My Mind Was Fed By "Feed"

I think M.T. Anderson's book was not only a commentary and the bleak future of the United States, but also a commentary on our current media-laden culture.

1. Media and advertising have become a distraction. Like the feed in the minds of most people in the book, we are overwhelmed with media messages. This constant advertising and meaningless entertainment has distracted us from having meaning discussions about important issues. Our current news "feed" is filled with stories that are more for entertainment than informative/educational.

2. Technology has weakened relationships. M-chat, conversations that are interrupted by blasts of advertising. The teenagers in Feed were unable to have meaningful relationships. Their connection to one another was based on their relationship with the feed. I worry about that with our current culture as well. Water cooler conversations based on celebrities, texting, Facebook, Twitter. Will it bring us closer? I hope so. I am cautiously optimistic.

3. Commercialism, Commercialism, Commercialism. In Feed, the characters were hit with advertisers all the time. Not only that, but the feed helped them make up their mind. This constant bombardment of persuasive messages had the characters changing hairstyles, clothes, and toys as the trends change. And those trends did change- quickly. These changes must make a lot of money for the corporations, but fill our world with waste: products tossed aside. In our current culture, companies profit from yearly changes in clothing styles, new upgrades in technology, etc. It makes me think: Do technology companies work together to hold back newer technologies so they can continually release new technology, making us upgrade and buy new products; our old products in the landfill?

4. Sorry. I have to do a 4th theme. I think the connection seen between the information that corporations had on Feed users and the information gathered by Acxiom as depicted in The Persuaders is uncanny. The lack of privacy in Feed is very obvious (such as the invasion of Titus' brain during a 'dream'), but in our culture we have a perceived notion of privacy. Most people are unaware of the profiles that corporations keep on them and what those profiles say. We may not have a feed in our brains, but hardware or not, are we moving in that direction at a rapid pace?