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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.
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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?!!
...do the characters actually *do* anything about it, or does his rebellious girlfriend die and life goes on?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Welcome to a novel form retelling of an Outer Limits episode.
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.
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.
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.
I'd suggest reading some Kim Stanley Robinson. His futures are much more reasonable than most SF; the changing technology tears society apart because of how different things become, but people muddle through it. Both fascism and free love get tried, and neither is ultimately stable. There are no endings, happy or otherwise; the answers to one day's problems are wrong the next day.
The natural consequence of progress along any dimension always seems like madness to the people from before and requires adaptations which may not be desired. PK Dick just focuses on people who don't adapt.
That's because people hope for the best, fear the worst. In reality it's neither, and probably why so many have a hard time accepting the cold reality that we all suck and are all more than capable of turning our future into a dystopian one, far more than a utopian one. Ultimately we get neither, and just see freedom and liberty slip away as nation after nation tries to build on the failures of the nations before it, only to once again, slip away into past. It'd be nice if us humans could change this pathetically repeating history around, and actually BUILD upon our failures, but I don't see that happening ANYTIME soon.
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?
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
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.