Monday, November 03, 2008

Feed by M.T. Anderson - the Audiobook


Creepy and fascinating, I found many things about Feed (and the Feed of the story) kinda...cool, though it certainly terrified me. In Titus' world, everyone (who can afford it) has the Feed installed into their brains as babies. It acts like a computer up there, allowing Feed users to chat with friends (private chats also available), watch "TV" shows, stream favorite tunes, and go virtual shopping 24/7 (like the coat your friend's rockin'? It's available for $89.99, in your favorite color, and can ship RIGHT NOW!). While all of this sounds pretty interesting (at least to me), the drawbacks are extreme: those who have the Feed are constantly bombarded with advertisements, and faceless Feed corporations track everyone's spending, browsing, and emotional information (yup - it's in yer brain, so those corporations can track everything you feel, too), all for the purpose of "fulfilling" one's every wish. This is completely normal to Titus, but when he meets a unusual girl, and they and Titus' friends are involved in a sort of terrorist attack, Titus finds himself thinking about the Feed in a whole new way.

This book is quite terrifying, and therefore incredibly fascinating. Just about everything in this book seems possible - I can easily see technology evolving to such a point, as I can also easily imagine those with the Feed developing strange, "unexplainable" lesions (HELLO?!?!? Computer chip/metal/circuits in your brain? Could that possibly be the reason your skin's falling off? Hmmmm?).

Definitely check out the audio version. David Aaron Baker reads Titus kind of annoyingly (which does fit the world Titus lives in), but if you can get past that, you'll be richly rewarded with the production of the Feed "excerpts" M.T. Anderson included in the book. For the audio, the ads, movie, TV and music clips have been produced as if they were real, complete with soundtracks. Pretty awesome, and a great underscore to the rapid onslaught of media that Titus describes.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i HATE this book!