HW # 12 - Feed A

To me Feed is more than a tragedy about what can happen if the digitalization of our lives goes too far, it is a horror story. First there is the horror of actually having the Internet and other digital technologies implanted in the brain. Today, we are aware of the negative effects of too much usage of digital devices while in Feed the teens' lives are totally taken over by technology. For example, we know that there is a danger now of trying so hard to be cool on Facebook that teens give an unreal picture of themselves and spend too much time trying to impress others instead of developing skills that really would make them feel good about themselves. In Feed forget about becoming individuals and devloping potential. Most teens seem to have been selected genetically by their parents, have their feed chips takeover a lot of their thinking, and become direct marketing targets for corporations, which run ads in their brains all day long. The main character Titus says "It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it." It's in the interest of the corporations which have all the power to keep teens feeling in an incredibly direct way that they have to keep making purchases to try to be cool. They can literally break in on teens thoughts without having to waiting to run an add during "The Simpsons."


Then there is the horror that more than one-fourth of the population is not wired with a Feed because they cannot afford it and are at a disadvantage at school without the knowlege feeds and because the corporations are against individualist thinking that is against bombarding the brain with commercials. In the book Titus's girlfriend had an inferior feed implanted because her parents couldn't pay for a better model. She ended up dying because of her low quality feed and she wasn't in line for a transplant of a better one bnecause she wasn't considered to be a good marketing target. I think this is an extreme of a problem today of teens whose parents can't afford a computer or maybe can't always make payments for their kids' cell phones.


There is also the horror of what has happened to the environment. Atmosperic conditions have resulted in the development of artificial clouds because the corporations obviously haven't had to worry about pollution. In fact, the ocean is so dangerous that whales have to be covered in plastic to survive. Also, women can't give normal birth anymore, and all babies come from test tubes. It seems that parents can pay to have certain genetic traits for their kids. Nutrition also seems to have had a set back because Coke is the drink of choice for teens. This extreme in the book of what can happen when corporations don't have any government anti-pollution controls seems like a lesson for us today. As a teen using technology now, I don't always unplug devices or give much thought to the energy I am using. Also, I think that using my i-pod on the way to school and sports and other activities probably gets in the way of my thinkin about the environment, for example recycling and other "green" actions like using fewer takeout cartons and cups.