, Paycheck; Isaac Asimov, I, Robot; Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers.)
And the shunning of SF continues into other media, TV and movies. With the exception of Trek, which has its own problems, and which (I'm told) has gone straight to hell lately, what SF is there on television? What was the last SF movie you saw? And I mean real SF. Look what's considered SF.
There's a tendency among the general readership to shun SF. I can't imagine why someone would have such an aversion to picking up "The Left Hand of Darkness" or "A Deepness in the Sky". Do you know what causes it?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
People are also just tossing out strawman arguments against the idea. That's what I mean by releasing your political prejudices for a while. All I implied was private sector schools (TM). It should have been obvious I don't mean the robot mills described in the book review, just the general concept. School(TM) in the real world does not automatically imply it's completely unregulated.
Yes, we already have privately run schools, but where is the experiment if you are talking about something similar to existing schools? Therefore, your impassioned grandparent post implied (at least to me) you wanted to try something noticably different that current public or private schools. Since you didn't include any specific differences in the approach you wanted to try, I reasoned you ment a system similar to that described by the book, with perhaps some minor changes.
That is my line of reasoning for making my reply. If I am wrong, could you clarify exactly what you want to try in your experiment?
Perhaps you'd be better off with stories beginning with "Once upon a time" and concludng with "and they lived happily ever after"! Alas, the real world doesn't work that way.
Ummm. I'm sorry but your stepsons problems have little to do with the internet and probably show deeper sources.
The majority of teenybopper netheads love music, are horny, chatting, etc etc. Internet addiction and overuse may be true but it is not causal of your stepsons problems. I wonder what he is doing online, just playing games?
The internet doesnt have much to do with this. Before the internet there were social outcasts who came home from school and stayed in their room doing god knows what repeat ad nauseum. It is indicitive of a deeper problem. It is a symptom not the source.
Ever since Mary Shelley (sp?), some authors have tried to warn us about the dangers they see on the horizon. And science fiction is the best genre to house these warnings. The Cold War becaomes the war between The Federation and The Klingon Empire, teh fear of the Soviet Union becomes invaders from Mars, fears of corporations taking over out lives become RoboCop, etc...
By placing the events of the story in a world that does not (yet) exist, the author can explore the issues he/she wants to talk about without pointing fingers directly at existing entities, and can take steps to remove us from the coccoon of our lives. They can show us their fears in a context outside of our daily lives, allowing us to see them in a context unclouded by what we;ve already taken for granted.
Sceince Fiction is a genre that can elegantly searve to make social comentaries about things we otherwise might not be willing to look at. Sceince fiction has dealt with racism, sexism, politics, matters of sexual orientation, rampant consumerism, medical breakthroughs, etc...
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Just going by what you've said, you might consider doing some research on high functioning autism (ie Asperger's Syndrome) and see if the profile fits his behavior.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
...and while the idea of the Feed and hyper-commercialized living is interesting, the prose is merely mediocre and the storyline is rather flat. The one thing that I can remember is that the protagionist seemed to lack any high-level cognitive function : I mean, communicating via semi-lingual grunts, having no emotion in regard to friends (girlfriend's death). Macborg gives this book 1.5 of 5. Worth reading only if you're really bored. But better than a lot of the really vapid YA-novel shite that has been published. Tell the kids to go read Snow Crash or something...
repetitive themes are an indication of nothing more than a lack of creative insight, or are they? putting aside the mundane references to a futuristic dystopia, i found myself intrigued by the closing paragraph; the more pertinent theme takes its place as the concluding clause:l .pdf); we have endured a three-fold increase in the frequency of natural disasters; an eight-fold increase in economic losses and a fourteen-fold increase in insured losses. Do we really have to come face to face, as individuals, with the ultimate powers of nature to initiate the change necessary? The news is saturated with disaster and plight, while the seemingly singular positive response from the masses are when we choose to revel in our own glory - the world cups, the olympic games... imagine the implications of a major natural disaster striking an economic hub, a threat that millions already face. What happens when humans cease to exist as consumerists, but as survivalists instead? Most of us agree that the future looks bleak and discouraging; why aren't we doing something about it yet?
