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Sci-Fi Books Media

Feed 310

Posted by timothy from the yum dept.
aaronvegh writes "Although it qualifies as a Young Adult novel, M.T. Anderson's Feed is a worthy read by any card-carrying geek. Especially the kind curious about where today's Net culture is heading. Set in a dystopian future America, the narrative follows a 14-year-old boy named Titus as he hangs out with his friends and tries to win the love of Violet, a girl much smarter than he." Read on for the rest of aaronvegh's review.
Feed
author M.T. Anderson
pages 320
publisher Walker Childrens Paperbacks
rating 8
reviewer aaronvegh
ISBN 074459085X
summary A disturbing and believeable rendering of a dystopian future America features some cool tech gone amazingly wrong.

The trouble is, all the citizens of this future state are connected to the global network with a direct neural link, called the Feed. The Feed connects its users directly to all others, allowing instant access to information and communication.

Like today's Net, however, the flow of information has grown disturbingly two-way: the Feed is owned by corporations, and their agenda to increase consumerism has led to such privacy-stripping "innovations" as predictive marketing (getting "bannered" by merely looking at purchaseable items) and constant interruptions (such as chats being broken by Google AdSense-inspired ads).

Even more sinister, those same corporations bought out the government's role in education, and so Titus and his friends attend School(TM) -- where literacy is not on the curriculum. Instead, students learn how to make purchase decisions and better use their Feed.

Titus' new girlfriend, however, is representative of a growing counter-culture. Violet's education is strictly home-based, and her objections to the mainstream grow increasingly strident, even as she becomes a victim of it. It is perhaps no coincidence that her lack of affluence in this society is tied to her resistance against it.

The citizens of this future America, weaned on the Feed, are shockingly illiterate. Their language is largely incoherent, riddled with "like"s and "thing"s. Poor verbal composition is combined with an almost complete lack of vocabulary, so characters are often caught referring to objects as "thing... uh..." -- pause while they look up the term through their Feed -- "table."

We often attribute poor language skills to teenagers, but the author's willingness to show adults with the same deficiencies is telling. Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated.

Not surprisingly, the inhabitants of this world are incredibly self-absorbed. Titus repeatedly demonstrates a callous disregard for the feelings of his dying girlfriend, although he has the good grace to feel guilty buying a sweater while she confesses her fear of death. It's a culture where citizens are trained to value only what's shiny and new, and to dispose of the old and used. How any relationship can survive in that environment is a mystery only philosophers and Slashdot commentators might dare address.

The author's handling of the characters is both realistic and sensitive. I found myself shaking my head at Titus and his friends, but my disgust was accompanied by a sympathy; like a baby raised by wolves, his behaviour is completely understood, if not acceptable.

In fact, the picture drawn of this future is all too clear, and the author's skill at connecting the dots between today and that time make for some serious introspection. After all, today's Internet is an obvious precursor of the Feed, and as commercial life makes ever-greater demands of our attention online, where does it end?

The gear that makes this future possible is incredibly empowering. It connects all people together, literally, to the sum total of all human knowledge, while providing a complete, instant telecommunications network. But corporate interest is clearly the villain here, with all technology perverted to consumerist ends, ripping away privacy, individual expression and true liberty. In the right hands, the Feed would be more powerful than the agricultural, industrial and communications revolutions put together; instead, the Feed is leading its users to an apocalypse, as the author strongly hints at the end of the novel.

Most savage of all, the citizens of this future America don't see the apocalypse coming. As they increasingly turn a blind eye to how their goods are manufactured and delivered (sound familiar?), they ignore the radiation-induced skin lesions that everyone has, the fact that couples can't reproduce without a "conceptionarium", the glowing green clouds, the dead seas, the ash falling from the sky. In their dome habitats, life goes on, in the malls and upcars and fake lawns underneath the Clouds(TM) -- while the other nations of the Earth vow to obliterate America's corporations by any means necessary.

It's a hell on Earth, but a hell that seems destined to come to a crashing halt. Like the best in science fiction, this novel shows us the worst-case scenario, so we can thoughtfully avoid it.

You can purchase Feed from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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  • all the citizens of this future state are connected to the global network with a direct neural link, called the Feed.

    When will the rip offs of Ghost in the Shell/Matrix end?!!

  • Even the President of the United States (Score:5, Funny)

    by stevemm81 ( 203868 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:16PM (#9846247) Homepage
    "Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated..."

