It's time for another informational edition of Ed's Book Review. When you've read all the classics and you're bored from the tired predictablity on the best-seller lists, expand your mind a little and read what I'm reading......
So I downloaded to my phone from the Overdrive website, an audio copy of "Feed" by MT Anderson that I found in the young-adult part of the sci-fi section of the online library. (I didn't realize the irony of that until I got part way through the book.)
It's about a future where everybody is connected to the Internet and everybody else, via a neural implant called the Feed, removing the need for computers, cell phones, books, TV's, radios, or any other connectivity or informational devices or media. It's very Orwellian in that the Feed "learns" about you based on your mental habits. The question then becomes, do we control the Feed or does it control us? The idea of an omniscient, paternal Web is disturbingly similar to present reality when you consider that in one generation we've become wholly dependent on the Internet for an ever-increasing proportion of our daily lives.
It's kind of a chilling look at what our near future might look like, but from the sardonic, always humorously cynical, view point of the teenagers. I recommend the audio book because between each chapter are what Feed commercials might sound like as they are streamed into your brain, tailored just for you.
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