I’ve just read the first 150 pages of Anderson’s Feed (2004). Even though some philosophers seriously propose that we may be in a matrix-like reality (examples), I’m pretty sure that I don’t have a chip in my head right now. I am very sure that I’m online almost everyday, that I’m influenced by it, and so is everyone else I know.
I don’t think of myself as being especially immersed, but today, when the power went off – just for a few seconds – turning my computer screen black, I was literally stunned. Without realizing it, all of my thought processes had been directed toward what I was doing or planning to do on the computer, and it was all gone.
After reorienting, it made me think.
Our brains have been described as “anticipation machines." Perhaps as a survival strategy, we tend to try to imagine the best and worst of what could be, so we can be prepared, though most often what happens eludes extremes.
I don't buy utopic visions and I don't lose sleep over dystopic ones, but both can be instructive.
How close are we to having the Internet in our brains? In one sense, not very close at all. Even the smartest of us don’t know our brains nearly well enough to pull it off. Judging new reports of monkeys just now starting to move prosthetic limbs, the neurosciences have a long way to go to get to that level of sophistication.
But, neural hardware is not necessary to affect many of the symptoms displayed by Feed’s characters. My experience today showed me that I already have the Internet in my brain to a larger extent than I realized. And this reminds me of considerations (realistic in my view) that computer activities affect our plastic neurophysiology (e.g., Prensky 2001a, 2001b).
It is not difficult to imagine our language declining, our attention splitting, advertising jingles and images in our heads, our president becoming less sophisticated, and people in power using new technologies to influence the rest of us. All of that has happened, some would say to an alarming degree.
To me, the value of Feed, at least so far, is in its being a cautionary tale about awareness and critical thinking. Violet feeds her own head. She's unusually self-aware, and aware of some underlying patterns and of how people are being unduly influenced and dulled. I look forward to finding out where she goes with this...
[Update: ...She got sick and died. It was a downer, but in an interesting, thought-provoking way.]
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Anderson, M. (2004). Feed. Cambridge: Candlewick.
Prensky, M. (2001a). Digital natives, digital immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5). Retrieved October, 31, 2006 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/
Prensky, M. (2001b). Digital natives, digital immigrants, part II: Do they really think differently? On the Horizon, 9(6). Retrieved November 4, 2006 from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/
1 comment:
I was pretty surprised at the lack of awareness and critical thinking in the Feed society. The scene where Titus and his friend were talking about Coke in order to get some free, but then ended up buying some anyway drew an interesting parallel between the marketing schemes of today. I wish that the reader could actually see Violet's thoughts in scenes such as those.
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