    Sounds a little familiar.

  • Would never happen (Score:4, Funny)

    by EnnTeeDee ( 799496 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:16PM (#9846249)

    This book sounds totally unrealistic: "Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated."

    This would never happen in real life, you know.

  • Young Adult Novel (Score:5, Funny)

    by vivek7006 ( 585218 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:16PM (#9846255) Homepage
    is NOT a porno.

    Sorry!

  • One problem with posts like this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Youssef Adnan ( 669546 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:17PM (#9846268) Homepage
    Is that it kills the story. If there is a point that the story is trying to imply, it just kills it. Sometimes, the author is trying to leave something to the reader, but when you get it from another person, it just no longer is there.

  • So... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:17PM (#9846272) Homepage Journal
    ...do the characters actually *do* anything about it, or does his rebellious girlfriend die and life goes on?

    • Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ink_13 ( 675938 ) <erlogan@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:25PM (#9846362)
      Why not read the book and find out?

      'Round where I live, there's this amazing place called a library, that lends out books for free. You may like to investigate the existance of something similar in your area. They may even be able to furnish you with a copy of this particular book.

      • Maybe because there are so many good books out there that spending a couple hours reading this one to satisfy vague curiosity would be a waste of time?

      • Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by AKAImBatman ( 238306 )
        Because I do not feel like filling my head with such drivel. Shouldn't the point be to avoid a future like this instead of merely accepting it? What kind of lessons are we teaching our children if their literature tells them that there is no hope?

        Personally, I find this book rather disgusting. The fact that the "girlfriend" dies while attempting to obtain an implant only furthers the idea that life is cheap and emotions are pointless. The author should have more carefully chosen his pen name. "M.T. Anderso
        • Was that sarcasm, or do you just appear to be strongly religious?

          -Jesse

          • Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by AKAImBatman ( 238306 )
            Very strong sarcasm aimed at the author. Perhaps its a result of having a family to protect, but I simply find it difficult to believe that anyone can be so callous as to write a story ending with no real concern over a pointless loss of a loved one. I'm even more disgusted by the fact that the author chose to present this garbage to impressionable young adults who lack a solid enough grasp on the depth of reality to effectively judge the content for themselves.

            • Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Enigma_Man ( 756516 )
              I dunno, I think a lot of young folk (of the age who'd read a sci-fi book, say 8 to 16, older being non-young anymore) would have enough builtup morals to be absolutely appalled by the ending, and that's apparently the point. Society had reached a point where one character's death didn't make much more of an impact over another beyond vague guilt. I believe that is the entire point of the book infact.

              -Jesse

              • Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)

                by AKAImBatman ( 238306 )
                Society had reached a point where one character's death didn't make much more of an impact over another beyond vague guilt. I believe that is the entire point of the book infact.

                Then this is a failure of the author to *study* the liberal arts. The very idea behind those arts is that some things are inherent in the makeup of mankind. This things are both his strengths and weaknesses. A great deal of literature has been produced on both of those concepts. In other words, *society* may not give a damn (not a
    • Perhaps you need to read the book to find out.

      Or just check the Feed and find out from someone who already read it.

    • Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AKAImBatman ( 238306 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <namtabmiaka>> on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:38PM (#9846526) Homepage Journal
      To answer my own question, the reviews on Amazon suggest that the end of the story is that his girlfriend dies and life goes on. Well whoop-de-do. This sort of ending can be acceptable in a short story where the author wishes to bring attention to an issue, but is completely unacceptable in a novel. One of the core points of good literature is the struggle of human-kind to improve himself. How does this novel meet that goal if the author provides no solution to averting this future? The very literary purpose of dysotopian futures is to demonstrate that such a future is possible, and demonstrate how it might be avoided. Leaving the reader with no hope is not the way to accomplish this.

      To me it sounds like this book would have been far better had the author taken the opportunity to "awaken" the main character and allow him to learn about his humanity.

      • Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by rjstanford ( 69735 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:51PM (#9846660) Homepage Journal
        To me it sounds like this book would have been far better had the author taken the opportunity to "awaken" the main character and allow him to learn about his humanity.

        Maybe by not doing so, he hopes to "awaken" his readership instead? There's something to be said for books that don't follow standard formulae too, especially in the all-too-genre young adult section.