'so we can thoughtfully avoid it.'
I find it difficult to comment on the status quo without being cynical; i must, however, maintain a positive frame of mind in respect to the future; the defeatist attitude encourages nothing more than apathy. What are seemingly more and more people trying to get across to the masses without presenting themselves as the paranoid, stimulant driven, conspiracy theorists?
With the world being so dynamically active, i find it hard to envision how much control we have over our changing planet. With the advent of the industrial revolution come consequences as well; natural disasters have shown a consistent increase over the past 50 years; statistics show that over the stated period (http://www.cipra.de/berchtesgaden/reden/Kron.eng
Let go of the unpleasant present, and embrace the semi-conscious blissful ignorance of the future.
Truly, literate people are so sentimental. Just give it up already.
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
I am sure you could do something similar for radio, books, etc.
This is an old problem: how to get a kid out of the house doing things. Good luck. Its a hard but important task. It is MUCH harder to become active as an adult than as a kid. I know from personal experience.
This sounds like both an Outer Limits, and Stargate SG-1 episode that I recall.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The author's conclusion is that life is cheap and humans are sheep.
and is the author wrong. I'm sorry if you don't like the message, and it upsets you, but a world where instant communication replaces one on one human interaction, and everyone locks them away remotely does limit a persons empathy for another. a person, in life, has the capacity to distance themselvse from a person, be they alive or deceased. in a time where all social connections are merely superficial, it is concievable that society could manifest an inherint autism. the loss of another is about as harrowing as the season finale if a favorite show. i suppose what you dislike is that there are no 'firefighters' or 'thought police' imposing this reality. that people, collectivly, without some kind of overseer, arrived at this state. well? why couldn't they. and, the main character might not struggle against society, but the girlfriend does. the struggle is hers, seen through the eyes of a disenchanted person who is just like everyone else. This is sci fi. It's simply hyperbole. it's an extreme extrapolation of where our society is headed. and, as with many distopias, it's not somethign we want. i think this is exactly what youth should be reading. afterall, the conclusion is never that 'life is cheap' but that 'life is becoming cheaper and, we should hold onto our humanity lest we fall into the trap depicted in the tale.' too use an example, not yet cited, in 'a clockwork orange,' anthony burguesse explores freedom of choice and what constitutes morality. he does so by having a disinfected main character who, at the end of the tale, repents nothing. is it dangerous for the youth to read a tale where the main character learns nothing?
and no i didn't RTFB, but thanks to your
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
So everything would be a monopoly then?
No, quite the opposite. A monopoly is when the supply for a given demand is controlled by a minority (e.g. Microsoft); I advocate freedom: The people make the decisions for themselves, based on an educated understanding of their own interests.
You see if there is any chance of competition then companies need those "free thinking" individuals to compete.
Be that as it may, as long as corporations control education and the media, there won't be very many free-thinking individuals; that's the topic of this entire discussion. Those few free-thinking individuals who slip through the cracks won't be very interested in indentured servitude to corporations. This is the case even now: Show me somebody who doesn't own a TV, and I'll show you somebody who knows better than to be fooled by corporatism. Rare exceptions aside, capitalism and television correlate very nearly 100%.
This is the fundamental flaw in neo-liberalism: Capitalism rewards short-sighted, unplanned behavior. That sort of random, blind trial-and-error just can't compete with intelligent planning. It's stupefyingly inefficient and staggeringly wasteful. If the effort now wasted on non-productive competition -- which benefits only the very rich -- were instead devoted to useful ends, or even spent on enjoyable and harmless pursuits, human quality of life would be immeasurably enhanced. Think about it: Something like half of your working hours are spent on this nonsense. We often have three or more corporations producing essentially the same product, but where is the money going? Advertising (read: competition), redundant R&D (due to competition, and to corporate-designed IP law), and all manner of other madness. Take R&D alone: Once you've designed a workable airplane, for example, it's a bizarre waste of time and effort for the guy down the street to design one that does essentially the same thing. If the designers of the second airplane just took a few months off from work and went fishing, greater social benefit would surely accrue. Then of course you've got redundant factories, when a single factory of greater capacity could produce just as much, with considerably greater econmies of scale. Everybody wins -- except the corporations.
