Must-Read ‘Feed’
Posted by anastasia on 03-18-2009
While I was at SXSW Interactive, I was finishing the YA novel Feed by M.T. Anderson. I highly recommend this book and am embarrassed to just be reading it now. Still, I can’t think of a better setting to be reading about teenagers having computer feeds installed in their brains than a conference celebrating technology and the people who are designing it. As I listened to people excitedly talk about “augmented reality” or using mobile phones to interact with the real environment and objects around us, the separation between having an iPhone in your hand and having a computer in your brain didn’t seem that far off.
The “feed” in the book is both actively controlled by the teens in that they can chat with others on the feed and look stuff up at the same time, but it’s also passive in that corporations are constantly data mining the teens’ preferences in order to serve them more relevant “must have” products. Sound familiar? Teens currently multitask with technology — chatting, looking stuff up and interacting with their friends. Twitter and RSS are literally feeds streaming abundant amounts of information to those of us who sign up to receive it. Google is data mining our email and search habits right now to serve relevant advertising.
What I got from the novel was a theme of how being so immersed in technology can separate and even blind us to what’s happening in the physical world. In the book, the environment is basically dead, yet technology seems to obscure this reality with suburbs full of artificial sunlight you can turn on and off. Anderson also points out what can happen when people don’t actively “resist” or think critically about the onslaught of consumer messages we’re bombarded with and question the source. The teens in Feed follow every new trend – even if it means cutting lesions into their own skin. And without giving the way the ending, there is a price for resisting as well.
Feed reminded me of what I have been feeling a lot lately – yeah, technology is cool, interacting with people online is cool, there’s definitely a lot to be gained from using “social media” (I’m really starting to hate that phrase), but it’s equally as important to invest time in our offline world – whether it’s in face-to-face relationships or going for a hike. I know I sound like all the parents I speak to who are concerned about how much time their teens are spending with technology. I will now tell those parents, read Feed and give a copy to your teens. Then discuss.
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Categorized under: Books & Print