      • Re:So... (Score:3, Funny)

        by Eccles ( 932 )
        One of the core points of good literature is the struggle of human-kind to improve himself. How does this novel meet that goal if the author provides no solution to averting this future?

        Sounds like this stupid play I once read. This guy gets told by the ghost of his father about the guy who killed him, so then he makes some pretty speeches and then everyone starts dying: his girlfriend, her father, a couple of flunkies, his mother, his stepfather, the guy himself, and a few others. What was that dren ca

  • Dystopian (Score:5, Funny)

    by FatRatBastard ( 7583 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:17PM (#9846273) Homepage
    Set in a dystopian future America...

    In SciFi is there any other kind? I'm still waiting for Manhattan to be turned into a maximum security prison. They're about 7 years behind schedule. /snark

    • Re:Dystopian (Score:3, Informative)

      by misleb ( 129952 )
      Star Trek (particularly TNG) would an example of near utopian Sci Fi. It does exist. It just doesn't stand out as "fiction" to many geeks when it is utopian.

      -matthew

      • Re:Dystopian (Score:3, Interesting)

        by cavemanf16 ( 303184 )
        That's because people hope for the best, fear the worst. In reality it's neither, and probably why so many have a hard time accepting the cold reality that we all suck and are all more than capable of turning our future into a dystopian one, far more than a utopian one. Ultimately we get neither, and just see freedom and liberty slip away as nation after nation tries to build on the failures of the nations before it, only to once again, slip away into past. It'd be nice if us humans could change this pathet
    • Class of 1999 [imdb.com]: "It's the last lesson you'll ever learn!"

      Set in 1999 Seattle, which has been "declared a warzone" and must employ security robots as high school teachers.
    • James White's Sector General Series was rather Utopian by comparison- sort of. A couple of wars, but even those wars contributed to a better-running multi-species hospital.
    • In SciFi is there any other kind? I'm still waiting for Manhattan to be turned into a maximum security prison. They're about 7 years behind schedule.

      And we're only fifteen years away from using replicants to harvest the moons of Saturn.

      Wait-- The Rutger Hauer replicant was four years old... Shit, that means we only have eleven years!
    • In SciFi is there any other kind [of future America than dystopian]?

      Yes, though dystopias and Ludditism have been very fashionable since WWII.

  • The future sucks, it always does (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:20PM (#9846298) Homepage Journal
    Why do I get the feeling that if SF writers were in charge of the industrial revolution we'd still all be dairy farmers?

    Why does the future always suck, why is that the natural consequence of progress along any dimension? Why do they embrace defeat?

    It's always some dark dystopian future and the cure is always either free love or fascism isn't it?

    That's why I like PK Dick so much. No happy endings, we all die alone tortured by our paranoias.
    • Not all SF stories are like that. You are over-generalizing.
    • Because if everyone in the future was happy, that'd be really freakin' boring to read. Drama needs conflict, and there's hella more conflict the dystopia than utopia.

      3004-07-30: I got promoted at my job. I love my job.

      3004-07-31: Little Jimmy got a gold star in hyper-space art today. I love little Jimmy.

      3004-08-01: My wife told me today that she loves her job at the nano-tech factory. Isn't that keen.

      You get the idea.

      (I suppose one could argue that it is possible to write a good story set in a better-t

      • It's easy. Futures that seem to perfect, actually are. Man has decided to ignore all the problems instead of dealing with them. This results in stories like when a "perfect" guys of the future accidentally trips across some information that could unravel the false reality and expose the puppet-masters. This sends him on an adventure where his life is in danger and his family kidnapped. To save them, he must expose the world for what it really is...

        In other words, utopian and dystopian futures are easily used to show how people sometimes ignore reality. In the former case, they live an illusion that hurts them without their awareness. In the later case, man has ignored the issues in hopes of a utopian society and instead brought disaster on himself.

        BTW, you didn't mention the third type of Sci-Fi story. The one where the future is neither utopian or dystopian, but rather has characters who deal with many of the same issues that we have today. These stories often serve as a way of contrasting our lives against a new backdrop to shake out any points that we've taken for granted or simply failed to take notice of. Another type of story like this is designed to give mankind a future to strive for. e.g. The "Star Trek" type future where everything isn't quite perfect, but things have greatly improved.
      • There is plenty of good utopian Sci-Fi.
    • Because corporations do strive to take control of everything - it isn't fantasy man, its happening all the time. It isn't this bad yet but if you look at the size/power of corps in the last 50 years, you'll see that writers are only writing in the direction that society in the US and UK is moving.

