February 2014
Feed by Call Number: CL YA And47f 2002Ever wish you could access the internet without a computer or phone? For Titus and his friends, that life is their reality. In their world, everyone (well nearly everyone) has a chip implanted in their head that lets them be connected at all times: To the internet, to each other, to advertisers. It was just a typical trip to the moon to party; until it wasn’t. Until they got hacked. After a week without the internet and the constant noise in his head, Titus begins to wonder, and question whether he too should be fighting the feed like his new unchipped friend Violet.
Articles about the book
M.T. Anderson does Urban Exploration
Discussion Questions
- Technology and consumerism are intertwined in this book. Is that true of today's society? How would the book have been different if the technology wasn't owned by a comsumer company?
- What do you think M.T. Anderson is trying to do by using the language he’s
using in the text? - Freedom and Determinism. Are there any negative consequences of having the world of information at your fingertips? Does it impose on your freedom or the meaning of life at all? Why or why not? How much of Titus’s life, do you think, is his free choice, and how much of his choice is changed by the feed?
- Hacking and Police Brutality: Did you think that the police were excessive or brutal to the hacker when he touched the kids? If someone could hack into your brain and plant ideas or a running loop inside your thought process, what should their punishment be?
- How much is who we are determined by the information that we feed ourselves (or is fed to us)? And why, if at all, does it matter that we’re plugged into the feed of (corporation-filtered) information? Does the technology and constant easy access to information change who we are? And does it matter? What about genuine human interaction?
- “Everything we do gets thrown into a big calculation. Like they’re watching us right now. They can tell where you’re looking. They want to know what you want….They’re also waiting to make you want things. Everything we’ve grown up with—the stories on the feed, the games, all of that—it’s all streamlining our personalities so we’re easier to sell to. I mean, they do these demographic studies that divide every one up into a few personality types, and then you get ads based on what you’re supposedly like…for easy marketing.” Where do we see this today?
- What role does commercialism play throughout the novel? How does it affect the characters?
- Does FeedTech have a responsibility to Violet’s health? Do corporations have obligations to pay for health issues associated with
their products? - At the end of the book, what is the author’s message about technology?
- Have your opinions of your technological use changed after reading this novel?
- What about the idea of your role as consumers?