Feed

aaronvegh writes "Although it qualifies as a Young Adult novel, M.T. Anderson's Feed is a worthy read by any card-carrying geek. Especially the kind curious about where today's Net culture is heading. Set in a dystopian future America, the narrative follows a 14-year-old boy named Titus as he hangs out with his friends and tries to win the love of Violet, a girl much smarter than he." Read on for the rest of aaronvegh's review. Feed author M.T. Anderson pages 320 publisher Walker Childrens Paperbacks rating 8 reviewer aaronvegh ISBN 074459085X summary A disturbing and believeable rendering of a dystopian future America features some cool tech gone amazingly wrong.

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.

Comments

Back to the future

[abhinavmodi]

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.