      "What are we then? Consumers" - Tyler Durden

    • Re:The future sucks, it always does (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JohnsonJohnson ( 524590 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:37PM (#9846516)

      Why do I get the feeling that if SF writers were in charge of the industrial revolution we'd still all be dairy farmers?

      Because you are likely only exposed to a very small segment of SF literature that is dystopic. Furthermore you regard all dystopic SF as Luddite.

      Why does the future always suck,

      In regards to SF, that's patently untrue. Heinlein, Brin, Asimov, Clarke, Rodenberry etc. are all utopianists, as are the gaggle of writer's churning out novels in the Star Trek franchise.

      why is that the natural consequence of progress along any dimension?

      That's an assumption on your part

      Why do they embrace defeat?

      Who's defeated? If you control one of the mega-corporations that are common in these types of dystopic stories you're doing very well in the world. In fact in such stories mega-corporations tend to subsume national governments so corporate executives even restrained by something as inconvenient as a constitution.

      the cure is always either free love or fascism isn't it?

      Huh?

      That's why I like PK Dick so much. No happy endings, we all die alone tortured by our paranoias.

      Dick died alone and tortured by his paranoias. His daughters survived to become a very profitable media enterprise. This is not meant to relect negatively on his daughters.

    • > Why does the future always suck, why is that the natural consequence of progress along any dimension? Why do they embrace defeat?

      Take two seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and call me in the morning.

    • Why does the future always suck?

      Maybe that seems more realistic than the stuff Arthur C. Clarke used to put out, which was boundlessly optimistic, and the future never sucked.

      Cases in point:

      • The level of space technology in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
      • The race to land first on the moon, in which the USA, Britain and the USSR (Russia) each mounted an effort to land on the moon, and they all succeeded simultaneously.
      • Childhood's End, in which the aliens were 100% good and noble and had only the best intere
    • Why do I get the feeling that if SF writers were in charge of the industrial revolution we'd still all be dairy farmers?

      Why do I get the feeling that without SF writers we'd be living out the dystopian stories (in many ways we already are). Sci Fi serves a very important function in a society bent on destroying and/or overthrowing nature.

      Why does the future always suck, why is that the natural consequence of progress along any dimension?Why do they embrace defeat? It's always some dark dystopian futur

    • Why do I get the feeling that if SF writers were in charge of the industrial revolution we'd still all be dairy farmers?

      Worse than that, if the reviewer's right:

      But corporate interest is clearly the villain here, with all technology perverted to consumerist ends, ripping away privacy, individual expression and true liberty. In the right hands, the Feed would be more powerful than the agricultural, industrial and communications revolutions put together

      It's saying "The future will suck! It'll be the wo

      • It's saying "The future will suck! It'll be the worst thing ever! But, if only we were communists, and outlawed companies which tried to seel you things and make money, then everything would be great! Dangerous and highly intrusive technology would never backfire then!" Awwwww. Aint that sweet.

        Right. Of course. Anytime someone criticizes corporations they must be communist or suggesting communism. Can't one be a Good Capitalist(tm) and still be critical of the system?

        -matthew

    • Why does the future always suck...?

      I guess you've never read early popular sci-fi, which was usually about the glories that technology would bring in The Future. That's what people believed in those days. The stuff you're reading (mostly written later) is a reaction to that, first acting as cautionary tales against conventional wisdom, and more recently confirming the common belief that Things Are Getting Worse. So the future isn't what it used to be.

    • Same reason newspapers are full of awful events - that's what's interesting, and what stands in contrast to the "mundane" workaday world of our own lives. Plus, SF dystopias are cautionary - they're waving red flags about present or incipient problems and rabble-rousing to try to inspire corrective action. The only world in which forward-looking, concerned people aren't presented with doomsday scenarios...is the happy-face worlds depicted BY those scenarios (no dark dystopian visions would be allowed/dist
    • It's a bait-and-switch, see, originating in the 1950s. The 1950s were supposedly the halcyon days of apple pie, clean (too cheap to meter!) nuclear power and robots that would clean your house---any day now! The 1950s were also a time of paranoia, McCarthyism and of course the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation.

