The Feed is embedded wetware which lets you access anything online, anytime. And your function, having been granted this incredible gift, is to consume.
‘The other was a good sale at Weatherbee & Crotch, which, by this time, I had probably missed. It was too bad, because I would have like to have been able to take the opportunity to check out these great bargains, for example, they had a trim-shirt with side pockets that I thought I probably would have bought, except it only came in sand, persimmon, and vetch.’
‘Of course, everyone is like, da da da, evil corporations, oh they’re so bad, we all say that, and we all know they control everything. I mean, it’s not great, because who knows what evil shit they’re up to. Everyone feels bad about that. But they’re the only way to get all this stuff, and it’s no good getting pissy about it, because they’re still going to control everything whether you like it or not. Plus, they keep like everyone in the world employed , so it’s not like we could do without them. And it’s really great to know everything about everything whenever we want, to have it just like, in our brain, just sitting there.’
‘…It’s like a spiral: They keep making everything more basic so it will appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make everything even simpler. And it goes on and on.’
‘When no one was going to pay for the public schools anymore and they were all like filled with guns and drugs and English teachers who were really pimps and stuff, some of the big media congloms got together and gave all this money and bought the schools so that all of them could have computers and pizza for lunch and stuff, which they gave for free, and now we do stuff in classes about how to work technology and how to find bargains and what’s the best way to get a job and how to decorate our bedroom.’
‘”This is the language called BASIC,” she said. On the paper, it said:
002110 Goto 013500
013500 Peek 16388, 256
013510 Poke 16589, 256
She read it to me. I could tell the numbers fine.
“So what does that mean?” I asked.
“It’s the first thing my dad teaches the students on the first day,” she said. “It means, ‘I came, I saw, I conquered.’”‘
‘I can read. A little. I kind of protested it in School(TM). On the grounds that the silent ‘E’ is stupid.’
‘”My friends and I are all home-schooled, so we’re a mixed bag. Bettina’s mother has us come over and weave ponchos.”
“You don’t go to School TM?”
“Alf’s parents teach us how to breechload their antiaircraft gun.”
“Whoa. Can you show me?”‘
‘So one time I said to her that she should stop reading it, because it was just depressing, so she was like, But I want to know what’s going on, so I was like, Then you should do something about it. It’s a free country. You should do something. She was like, Nothing’s ever going to happen in a two-party system. She was like, da da da, nothing’s ever going to change, both parties are in the pocket of big business, da da da, all that? So I was like, You got to believe in the people, it’s a democracy, we can change things. She was like, It’s not a democracy.’
‘I miss that time. The cities back then, just after the forests died, were full of wonders, and you’d stumble on them–these princes of the air on common rooftops–the rivers that burst through the city streets so they ran like canals–the rabbits in parking garages–the deer foaling, nestled in Dumpsters like a Nativity.’
‘It’s the end. It’s the end of the civilization. We’re going down… I just hope my kids don’t live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars… The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.’
One girl’s feed malfunctions, which makes her body gradually shut down. As the corporation deems her consumer choices unsuitable, they decline to repair her. She dies, while her friend sitting next to her is distracted by enticing online content.
Feed is told with wit and humour, I thought the whole thing was entertaining, just a little unoriginal, too close to reality. That was until I learned the book was written in 2001 – before smartphones, before social media, when the internet was still a collection of interesting websites curated by enthusiastic eccentrics. It’s truly impressive, and depressing, how much Anderson gets exactly right.
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