Feed
Author: M.T. Anderson
Rating: â 2/5
Date Read: 2016/03/23
Pages: 308
I read this one to see if my students might like it. The internet is, overall, a pretty stimulating place, and generally it fits in your pocket. Many adults that I know have a difficult relationship with technology: itâs useful, but hugely distracting and often a source of intense stress. High school students feel similarly, and many of them confide that they wish they were more capable of unplugging. Frustratingly, with so many pushes for technology in education, students are completely inundated by technology both at home and school. Itâs difficult for teachers to watch students become addicted to technology, especially since we often (unnecessarily) force them use these same technologies in class, despite the lack of any real, pedagogical value.
Anyway, Feed takes this uneasy dependence we have on technology quite a few steps further. In the future world of Feed, everyoneâs brain is implanted with a device that has them constantly connected. They chat with each other inside their heads and generally surf an in-brain internet whilst constantly being bombarded with advertising. Unsurprisingly, this doesnât go well. Itâs an interesting idea, but with extraordinarily poor execution. Since I started teaching and reading relatively more young adult books (a genre I generally dislike), Iâve been somewhat shocked that such bad writing gets published without significant editing. Exhibit A:
âEveryone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit.â
As you can see, the writing is terrible, and it only gets worse from here. Still, the ideas could definitely start a dialogue between teens and their peers, parents, or mentors. This is a 2.5 star read for me, but I might keep a copy around just for discussion purposes.