FEED

Feed is a story about a futuristic community that has chips implanted in the backs of their heads, which sends them information. This information can be anything from taking them to a place, to ads, to telling them what they should do and buy. The book’s two main characters are Titus and Violet. Titus had his chip implanted in him when he was born but Violet didn’t have hers implanted until she was 7 years old. Not having it implanted until she was 7 caused her to develop more social skills and let gave her the opportunity to learn in School (Trademark). Since Titus had his implanted when he was young, he doesn’t have as much social skills and can’t think for himself as much as Violet can. Violet did end up dying at the end because of her feed being added at such a late stage in her life however. I personally did not like the story because of the way it was written, but the book did get me to think about how technology affects our community and what life could be like in future years. I started thinking back to what it might’ve been like living a hundreds of years ago. How weird life must’ve been having no phones, Internet, or even gps systems. I’m sure that it must’ve been crazy not being able to call someone when you needed to contact him or her. Even when they had phones it still must’ve been hard without cell phones. The world of technology has come to far to make our lives convenient so maybe having these feeds in our heads will be something good. People in the past may have thought that having telephones would be the weirdest things, but we treat it as the characters treat their feeds. Feeds are a lot more different than telephones though. I would never want to get a feed put in. Thinking that people would be forced to receive information about hotels and their prices is just weird. It’s as if the feed is telling these people how to live. Telephones never force us to have banners and say what we should do. I honestly don’t think that feeds will ever be created but the book did a really good job of making it seem like something that could happen any day. It’s impossible for a company to be given the rights to implant a system that tells people basically how to think. The fact that this device interacts with the human brain is enough I think for the government not to allow this to be used. The device could malfunction like it did in Violet’s case. It’s very doubtful that people would ever consent to this, but who knows maybe in the future it will become a common thing just like cell phones. People used to be suspicious of getting cell phones because of the fear that they would cause cancer but now just about everyone owns a cell phone.