      To reflect this duality, take Asimov and PKD. Asimov's stories reflect the attitude that technology will save us, that robots will do our bidding and be our Fuzzy Friends. PKD's view is tha
    • I'd suggest reading some Kim Stanley Robinson. His futures are much more reasonable than most SF; the changing technology tears society apart because of how different things become, but people muddle through it. Both fascism and free love get tried, and neither is ultimately stable. There are no endings, happy or otherwise; the answers to one day's problems are wrong the next day.

      The natural consequence of progress along any dimension always seems like madness to the people from before and requires adaptat
  • Judging by the moderation and post quality, the average age of a slashdot poster is probably 15, while the editors seem to average around 12 judging on spelling, grammar and attention span.

  • uh huh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tumbleweed ( 3706 ) * on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:22PM (#9846319)
    Welcome to a novel form retelling of an Outer Limits episode.
    • Season 3, epsidoe 5: "Streams of Consciousness"

      Outer Limits was such a great show. The same thing happened to another episode - the same premise got turned into a movie called, "The Truman Show." *yawn*

      At least this one is a novel, plus I guess there are only so many storylines available. *shrug*
    • Yeah, and "West Side Story" was just a singing and dancing retelling of "Romeo and Juliet", and "Le Morte d'Arthur" was just a novel-form retelling of the Christian gospels, and "The Wrath of Kahn" was just a movie-form retelling of "Moby Dick".

      There aren't a whole lot of truly original story ideas out there. What matters is the telling.

      • > Yeah, and "West Side Story" was just a singing and dancing retelling
        > of "Romeo and Juliet", and "Le Morte d'Arthur" was just a novel-form
        > retelling of the Christian gospels, and "The Wrath of Kahn" was just
        > a movie-form retelling of "Moby Dick".

        Dude...whatever you're smoking, pass it on, it looks pretty sweet from here.
  • At least they wont attempt to hack into a Gibson Supercomputer with Apple Notebooks. OR WILL THEY!

  • The citizens of this future America.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by A.S. ( 122423 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:24PM (#9846348)
    ...weaned on the Feed, are shockingly illiterate.

    The consumers of today's America, zombified by television, are shockingly illiterate. That this trend continues doesn't surprise me.

  • I think I've read this before (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JLavezzo ( 161308 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:24PM (#9846352) Homepage
    Hmm sounds like most of the books about dystopian future Americas out there... Since this one seems even less likely than the nuclear war caused one in the books I read as a kid, and even THAT one was thwarted by humanity, I'm only wishing kids had more books of inspiring futures than angst-riddled depressing ones. Last think a teen needs, another thing to be depressed about.

    I can almost imagine the thoughts of the author as he sat down to write this: "Hmmm... there used to be a lot of fear-the-future books 20 years ago. They sold really well. But we've fixed the threat of world war three, nuclear disaster, and this terrorist thing doesn't seem tangible enough to write about. Guess I'll just have to make up something about a capitalistic conspiracy gone awry and hope no one stops to think about how many people would have to abandon their ethics to participate in setting up this conspiracy."

    Blah!

    I'm tired of being told to be afraid. Hurray for hope.
    • There's a good reason for reading dystopias. Heck, there are lots of 'em. See, any good story has to have conflict in it. I'm in the middle of reading "A Deepness in the Sky" right now---not a dystopia, but it features what I consider pretty damned scary bad guys. If they weren't as sinister as they are, the book wouldn't be exciting. Who wants to see Fluffy Bear out-cuddle Slightly Less Fluffy Bear?

      Now, I'm not defensing dystopias which are unimaginative or poorly written. As another reply to you put it,

  • I actually read the book (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rognvald ( 655851 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:27PM (#9846381)
    I thought one of the most telling scenes in the book was a ride they took to "the country." They found a steak farm that allowed visitors to watch the blood flowing through tubes to irrigate fields of steak, with the occasional horn or hoof sticking out of a hedge of beef. I recall Titus thinking that it was important to visit these kinds of places so people would remember where their food really came from.
    • Well, what do you really think about this? Sure, our culture seems to have an aversion to blood, but if you could create meat without having a living animal (loosely defining living here) then are you saying we should still stick with live cows?

      I agree with titus that it is important to know where your food comes from - it seems like it would be an instinctual desire.

