Assignment #2 (part 1)

Meg said...

1.Link- rich, sarcastic, short-tempered, competitive, and unattractive.

2. Null- boring, lame, or mundane.
Bonesproket- tool, loser, dweeb, or generally someone who is not considered to be ‘cool’.
Youch- hot, exciting, fun, attractive, or otherwise appealing, particularly in a sexual manner.

3. -Young people are sarcastic, always bored with their current situation, and tend to seek out drug usage to have a good time or be social.
-There is a lot of pollution and broken things. On the flight to the moon, Titus mentions that “there is nothing to see except broken things in space…”
- People are constantly being updated on new trends. In FEED, the feeds planted in the brains of the people represent, among other things, the constant media interactions in our society that we may not realize have so much influence over us. In the book, the girls would go to the bathroom several times as the hair styles changed throughout the night. It is a bit of an exaggeration compared to our present world, yet parallels can be drawn.

4. -Lesions are normal in the FEED world, and people try to incorporate them into fashion. In our world, such lesions would be considered an immediate medical concern, and quite unattractive.
-In our world, people do not go to the moon on weekends to party…yet. I have heard that, if you are very rich, you can go to the moon.
-We do not have “pot stickers” (page 14), as far as I know. I’m not sure exactly what they are in the book, but I am assuming they represent both marijuana and LSD.

5. -The media, technology, and cyber-communication have become a part of the mind itself, because the feed in physically in one’s skull. This may represent a futuristic interpretation of how interwoven our own minds have become with mainstream media and instant cyber communication. “Chatting” in Feed, is comparable to texting and Tweeting in our society.
-Another huge theme is corporate control over society in general. We can see even today that huge corporations, like Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and Exxon, have huge influence over what people eat, drink, use as fuel, or even see on the news! Our society is capitalistic, and thus daily life revolves around consumption. In Feed, it is taken to an extreme where pop-up ads and spam literally cannot be escaped, because it is in your brain. “The (corporate) Man” literally owns people.
-The most horrifying part for me is the complete immobilization of natural processes ecosystems. In Feed, clouds have become artificial, ocean creatures are covered in plastic to protect them from acidic conditions, and humans do not reproduce sexually. I can see how MT Anderson got the ideas for these horrors just from our own world. The oceans are becoming more acidic because of the burning of fossil fuels, which has led to destruction of coral reefs. Last year the Chinese shot particles into the sky to make it rain so that there would be fewer clouds of smog during the Olympics. In my own lifetime, I have seen a dramatic rise in the number of couples who cannot have children naturally, and thus seek in-vitro fertilization or adoption.

February 1, 2010 8:51 PM