Feed by M.T. Anderson

My husband bought Feed for me at a children's media conference in Athens back in the spring and got it autographed. (That's Athens, Georgia, not Athens, Greece, just to be clear!) Before I met up with him, he was reading it. He basically held it hostage until he finished it.

Now I understand why. I finally found where he had stashed it, and started reading it this morning before work. When I got home from errands and dinner, I sat down to read it (just while some software downloaded, you know), and didn't put it down until I finished it.

Feed is fascinating, terrifying, and heart-wrenching. On the surface, it's a futuristic dystopian novel, full of original ideas and familiar archetypes. At its heart, it's a sobering commentary on today's media-driven blindness and consumerism, woven around convincing characters.

It's also terribly sad, in the vein of The Hunger Games, The Giver, Unwind, and The Roar. (I don't recommend reading them together if you value your sanity. Disregard my advice at your own peril.)

In the future, everyone who matters has the feed implanted. What's the feed? It's Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia, eBay, Amazon, GPS, instant messaging, and email, all in one. Throw in every banner ad, Flash animation, Javascript, pop-up, and pop-under you've ever seen. Add scents, taste, and touch.

Now jam them all in your skull, all at once, all the time, and give them carte blanche to scan your emotions, thoughts, and sensory input. Tie it all in to every part of your brain; that's the feed.

Titus is a priveleged, upper-middle-class to upper-class teenager. He and his friends spend their days in pursuit of pleasure and stuff. In many ways, he's like any other teenager…except that he and his friends aren't capable of much in the way of original thought. Of course, if your brain were constantly assaulted with that much input, all of it directed by the mega-corporations, you wouldn't by able to concentrate on anything of consequence for longer than two minutes, either.

The world of Feed is so far out of whack that it really stretches the suspension of disbelief at first. However, Anderson makes a convincing case for its gradual evolution. With thought, it's easy to see how our current consumerist culture with its information overload and insular focus could become a pervasive, all-controlling crutch.

Lest you think I'm a whacko nutjob who's down on capitalism and sees a conspiracy behind every bush, let me set the record straight. I like capitalism and a free-market economy. I also like media, technology, and gadgets. However, I also see the danger in allowing those things to blind us to what's far more important: people and freedom. The freedom to make our own choices, the freedom to think for ourselves, the freedom to control our destiny. In the world of the feed, there is nothing without the flood of information. Every decision, every thought, every emotion is driven by the messages from corporations and media. Adults sound just like the teenagers. The main character claims, "That's one of the great things about the feed--that you can be supersmart without ever working...You can look things up automatic." However, few people ever actually learn anything of consequence. Instead, they look up factoids (think Wikipedia, but shallower); there's precious little reasoning or evaluation. Even the president's speeches sound as if they were written by a sixteen-year-old stoner, and his vocabulary matches that.

Until Titus meets Violet, a girl who has been raised on the fringes of the current society, he never thinks about what's going on outside of his corner of the feed. The world beyond the more priveleged areas of developing countries is falling apart; the Earth's environment is all but dead. Nearly everything is disposable. People from every level of society have terrible, weeping lesions on their skin, but everyone shrugs it off. In fact, lesions--something that should scare every thinking person--become a fashion statement.

Despite the inherent bleakness of the storyline, Anderson offers us a ray of hope through Titus and Violet. As affairs grow blacker, Violet's inquisitive mind and indomitable spirit drive her to resist the feed and challenge Titus to take an active role in his own life. Thanks to Anderson's insightful storytelling, we can join the ride.