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.

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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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.

Re:Another Matrix Rip off

Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated.

When will the rip offs of George W.Bush end?!!

Re:Another Matrix Rip off

I always hope comments like these are meant as sarcasm. It really makes me wonder if today's generation has any idea of the author's from generations ago that did very similar work. For instance:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

I guess I'm getting old when I've actually read the books that current movies are based on, but when I try to discuss them with people I get a blank look. Sometimes I wonder if the thought process is 'what is a book?' Of course this would segue into Bradbury....oh nevermind...

Even the President of the United States

"Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated..."

Sounds a little familiar.

Re:Even the President of the United States

>> 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.

Ahhh... reality-based fiction. Those who do not remember the past, uh... oooh, shiny!

Would never happen

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.

Young Adult Novel

is NOT a porno.

Sorry!

Re:Young Adult Novel

Thanks, I was able to cancel my order at Amazon just in time!

One problem with posts like this

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.

So...

...do the characters actually *do* anything about it, or does his rebellious girlfriend die and life goes on?

Re:So...

Why not read the book and find out?

'Round where I live, there's this amazing place called a library, that lends out books for free. You may like to investigate the existance of something similar in your area. They may even be able to furnish you with a copy of this particular book.

Re:So...

To answer my own question, the reviews on Amazon suggest that the end of the story is that his girlfriend dies and life goes on. Well whoop-de-do. This sort of ending can be acceptable in a short story where the author wishes to bring attention to an issue, but is completely unacceptable in a novel. One of the core points of good literature is the struggle of human-kind to improve himself. How does this novel meet that goal if the author provides no solution to averting this future? The very literary purpose of dysotopian futures is to demonstrate that such a future is possible, and demonstrate how it might be avoided. Leaving the reader with no hope is not the way to accomplish this.

To me it sounds like this book would have been far better had the author taken the opportunity to "awaken" the main character and allow him to learn about his humanity.

Re:So...

To me it sounds like this book would have been far better had the author taken the opportunity to "awaken" the main character and allow him to learn about his humanity.

Maybe by not doing so, he hopes to "awaken" his readership instead? There's something to be said for books that don't follow standard formulae too, especially in the all-too-genre young adult section.

Re:So...

But why was he let out into the open if he was going to die? explain this...

In Soviet Russia, there is no such thing as "open". Neither in Oceania, mimicking the Stalinism as Orwell knew it. During the stalinist purges in late 30's - the ones that shocked Orwell so deeply - it was a common practice to first break down a man, and execute him only afterwards. They arrest you and they torture until you confess to anything they told you to confess in exchange for release. Obviously, even the strongest ones break down after just few weeks of torture. Then you are free... but they will still get you in a matter of months, this time a completely broken ex-man. You won't escape anywhere, you can't leave the country and NKVD will trace you everywhere within the country, even on Arctic station or somewhere in the Siberian wilderness. So you just wait for the last knocking at your door, drinking "Victory" gin and loathing yourself.

Dystopian

Set in a dystopian future America...

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. /snark

The future sucks, it always does

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.

Re:The future sucks, it always does

It's easy. Futures that seem to perfect, actually are. Man has decided to ignore all the problems instead of dealing with them. This results in stories like when a "perfect" guys of the future accidentally trips across some information that could unravel the false reality and expose the puppet-masters. This sends him on an adventure where his life is in danger and his family kidnapped. To save them, he must expose the world for what it really is...

In other words, utopian and dystopian futures are easily used to show how people sometimes ignore reality. In the former case, they live an illusion that hurts them without their awareness. In the later case, man has ignored the issues in hopes of a utopian society and instead brought disaster on himself.

BTW, you didn't mention the third type of Sci-Fi story. The one where the future is neither utopian or dystopian, but rather has characters who deal with many of the same issues that we have today. These stories often serve as a way of contrasting our lives against a new backdrop to shake out any points that we've taken for granted or simply failed to take notice of. Another type of story like this is designed to give mankind a future to strive for. e.g. The "Star Trek" type future where everything isn't quite perfect, but things have greatly improved.

Re:The future sucks, it always does

Why do I get the feeling that if SF writers were in charge of the industrial revolution we'd still all be dairy farmers?

Because you are likely only exposed to a very small segment of SF literature that is dystopic. Furthermore you regard all dystopic SF as Luddite.

Why does the future always suck,

In regards to SF, that's patently untrue. Heinlein, Brin, Asimov, Clarke, Rodenberry etc. are all utopianists, as are the gaggle of writer's churning out novels in the Star Trek franchise.

why is that the natural consequence of progress along any dimension?

That's an assumption on your part

Why do they embrace defeat?

Who's defeated? If you control one of the mega-corporations that are common in these types of dystopic stories you're doing very well in the world. In fact in such stories mega-corporations tend to subsume national governments so corporate executives even restrained by something as inconvenient as a constitution.

the cure is always either free love or fascism isn't it?

Huh?

That's why I like PK Dick so much. No happy endings, we all die alone tortured by our paranoias.

Dick died alone and tortured by his paranoias. His daughters survived to become a very profitable media enterprise. This is not meant to relect negatively on his daughters.

Re:The future sucks, it always does

Agreed--SF writers aren't Luddites. Remember the words of Lloyd Biggle, Jr. (if you don't know who he is, you have some good reading ahead of you): given a bunch of people in a sewer, mainstream literature will write at great, delighted length about the people who stay there; SF writers will write about the people trying to get out.

uh huh

Welcome to a novel form retelling of an Outer Limits episode.

The citizens of this future America....

...weaned on the Feed, are shockingly illiterate.

The consumers of today's America, zombified by television, are shockingly illiterate. That this trend continues doesn't surprise me.

I think I've read this before

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 actually read the book

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.

commercialization of teenagers

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.

and there's little alternatives for us.

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.

Re:commercialization of teenagers

I wrote a letter to our principal, but I never heard anything back. They got their money; it doesn't matter what the student body thinks.

Make it matter. I know it sounds trite and cliche, but make it matter to them in an intelligent way.

Talk to your parents about it. Prepare what you want them to understand and present it to them, and have them bitch. If your parents don't care, take it to someone else (and really, even if you think they don't care, try them first, even if only as a practice run for pitching to people who do care). Go to another relative, sympathetic teacher, school board, city council, anyone. If you are in any kind of youth group (club, church, whatever) use the people there. Trust me, the people that volunteer with those groups would be overjoyed at the idea of helping you out with something like this. I work with teenagers, and I love helping them bitch about things they think are screwed up, even if I don't think it's important. It makes up for me not having the balls to do it when I was younger.

If you can't find a champion, do it yourself. Go to the city council, or the mayor, or the school board. Don't write a letter, and don't waste your time with an e-mail. Go see them. Walk into a city council or school board meeting and get up in front of them and talk. Most districts allow the general public to do this. The idea that elected people won't listen to you because you're a kid is bullshit. Championing the cause of teenagers who just want a good education is gold for an election campaign.

You have to put up with this crap all the time in the real world. You should be left without it at school. It's bullshit. Don't let people ignore you because you are young.

A female engineer?

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.

geez

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? ;)

What do corporations want from education?

Alvin and Heidi Toffler in their book The Third Wave [toffler.com] make the point that industry doesn't just want the education system to turn out consumers. Industry also needs workers.

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

Dude, that's not a novel, that's happening today

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?

Maybe his Problem is not DSL . . .

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

relationship

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.