FEED by M. T. Anderson

Is Anderson's idea of the future possible? YES, I believe so. Is it desirable? No, not at all...at least not to me!

The idea of implanting a chip in your brain and watching feed casts all day! The idea of everything you think and feel being taken in by a corporation and a special profile being created about you for them! Knowing everything you want and hope for, sometimes before you even know it! All of these things were written about in the book and none of them seem particularly desirable.

On the other hand, being able to m-chat, having a dictionary or other information sources at your fingertips instantaneously, and being able to go shopping in your own head...now THAT is something intriguing!!

I believe that some day this might be possible. In the book, MT Anderson spoke of people walking around talking to people who weren't there...don't people do this now when they have on their Bluetooth? How many times have you been somewhere, thinking that someone was talking to you, but they were actually on the phone and you didn't know it?

There were a few really funny parts to the book. For instance, when Violet spoke of her father's job as a professor of the dead languages (FORTRAN and BASIC). The girls who had to go into the bathroom frequently to change their hairstyles because the hairstyle of the minute had changed. I found it funny that the word SCHOOL was trademarked in the book (so was clouds). But, I must say, as a first grade teacher, the funniest part was when Titus (is that his real name?) protested learning to read on the grounds that the Silent "e" is stupid!!

All of this is a social commentary on a world full of technology creating uneducated people who are driven by the feed in their heads. When the feed is off, no one knows what to do. Their life is overtaken by this technology, and to the characters, as Anderson wrote, "...everything that goes on, goes on on the feed."