      But it does bring to mind the magic cow [sluggy.com]:
      Riff: Torg, you traded our magic beans for a cow?
      Torg: It's a magic cow!
      Torg: (whispered

  • commercialization of teenagers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by keyshawn632 ( 726102 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:28PM (#9846399) Journal
    I read this in a few days, with only about 150 pages long during the school year, about 4 months ago. It's diction is pretty light, and is on a 8th grade reading level.
    *Tries to remember the story more*
    From what I do remember, it was pretty prophetic in describing the commercialization of schooling and teenagers. The reviewer touched on this point a little too. Speaking from a teenage geek's perspective; it's often sickening to see how invasive advertising is becoming in teenagers' lives.

    Unfortunately, the advertisers seem to have already won - as I and many others are already 'casted' by other peers as 'outsiders' for not being as consumptious or brand-loyal as them.
    Both the main character and I feel torn, as we do not like to befriend/hang out with such a 'phony' crowd [I hate to use Holden's word, but it fits here]; and there's little alternatives for us.

    • and there's little alternatives for us. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:03PM (#9846782) Journal

      Damn to late the future is now. You do use some big words, googled for them? Pity you can't google grammar eh?

      Just messing with you, not like I could do much better but then english ain't my first language.

      As for advertising and american education, the rest of the world is just a few years behind, I once saw a documentary on kids in an american school being forced to watch commercials. The companies who owned the ads had paid for the lessons so if you didn't watch you were BANNED from class. It was a few years ago and I only saw half of the program so it could have been a spoof. It was supposed to be in one of the more depressed areas of big city.

      Anyway we have long since passed the point of sponsored kantines and sponsored school books. We can bitch all we want about it but as long as we allow campaigns that promise tax cuts and don't gas people that vote based on this we can't expect anything else. He who promises the biggest cuts gets the power, to make the cuts he needs to cut money to schools. Then "industry" steps in but they don't do it for free.

      Someone else commented how this kinda of future requires a lot of people to overcome their ethics. No it doesn't, it just requires everyone to make a tiny little adjustment of their ethics every couple of years. That is presuming people have ethics anyway. Look at how easily people turn to butchering their neighbours and perhaps the human race has about the same amount of ethics as a cat.

      The book review talks about the "hero" having little feelings about his girlfriend dying while he is shopping. But as we shop for candy and luxury goods and speculate on the latest ship or bitch how camera phones are crap PEOPLE ARE DYING FROM HUNGER. Do we give a damn about them? I don't. Oh sure when you corner me on the street and shove a tv-camera in my face I will say I care but really I don't. If I did I would do something about it and I don't. None of us do. Well at least not enough of us to make any difference.

      Oh well at least you and I feel torn about it. Better then some of the posters who prefer books that say "everything is going to be alright". We are all consumer slaves but at least some of us are aware of it. Like alcoholism the first step is admitting you got a problem. The real problem is all the steps that come after it. Looks like a long journey, better have a drink first to encourage us.

  • A female engineer? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Trillan ( 597339 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:30PM (#9846424) Homepage Journal

    Poor boy. Female engineers become attractive to male geeks at puberty, and remain so until 20 minutes after death. Longer on warm days.

    And as an engineer, she's probably way too smart to hang out with a boy named Titus.

    • This is Sci-Fi not fantasy. We are talking things that are theoretically possible based on what we know now and adding a generous dose of wild speculation and random guesswork.

      You are well into the realms of pure fantasy. No basis in real life whatsoever. Women being able to avoid men that are bad for them. Yeah right you are even incapable of it yourselve. You reject him just because of his name. That is rational. We all know you can tell the wifebeaters by their given name.

  • geez (Score:5, Funny)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:30PM (#9846428) Journal

    We often attribute poor language skills to teenagers, but the author's willingness to show adults with the same deficiencies is telling. Even the President of the United States appears unfocused and uneducated.

    You really posted this whole story just to say that, didn't you? ;)

  • It's a culture where citizens are trained to value only what's shiny and new, and to dispose of the old and used. How any relationship can survive in that environment is a mystery only philosophers and Slashdot commentators might dare address

    This is what I've been trying to figure out for years! HOW!?!!??
  • THE ANGST!! I CANNOT STAND THE ANGST!!

    Go read Greg Egan's works, or something else like the 4 books of Hyperion.

