Comments on “Feed”

In some ways I feel as though our society is very different from the society in Feed. We don’t take vacations to the moon, the government still runs public education (as opposed to corporations), and our meat still comes from animals. However, there were many eerie details in “Feed” that reminded me of our society today too. We may not have feeds hooked into our brains yet, but most people carry one or more mobile devices that allow us access to a network. When I read the book, I thought of those people who walk around with their Bluetooth headsets in their ears, even when they’re not using them. They’re ready to connect with someone at all times, just like the m-chats. We also are inundated with recommendations from the technology we use. You can’t place an order on Amazon.com without receiving several recommendations for other items you might be interested in. Since I had never used personal aggregators before this class, I hadn’t realized before how close we are to some of the aspects of the society in “Feed.” With our Google accounts which enable us to search, blog, email, im, track our favorite web sites and blogs, etc., it seems like we’re almost there. As brutal and heartbreaking as it was in the book, I can also certainly envision in our own future companies that will not help people who have proven to be unreliable customers. It wouldn’t surprise me if it happens today. Aspects of today’s society can also be related to the humiliation and mockery that Violet’s father had to put up with for not having a feed. I don’t know one adult who doesn’t have a cell phone. I can imagine an adult living right now who has no phone number would have an extremely hard time getting hired for a job. And just like the kids were longing for their feeds while they were in the hospital, today people would long for the Internet and their cell phones if they lost access to them.

I think that the most shocking part about “Feed” to me was the control that the companies had over people. In essence, they decided who got medical attention, and who died. They turned education into advertising (School TM). They actually had access to people’s thoughts. They were literally tapped into their brains. I found it very disturbing… and yet, I can also see us getting closer and closer to realizing a future like this.

The destruction of all things natural was also highly disturbing. It amazed me that the characters in the book not only accepted their lesions, they thought they were cool. They went as far as to get additional incisions to appear “brag.” Their bodies were falling apart. People weren’t conceived naturally anymore. The environment was falling apart. For goodness sakes, whales had to be laminated in non-organic covering to be able to live in the ocean! And intelligence sure seemed to be dwindling as well. It’s a depressing prediction, and one I hope we manage to avoid.