Feed - M. T. Anderson
"...we have entered a new age. We are a new people. It is now the age of oneiric culture, the culture of dreams."
In this new world, just about everyone (everyone that matters, anyway), has a feed—a broadband Internet connection (with m-chat, encyclopedic searches, shopping, and ... banner ads) wired straight to the brain. The story is something of a cross between Stargirl and Everyone in Silico, a little bit of Brave New World and a dash of 1984. It's targeted towards young adults, but I think the book applies to most of us. Titus (the narrator) meets a girl who's a bit different; she talks differently, isn't interested in the same things as everyone else, and tries to resist the feed. Like any good tale about the future, Feed is filled with the slang of its time. (The author says he read a lot of magazines like Seventeen, Maxim, and Stuff prior to writing the book.) It's a sweet story about teenage love, and painful one about a boy who can't help being a jerk sometimes. It's a witty satire about corporate America and consumers, a world with air factories, filet mignon farms, and conceptionariums.
[02.04.05] I realized recently that this book also echoes Fahrenheit 451, with the girl who knows how to read and isn't caught up in the current fads.
Fed to jhliu's brain | August 27, 2003
