Feed

feed is officially young adult fiction. but that category, i'm finding, can be really misleading. i would say this is a great work of fiction, that anyone in 8th grade or older could read (which, really, is true of a lot of great fiction, right?). of course, the fact that the main characters are all high schoolers doesn't hurt.so, here's the deal: feed takes place in some kind of distant future. it's not clear how distant; but it is clear that the grandparents of the high school students in the book remember what life was like in the fairly close future. one of the brilliant things anderson does in this book is paint all kinds of passing descriptions of this future, details all over the place, without focusing the narrative lens on them. for instance, he never directly addresses the stacks of suburbs, vertical and self-contained, each with their own artificial sun and weather voted on by the home owner's association, but the description is there, like great framing.the focus of the book is the "feed" that almost everyone has implanted in their brains in early childhood. it started as a brain-connected educational tool (or, at least, was marketed that way), much like the internet was talked about in its early days. but quickly, the feed became a replacement for theaters and television, radio and all other forms of listening to music, m-chatting (almost like esp -- a form of text communication brain-to-brain, along with file attachment options and such), purchasing, and - mostly - advertising. the feed provides a constant customized barrage of marketing, based on the emotions of the moment, experiences of the moment, things you're looking at, and much more.the nutty thing about all of this is that it makes sense. the book plumbs, without being overly preachy, some of the "how we got heres" and "what this means" aspects of the feed.on the surface, it's a story of a titus (a teenage guy), his group of extremely shallow friends, and a somewhat mysterious antagonist girlfriend who is suspicious of the feed, and has complications due to getting hers installed when she was 7 years old. but, of course, it's about much more than that.so here's my grandiose statement:aldous huxley's book, brave new world, published in 1932, took cutting edge technology of his time, along with current trajectories in religion, philosophy, science, and other areas, and projected a potential reality (told in story form, of course) of our current day. feed does the same - it takes our current technology, consumption, relational dynamics, political climate, and much more, and projects a trajectory for something like 80 years from now (give or take). some of it will crack you up, and some of it will freak you out.a great, fun, somewhat uncomfortable, read.

Imagine a world where you don't have to leave your house. The internet, IMs, chats, stores and all connections to the outside world are directly installed... in your head. But, if you DO choose to leave your home, you have the ability to ride (not drive) in your "up-car" to the Moon, Jupiter, Mars, etc. Everything you'd ever want is directly at your fingertips. There is even a way to experience virtual reality and even watch your favorite personal memories with your friends. You can share your dreams and the thoughts and images that you see in your head (including your personal feelings while you were seeing these images) with other people- projected in their minds like a movie.Everything is connected. Everyone is connected.But, there's a problem. Due to this "connection" being constant, people lose pieces of their personalities. Commercials and advertisements are constantly being broadcasted into your MIND so that you'll get the sudden urge to buy, buy, buy everything that's in "style", even though styles only last about 15 minutes. Girls excuse themselves to go to the bathroom and change the part in their hair, people "zone out" during conversations because they're "chatting" with their friends IN THEIR HEADS!Human bodies aren't meant to function this way, so they begin to fall apart. Not everything is "meg rad".The scary part is, while this story is a bit over the top and far-fetched, I can't say that it will NEVER happen. I see the deterioration of Earth and America as a whole. (Tear down the forest to put up Air factories) I see the ever persistant need to be "connected". I am old enough to remember a time when cell phones didn't even exist- now, I can't possibly get through the day without checking my email and text messages. Even this review is online. How else would I be able to share this with you?The difficult part of the book- the vocabulary is really aggravating at first. It took me a few chapters to warm to the characters because they "like" said "like" everything in "meg" overtoned simpleton language. It was frustrating, at first, but I was over it by the middle of the book. The storyline carries it enough to overlook the aggravation. Even the narrator's dad says "Dude". haha.Great story. I read all the time and this story has been the best idea for the past few months, at least. Even though I am much older than its intended audience (I think around 14?) it is still really enjoyable. I may read more MT Anderson. "Feed" is my first.

Such an interesting concept….with our addiction to technology, it could happen. Definitely recommend.

Schnelle Lieferung, beste Qualität!

Por el precio yo esperaba algo de menor calidad, pero no esta super bien, es altamente recomendable para aquellos amantes de la lectura y que no les gusta gastar demaciado

Great book. I heard about this through a friend, and after reading it feel it's one of those great books that didn't get as much recognition as it deserves. The opening pages are some of my favorite to any book: we are immediately thrust into the narrator's strange world via his strong voice and use of dialect/neologisms that work to cement the strange dystopic future setting of the novel. Probably described as YA for the novel's voice and adolescent narrator, like all good YA books it transcends the YA genre and explores many interesting and broad-reaching themes.Published in 2002, when the internet was yet to invade every corner of our lives as it does today, this book truly felt visionary and premonitory, particularly with it's prediction of how advertising would track our every movements and filter into all aspects of our lives. A brilliant read, not without flaws, but any flaws the book may contain did not bother me in face of the great strength and force that the novel delivered.Absolutely recommended.

A prescient tale of the strings attached to our consumerist lifestyle and where it might lead. It certainly has made me reflect on the growing role that technology plays, or the role I want/don't want it to play, in my life. Highly recommend.