I like to think of what people used to do in elevators before we had computers in our pockets. Obviously I know, but was it as awkward with strangers as it is now? I at least try to conversation if it seems appropriate because unless you're already using your phone before the doors close it’s still uncomfortable. Even when you are occupied in silence, you're just waiting for the doors to open as you bolt out and get on with your life. That’s pretty damn. What's crazy is that our lives now would be considered a never ending elevator ride compared to that of the Feeds generation. “When there is a constant stream of games, shows, chats, and ads feeding directly into your brain, does the world make sense without it?”, M.T. Anderson has created a world that ours is not very far from. The thought of having something more complex than the internet directly fed to my brain terrifies me. Looking at us now, people who have modern technology feel helpless when separated from it. Having instantaneous gratification of knowledge and entertainment at your fingertips dulls some of your most basic instincts.
In the Feed, communication is very different, “Okay. Could we get a thingie, a reading on his limbic activity?”(69). That was Titus's doctor, and maybe if I was in his position I wouldn’t think anything of it, but I’d be a little concerned if my life was in his hands. Titus’s father, a successful businessman who has to travel to the moon for work, he sounds more illiterate than a middle-schooler. Not even taking in account what had just happened to his son, he was too occupied by the feed to care that his own kin could’ve been seriously harmed(55).
To be fair though they don’t use their voices, I mean why would they? They can just m-chat each other, able to send messages instantaneously through the Feed. When Titus looked at Violet upset at their first party together, he chatted her and , “Hey beautiful. What’s doing?” (83). For Titus and his friends to be completely disconnected from the Feed, I’m honestly surprised they didn’t react worse. However, they were at least put in a controlled environment where they were monitored, if they had happened to have their feed cut away from civilization. I can guarantee that most people would be completely incapable of surviving or finding help.
The Feed is a part of these people, and extension of their brain. Streaming shit into your head all day, even the songs, they’re absolute garbage, “I like you so bad, And you like me so bad. We are So bad..”(15), how deep. But how different our we? Especially our popular music, that doesn’t sound far from Justin Bieber. To top it off, the music is all playing through the Feed. When Violet and Titus went outside, it was a bunch of people bobbing their heads to nothing, like some uncomfortable silent rave(88). But hey, don’t worry if you don’t like the music you can just do drugs instantly on the web! Or what they like to call malfunctioning. Which from the party scene with Titus and his friends Link and Marty, it seems like it’s equivalent to heroin(87). At least in our time you have to go out and pay money to get high, when it’s sitting as a webpage in your brain it’s just a tad easier.
As technology becomes more advanced we start to lose our humanity, it becomes blurred between our actual thoughts and that which others have created that influence our everyday lives. And when the whole surface of the earth is destroyed and you have to live in giant glass domes, being transported by “Up Cars” in traveling tubes, then I’d probably get a little bored too(94). M. T. Anderson has made a scary hypothesis of what future generations will have to live through. Hell, I can see our planet being destroyed by global warming with the century. Even when it’s a well known fact that it’s destroying our atmosphere money is more important than how these decisions will affect us in the long run. Within our lifetime, the Feed is going to be more like a way of life as opposed to a fictional book.
Luke D. Prompt 4.
Works Cited
Anderson, M. T. Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2002. Print.
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