Since we are in a global market place they also need to compete with other countries.
The cutting edge of resistance to corporatism is resistance to globalization. Now you know why. As long as people are reduced to animals or automatons, "competing" for meaningless prizes, nothing useful or worthwhile will be accomplished. It's the old "divide and conquer" routine. You're telling me that to fix things, we need to devote more time and energy to establish more firmly the root cause of the very problems we're trying to solve. No thanks.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
I think we're already experiencing something similar to that with just the internet. For example, we've had diet fads before but the current Atkins / low carb craze is just insane.
I mean, everywhere you go it's low carb this, low carb that, even Coke and Pepsi have low carb versions. Not to mention low carb beers??
Would the low carb craze have been as pervasive, as quick to take off, if it wasn't for the internet? And what happens in another 100 years when communication technology really starts to get advanced?
barrage of comments i don't have to.
also, you really don't give credit to the late teens critical analysis that this book is focused towards. i think, like yourself, the audience would be disgusted by the main characters inhumanity and, indoing so, the authors point is reached.
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
There is a place for George Bush The 5th in The White House.
If the popups lead to better educated children, I have absolutely no problem with them at all.
As I *said*, how about a ***pilot*** program. You know... TRY IT OUT instead of making ideological prejudgements based on scare tactics of subliminal advertising and other urban myths? Can we at least TRY and be scientific by running an experiment?
I don't think at all that business has to equal evil. I am a big fan of business myself.
I'm an even bigger fan of privitization of schools.
What I am not a big fan of is a preponderance of advertising in schools, at all - I think it creates a major diestration and makes it hard to learn. Your first sentance is especially silly to me as there is NO WAY you would be able to learn squat if new windows wer really popping up on your desktop all the top. Similarily a huge number of conflicting colorful ads all over school is not well suited to retention of anything, except perhaps that Coke is Good.
I'm not exactly sure what pilot program you are for - as I said I welcome privitzation, as long as it comes without advertising for the kids. The taxes we pay should cover it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
ahh but whoever controls the spice, controls life...
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
try jennifer government... a slightly more adult vision of a similar future.
7 /q id=1091224726/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/702-9988470-84 92837
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/140003092
ISBN: 1400030927
scott king
That sounds terrible. Until you realize all you can actually do online, other than surf for porn.
He could be composing his own music, rather than listening to some fool sing about how terrible/great their life is.
He could be drawing.
He could be having intelligent discussions with other people, and have far more friends than you may think, even if they are just online.
He could be writing his own books, as well as reading them.
He could be making his own games, rather than just playing someone else's.
Many other things are also possible..
Not only can the internet/computers be used for creating many, many things but it also gives you a massive auidence to show them to.
Maybe it's just me, but about all of these seem more meaningful to me than looking into how to drive a stupid machine for getting to places, how to become a slave who merley does enough work to get food to continue his existence rather than living off his creations, and trying to reproduce when it wouldn't be feasible to raise said offspring.
Of course he could be doing nothing of the sort, but even sitting in front of a screen doing nothing in particular dosen't seem much worse in my eyes than your life at that age.
Of course, I'm probably severley biased on this issue since you practically just described my life.
Ah yes, these liberals and their propaganda... such a touching sight...
Just out of curiousity, have you had a therapist talk with this kid? I ask this because it sounds as if the kid could be clinically depressed.
;-)
The fact he's your stepson & lives half of the time with his dad suggests that he's gone thru some serious trauma: he's seen his family break up & getting bounced back & forth could be undercutting his sense of a home & security. This would make a case of depression understandable.
