Feed by M. T. Anderson- Book Review

 Feed by MT Anderson - Book Review

Feed by MT Anderson, published in 2002, is a sci-fi/dystopian novel that eerily predicted the rise of the algorithmic advertisement system. It is set in a world where n early everyone has computer chips implanted in their brain that link the Internet (they call it the 'feed') directly to their brain and create a permanent augmented reality around them. It seems like a massive utopia- after all, you can do almost anything with a single thought, no need to type. However, that's not all there is to this new world...

**This book review contains spoilers for this book. If you still want to read the review, go ahead. However, I strongly recommend you to read this book before reading my review.**

 

If humans only had the technology to implant the feed like in the story, Feed would probably come true in just a few months. 

I was slightly unsettled after finishing this book- I didn't like the plot development, didn't like the ending

(maybe I like happy endings way too much, but it was bad nonetheless), and I was disturbed by how closely

the society resembled our current society. 

As mentioned before, Feed was published in 2002, two years before Facebook was created and eight years

prior to Instagram. It was even three years before Youtube existed! However, the Feed in the story is similar

to Youtube's algorithmic advertising in a number of ways. The Feed analyzes everything you look at and

everything you interact with, determines what you're interested in, and gives you suggestions for related

material. Sound familiar? That's precisely how the Youtube algorithm somehow magically puts things you're

interested in in your Recommended section for you- and you just keep watching and watching.

The idea of ​​​​the feed isn't just eerily prescient- there are also negative aspects of the technology, which aren't

easy to brush aside. The most obvious one is the constant, never-ending stream of advertisements coming

in through the feed- there are always ads, telling everyone what they can do to fit in, what they should be

like, what music others listen to, what is ' in' these days, and much more. Completely unrelated ads and

sensational news pop up at the end of some chapters, where the book gives readers a slight sense of what

the feed may be like for the characters.

Another aspect that seemed quite brilliant to me was the idea of ​​the physical environment and the Earth

wasting away while people are lost in their feeds. All the forests are gone. The air is severely polluted. Land and

the oceans are all toxic. The soil is radioactive. Everyone's starting to get lesions because of the bad air and

polluted environment, and they're bragging about it- lesions have literally become a fashion statement, and

near the end of the book, Quendy has her body covered with artificial lesions . It's gross to even think about

it. And the lesions aren't the end of it- most people go to conceptionariums to have kids, and then literally

customize the child's genes to have more of a certain trait and less of a certain physical feature. One of Titus's

friends, Link, is a genetic clone of Abraham Lincoln.

The feed didn't only influence people and the environment- it also had quite a negative effect on the quality of everyone's language. The dialogue was understandable yet very bland, and the story contained slang words like 'meg', 'unit', 'null', and 'youch', the meanings of which I could slightly infer from their original definition but failed to really see what they are supposed to mean. In one of the 'sensational feed news stories' in between chapters, it's revealed that the President of the US had referred to the Prime Minister of the Global Alliance (a global organization like the UN) as a 'shithead' in an intercepted chat. The spokesman for the President hilariously tries to cover this up- this was personally my favorite part of the book. Not only has language been degraded everywhere, since everyone can chat to everyone else through the feed without speaking, verbal communication is nearly obsolete. The feed thinks for people, so all the characters in Feed- except maybe Violet- do not think deeply. Even when Violet tries to share her deep thoughts and ruminations with Titus, whom she likes because he's 'the only one of them that uses metaphor', Titus is so trapped inside the feed that he cannot grasp her full implications and responds insensitively. But then again, everyone is insensitive in this book- As I said before, the dialogue is quite direct and bland. Even Violet's father, who doesn't have the feed implanted in him and instead wears a feed backpack to access the feed, is shown as displaying these 'symptoms' of language degradation. For example, near the end of the story, he yells at Titus, "[I hate] you forever and forever and forever! [I hate] you forever and forever and ever!" 

This kind of language was so reminiscent of a six-year old child's tantrum that I was taken aback. Earlier, when Violet's father was first introduced, he intentionally speaks using long, complicated, unnecessary vocabulary. He teaches physical writing at an actual school- but even writing has been simplified. 

"I came, I saw, I conquered" now only contains numbers and the words 'Goto, Peek, Poke'. 

Language has degraded so much because of the feed. 

In conclusion I didnt love Feed as much as some other great books that I've read- the dialogue is bland, the storyline is also quite bland, and I didn't like the ending very much. My favorite part of the whole book was a random news story about the US president calling someone a shithead- the story's that bland. I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, but it's not like I absolutely hate it. 

This book would be appropriate for grade 8-9 and up.

Rating: 3.5/5 - the storyline and dialogue were quite bland, but the setting was quite realistic.