The Dangers of Technology Reliance and Consumerism in the Novel Feed by M.T Anderson

Imagine being able to get instant information, gossip, news, and any social networking humanly possible; sounds amazing right, just watch what the feed does. In the book “Feed” by M. T Anderson, he explains the dangers of a lifestyle centered around technology and consumerism. The world described in “Feed” by M.T Anderson is dystopian.

One reason why the book “Feed” is dystopian is that corporations brainwash people into buying useless products. For example, when Titus and his friends were getting off the ship, Titus says, “Our feeds were going fugue with all the banners... I was trying to talk to link, but I couldn’t because I was getting bannered so hard” (Anderson 8). The feeds constant bannering makes it impossible for Titus to even think. He can't even talk to link without being interrupted by ads. Also, after Titus gets into a heated argument with violets dad, he says, “It was like I kept buying these things to be cool but cool was always flying just ahead of me and I could never exactly catch up to it” (Anderson 279). The feed is trying to manipulate users to buy items for them to make money. Titus believes the cure to this hardship is to purchase. However, buying does not accomplish anything. Another reason why this novel is dystopian is that the “Feed” environment is contaminated with technology.

For example, when the narrator is speaking, he says, “ I remember seeing the hawks perched on street lamps, during those last days of the American forests. They had come from the mountains, maybe, or pine woods that were now two or three levels of suburb, but the hawks sat in our cities like kings. They would not look down from their lampposts as thousands of down cars went by underneath. It was like they sat alone on their Douglas firs” (Anderson 94). He's talking about what it was like when the forests were destroyed. Nature has been turned upside down, and the animals are so confused with their destroyed homes. Furthermore, when Titus’s mom explains how he was created, she says, 'So, we went into the conceptionarium and told the geneticists what we wanted, and your father went in one room, and I went in the other and...'(Anderson 117). Titus’s mom describes when Titus was picked out of a list. This shows how much the environment has changed with the use of technology. Kids are created in labs, rather than the natural way.

Regardless, the opposing view may say that the world described in “Feed” is Utopia because of the easy access to information from the feed. For example, when Titus finally got the feed back, he says, “the feed was pouring in on us now, all of it, all the feed net, and he could feed all of our favorite files... it came down like water. It came down like Frikken spring rains and we were dancing in it” (Anderson 70). However, the opposing position is wrong because Titus and his friends become too dependent on the feed. Titus compares the report he’s getting from his newly restored feed like rain falling on him. This shows us how technology has changed into something as normal as rain. The feed stops its users from thinking for themselves by constantly giving them information that they can use, thus creating a dependence upon the feed which makes the characters less intelligent. In conclusion, the world described in “feed” is dystopian because of technology linked with consumerism, and the contaminated environment.

M. T Anderson gives a clear picture of future might look like. He is trying to warn readers about the dangers of a lifestyle centered around technology and consumerism. After reading this book, people need to pay attention to how much time they spend with technology.