Then consider your following paragraph:
> He doesn't even mention cars or driving and to the best of my knowledge doesn't know what a girl is (and I check his
> browser cache when he leaves so we're not even talking about hitting the porn here). He doesn't read, he doesn't listen
> to music, and he doesn't even want to go outside much less actually do something that might require sweating.
> Friends? Hell if I know.
Lack of interest in things like cars, sex, any activities or friends are all textbook indicators of depression. And doctors have only admitted in the last 5 years or so that children _can_ suffer from depression.
When he's not around sometime, use Google to find some webpages on depression, & compare a couple of the tests against his behavior. If they suggest he might have depression, get him some medical help: depression is a disease. And once he starts coping with it, & starts to show an interest in those things, he will be glad for the help.
On the other hand, if you have had him examined by a medical professional, & he's not depressed --just lazy -- then it's well within your rights to talk to his mother about sending him to a military boarding school.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Are you sure your main gripe isn't just that the novel doesn't have a happy ending?
I'm a little suprised that because an author chooses to take a downbeat view on a topic it produces responses of "disgust".
As for the bit about the liberal arts and what may or may not be inherent in the makeup of mankind... I'd suggest that such rarified notions wouldn't survive contact with that's going on in the Congo at the moment.
Have you ever read this book?
The Giver is exactly like this, where occupations are planned and "love" has no place in society.
It is a children's book (won the Newbery Medal) and dosen't get into the whole capitalist angle (IIRC they were socialists) but the description of reproduction seems verbatim from the book...
"For us the Living" is the one I've read most recently. "The Dispossessed" is another.
These are extreme examples talking about the Utopia's that we could reach if we only accept "Idea(s) A, B and C", and tend to be a bit preachy.
But overall, I think Sci Fi is usually TOO optimistic.
plus-good, double-plus-good
Ask him to show you what he does online. Maybe you could become interested and become a pod person too like the rest of us here.
So Dubya is going to remain president forever and forever.
Julia Cameron
Oich ù agus hiùraibh éile
That's 99% of slashdot readers! right on target!
where the ultimate Marvel supervillain, Doctor Doom, pops out of time travel in 2099 and sees a corporate-dominated world. Being a 20th Century dictator with Victorian era attitudes, he decides to remake the world - which includes invading the United States and using nanotech to subvert the corporations.
One of the best Marvel series ever done, with quotes from Bakunin and other radicals scattered through the stories - they even had Doom quoting Noam Chomsky.
Which is probably why (along with low sales) the series was abruptly canceled and the editor canned.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Sounds like my college roommate, only worse.
:)
It took me a while before I realized that his whole family behaved this way to some extent.
My roommate does, in fact, listen to music, and read, but he mostly plays video games and watches TV or movies(which are downloaded from SA torrents so that he need not spend a dime on that sort of thing). His passive nature is not really the problem; it's a symptom of his not knowing what he really wants to do. He obviously hasn't had much guidance in that area, and I know I can't help him, not if he doesn't want to talk. I can only be inspirational by doing something every day, which I didn't quite maintain last year. Perhaps this year
Sounds awfully familiar.
I read the book, and it's nothing like The Matrix, which is itself a rip-off.
For starters, while most --NOT all-- of the citizens are connected to the network, they're all fully aware of it.
According to the World Factbook, world literacy is approximately seventy-nine percent.
The United States is sixty-sixth in literacy, with ninety-seven percent literacy.
Uhh... he's a teenager. That makes him anti-social by definition.
The fact that his distraction of choice is the Internet vs. say hot rods, is just a modern difference. I was quiet as a teenager, and damned if I was gonna go chat it up with my stepfather when I did get the urge to bounce ideas of someone.
The fact that his parents are divorced is easily related to him not wanting to communicate with either one. and, the father probably has his own deal, depending on how the relationship with your wife ended.
In summary: the kid is basically normal. Give him some time before calling in psychotherapists and other idiots who'll just drug him up, or before ripping away his only distraction so he goes Columbine from BadParenting©.
-bZj
.sig