Feed essay

Lourdes Bennett
English 093
Emma Liddle
12/17/2009
Feed M.T. Anderson (Final Paper)

F E E D
“Feed” by M.T. Anderson describes youth behavior and attitudes in a futuristic cyber world. The new American civilization whose citizen’s brains have been connected to a master computer called Feed via special chips installed in their brains at the moment of their conception. Anderson developedthe story using a special protagonist and his conflicts. Titus, a male teenager, whose family, is described as an ordinary middle class family without any economical problems. While the new world is immersed in technology and communications were the common denominator is acting always under the control of what is called corporations, teenagers life has been affected for this new technologicalage, and their addiction or dependency on socializing via imitating TV features, using cellular phones, text messaging and certainly the Internet. A world where individuals have not privacy or intimate conversations due to the existence of the modern network, a new world without emotions, a new world depending just on the feed.
Internet, internet shopping, text messaging, cell phones, have emergedas an essential media channel for personal communications. Over the last ten years, the use of the internet, cellular phones and many other technological devices and new products have been incorporated as a part of our daily common life. In fact it seems to be like an extension of our body and dramatically obsessive for some people, I could say particularly young adults in scholastic stage areusing technology and internet more and more every day, though as a part of their social life. Anderson gives us a clear example by Titus when he says “I was currently disconnected from feednet, of course, and I was starting to get scared…” (43) As part of the new life, where acting as an individual is not common anymore, Titus feels that something is wrong when he perceived he has been disconnectedfrom the feed just for an instant, this is the kind of panic that runs every day for many addicted to technology people. Either professional executives or young students are always thinking about reviewing their e-mails at the first hour of their day, and the reactions of frustration are just visible when they cannot execute their activities in a good mood, either in an office or at school, unlessthey can satisfy the necessity to be connected, the necessity to know who send them an e-mail and who is connected in the chat, it is remarkable when they are not able to do it because their minds and their thoughts are just distracted for the internet absence.
The use of the internet as a tool, for some specialists, executives or researchers, is just vital in order to achieve their goals, likepublishing and updating research information, generally contributing and benefitting the humanity or global economy. The use of the internet is also a tool for many other businesses, but it turns into addiction when users decline in work performance, reducing job satisfaction and decreasing efficiency. Those are not the only issues that really matters, there are many studies related topsychological behaviors analyzing the sever effects caused for these addictions, a research about teenagers and the use of technology, recently published, demonstrates that there is a direct relation between self-esteem and the use of technology, the study also includes positive information about the relation between internet use and academic performance in low income children
I would like to say thatnot everything is negative about using internet, though Anderson emphasizes “we chatted all the time on the feeds and shared…” (73) His point of view describing youth people using the internet to have frivolous and irrelevant conversations through the internet, something like just living their lives as a part of a big structure, functioning just as repeated copies of the same person, without…