    May you live in interesting times.
  • Read the Otherland series if you want a good, future, dystopian society where everyone has a direct connection to the Net. Extremely deep and broad world, where heroes find out that in RL they're young,old,opposite gender, etc. I'm not saying that this new book isn't good, but this stuff has been explored already, in depth, by masters (Neuromancer anyone?)
  • Wha...I thought this was a futuristic story!
  • Alvin and Heidi Toffler in their book The Third Wave [toffler.com] make the point that industry doesn't just want the education system to turn out consumers. Industry also needs workers.

    We are seeing in the debates over the Japanese and Singaporean education systems the pressures being brought to bear by modern information, science and technology based industries upon the education system to turn out more creative, less regimented, adults.

    If the mass illiteracy future happens, it ain't going to be because that's what companies want.

    Douglas -- All speeling mistaks shoud be consedered intentionel irony

    • Industry may need workers, but the workers don't need to think, because a corporation can always spend some of its ill-gotten profits hiring somebody to think for their employees, so nobody on the payroll actually needs to think at all.

      Leaving aside the quasi-libertarian dogma, the only solution to the problems described in the book is a series of well-considered government programs designed to address what's really wrong. I'm sorry, but you simply can't trust private enterprise to solve these things, be

    • Yet another example of Toffler(s) being wrong. They were writing at a time when there actually was a labor shortage in the Western world. We can only hope that we will see those times again. We have "future shock", but not of the kind they invision.

      Our world is struggling with a shortage of jobs, not workers. Corporations have more than enough workers. Feed gets some of these themes right. As productivity increases, more and more stuff is produced by fewer and fewer workers. Who will consume all the

  • My mom knows this guy. He had dinner at her house a couple of weeks back. Haven't read this book but people speak of it very highly.

    Awesome to see some "children's cyberpunk" if that's not an oxymoron. I should pick this book up.

  • Dude, that's not a novel, that's happening today (Score:5, Informative)

    by JudgeFurious ( 455868 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @01:41PM (#9846554)
    At least the part about the language skills.

    Example (And I'm going to preface this with a solid "I have absolutely minimal input in this situation though I'm trying" statement)

    My stepson is a frickin pod person thanks to DSL and a father (who he lives with) who literally refuses to pull the plug. The kid comes home from school (not School(TM) yet but soon I'm sure) and goes online. He stays online until he goes to sleep. When he's at our house (every other weekend, his dad got custody and then prompty opted to let the net and television handle most of the chores) it's a war to get him to do anything that doesn't involve a video game. We have broadband too but we try to keep him from spending the entire weekend on it. What's two days though every two weeks when he lives online the rest of the time (admittedly outside of school).

    He seems to me to be a pretty bright kid and makes ok grades but his communication skills are almost non-existent. Getting more than a couple of sentences out of him at one time is a triumph and if they're understandable then that's a bonus. He's got to use the English language at school (doesn't he?) so you would think he'd know a few words. A noun or two here and there? Maybe? If that's the case though then he doesn't exhibit any sign of it that I can see.

    At his age (Almost 16) I was trying to figure out how to earn enough money to get a car, trying to get laid (with little luck), and had interests in music, books, sports, and a pack of friends all thinking about much of the same things.

    The idea of this kid working anywhere is laughable. He doesn't even mention cars or driving and to the best of my knowledge doesn't know what a girl is (and I check his browser cache when he leaves so we're not even talking about hitting the porn here). He doesn't read, he doesn't listen to music, and he doesn't even want to go outside much less actually do something that might require sweating. Friends? Hell if I know.

    I wonder how many other kids are already hooked up to "The Feed" for all practical purposes?
    • The kid comes home from school (not School(TM) yet but soon I'm sure) and goes online.

      Gee, I dunno... could School(TM) really be worse than School(Govt-Spec-12-5129-00917)?

      How about a pilot program?

      • I think School(TM) Could be vastly worse - Government run things are generally just sluggish and ineffective. But a corperation run school where they were allowed to pull every subliminal trick in the book on you? Scary stuff.

        Personally I think it would backfire though and people would just become hardened to the ads.
    • Have you tried beatings? If it doesn't work, at least it's exercise.

      Well, for you that is.

    • Maybe his Problem is not DSL . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

      by llywrch ( 9023 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @05:28PM (#9848681) Homepage Journal
      Just out of curiousity, have you had a therapist talk with this kid? I ask this because it sounds as if the kid could be clinically depressed.

