HW #12 - Feed A

At first, when I read the pages of Feed in class, I didn't really understand what was going on. Especially the pages of Ads and the presidents speeches. Even though I read them, I didn't get what the author was trying to convey and as well as the language that the characters are speaking in. Because the characters have the Feed, I think the language that they are speaking and the words they use are deteriorating or less smarter than I thought. They keep saying words such as "shit", "brag" and other slang words, which I think it connects to how the teenagers in reality use as well. Since we have the technology we needed such as the spell check and grammar check button on the program (Microsoft Word), our grammar when speaking and writing start to get worse. I think that the author is trying to tell us that digital makes us dumber rather than smarter because it is the digital is the one that are the smart one so we are only smart when we know how to use the digital. But what we want to find using the digital is the digital's work, not ours.

When I had the group discussion, a few people said how the ads page and the president's page are showing how the teenagers are clueless of the world because the digital is distracting them. We are being "spoiled" by technology so we don't know know what the big world outside of the small world that we are in. In the book, it was only Violet that keeps saying that the world is going to be destroyed, going to end but the rest of the others are ignoring that fact even though it happened right in front of them. They don't think about it but instead, enjoy the technology, the Feed, to help them entertain themselves before they died or be malfunction by the Feed, like Violet at the end. I thought it was unfair how Violet was the one that got the sad tragedy; even though she got the Feed later than she should, it showed how we need it in order to keep it up with the society, the advancement of the world. I think technology is advancing but its causing the rest, the natural things to slowly die. I feel as if I am being masked by the technology that I am not aware of what is going on in the world or how technology is killing us. Additionally, we are not doing much about it but waiting for something to happen.

Thus I think we are not living in a meaningful life. Most/Some of us have to work to get the money to survive, to buy the technology that we need. We use up our strength and time to not think about other things, like in the Feed for what the teens can do. We cut up our body parts, like the lesions in the book, to stay with the popularity. It seems as if we are born into this world, then waste our life period because of the technology, and gain not as much as we can gain if technology is not there. But it also seems that we can gain more for the future generations with the technology even though the world is being destroyed. I agree with what Anderson was trying to say about the teenagers and our ignorance about what actually happened that is replaced by some other stuff (I guess technology? and people in the past hiding the truth). Though I think Anderson is a bit exaggerated in the book.