      The fact he's your stepson & lives half of the time with his dad suggests that he's gone thru some serious trauma: he's seen his family break up & getting bounced back & forth could be undercutting his sense of a home & security. This would make a case of depression understandable.

      Then consider your following paragraph:

      > He doesn't even mention cars or driving and to the best of my knowledge doesn't know what a girl is (and I check his
      > browser cache when he leaves so we're not even talking about hitting the porn here). He doesn't read, he doesn't listen
      > to music, and he doesn't even want to go outside much less actually do something that might require sweating.
      > Friends? Hell if I know.

      Lack of interest in things like cars, sex, any activities or friends are all textbook indicators of depression. And doctors have only admitted in the last 5 years or so that children _can_ suffer from depression.

      When he's not around sometime, use Google to find some webpages on depression, & compare a couple of the tests against his behavior. If they suggest he might have depression, get him some medical help: depression is a disease. And once he starts coping with it, & starts to show an interest in those things, he will be glad for the help.

      On the other hand, if you have had him examined by a medical professional, & he's not depressed --just lazy -- then it's well within your rights to talk to his mother about sending him to a military boarding school. ;-)

      Geoff
  • uh...

    uh...

    good.

    --riney
  • On the main character, Titus:

    In my mind's eye I imagine him to carry a blue water sword and voice-over annoyingly.

    On their language:

    "Hey Marge, where's that uhhhhhh, thing you use to ummmmmmmmmmm..... dig?"

    "Oh, you mean a spoon!"

    "Yeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeah!!!"
  • Poor verbal composition is combined with an almost complete lack of vocabulary, so characters are often caught referring to objects as "thing... uh..." -- pause while they look up the term through their Feed -- "table."

    Nowadays, we call that "lag".

    This is a typical result of lazy programming. Never underestimate the value of caching a local copy of your data for faster look-ups.
  • I remember her. She was definitely waaaay smarter than me. Every time I tried to touch her, she smacked me. *sigh* I miss Legend of the Red Dragon [chrishiller.net]

  • I don't get it. If everybody has a direct neural Feed, why talk at all, except through it? Seems like it would revolutionize society in ways too hard to write about...oh, now I get it.

    See Alfred Bester's famous novel The Demolished Man [amazon.com] for an interesting take on a future in which just a subset of folks are telepaths. Highly recommended.

  • relationship (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Friday July 30, 2004 @02:11PM (#9846867) Homepage
    Ok, I'll dare to address the question of how any relationship can survive in such an environment: Frankly, it doesn't need to. In The Future®, relationships are superflulous and unnecessary as all human reproduction is handled by a corporation formed from the merging of the sperm bank, planned parenthood, and artificial insemination clinics. Certain males, selected from the gene pool after application and carefull screening, are permitted to make a 'deposit' in the sperm bank, where their 'funds' remain anonymous but are catagorized by physical characteristics. Certain select females are granted a license to reproduce when deemed necessary in light of population statistics, the desired qualities of new members, etc (do we need more scientists, hair stylists or equipment operators) and permitted to conceive (unlicensed conception is severely punished). After birth the newborn begins to spend more and more time in corporate training centers (day care) where s/he is raised to fulfill the role in society ordained for him/her.

    So, all the sentiment about 'love', 'relationship' , 'romance' is completely unnecessary and dangerous to the established order and prone to produce troublemakers who don't 'fit in'. The only relationship necessary is that between the individual and the corporation.

    And they have flying cars.

  • Feed (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Bart Read ( 767002 )
    To be honest this sounds interesting, I think branding it as another Matrix etc rip-off is probably missing the point, and I think slating it for using ideas that have occurred in other SF novels is probably doing the same. No novel is ever entirely original in all aspects: if you're going to nitpick about the reuse of ideas you may as well give up now and never read another book in your life.

    However:

    The citizens of this future America, weaned on the Feed, are shockingly illiterate.

    The fact is th
  • OK. In this book, the US is a nation of dunces--but somehow all the infrastructure to keep the Feed, the high-tech GM food functions. The people who run that clearly can't be the mindless, attention-span-of-a gnat zombies that the author posits the general public has become...and they can all be counted on, or coerced to, not object to the hell that life has turned into.

    For that matter, somehow this country of imbeciles can afford to buy the latest gewgaws. How? What can they trade for money? Organs? Bloo

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