Reading Response:

Recently, I have finished a book called Feed by M.T. Anderson. Though this book is set in the future, it has many themes and social issues that we today can relate to. One of these social issues is humans' unhealthy reliance on technology. The humans in the book rely on technology for nearly everything, from day-night cycles to job interviews to their own survival. In the world of Feed, most people have a microchip inserted and hooked up with their brain. This microchip, called a Feed, controls nearly everything that surrounds the people. The people never stop to think about what would happen if the Feed no longer existed. This shows how reliant they are on the machine to work.

The first time this issue appears in the book is when the main character and his friends go to the moon and are attacked by a hacker/terrorist. When the terrorist hacks into their Feed, he causes them to malfunction and black out. The bodies of the humans could not deal with the hack because they depended on the Feed to send signals to the rest of the body. When the Feed broke, it was sending too many impulses that the body could not deal with. If their body was not so closely linked with the Feed, that would not have happened. Another example of when people rely on technology appears in many descriptions of neighborhoods in the book. The wealthier people have their personal sun  and sky that they control. This artificial sun, in wealthy families, is located at about one per house. They can control this sun by using their Feed. The families that are poor, however, usually have one sun per block or per neighborhood. In poor neighborhoods, the artificial sky is always peeling off like wallpaper, and the suns don't seem as bright or they aren't the latest model. People don't have a real sun so they have to use machines in order to keep track of time, this can lead to issues if someone's sun is not in sync with all the other ones. Finally, in the book, people who have the Feed are given more advantages than people who do not have one. At job interviews, people who have the Feed can communicate and talk about you in private. You do not have the advantage of knowing what they are thinking. And, in some instances, people without a Feed may not be given the same job as people with a Feed simply because they do not have the microchip embedded in their brain. It isn't fair if some people are given an advantage over others because they have a certain piece of technology. People have become too dependent on technology to bring them information and give them an advantage at life.

The problem that exists in the world of Feed, also exists in our world. Humans have become too dependent on technology in the modern world. Statistics show that the average human checks his or her phone at least 110 times a day! When the machines fail, the people panic. We are so used to things being done our way and technology always working that we never consider what would happen if all of those machines stopped working. What if, one day, it would happen just like in the book Feed and technology would fail just when we needed it most? To minimize the damage caused by technology if it fails, humanity needs to learn to do things on its own, like it did before computers.

The reliance that people have on technology is severe and addicting. If it isn't stopped, problems may occur. The book Feed by M.T. Anderson displays some of the issues and shows us the after effects of relying on technology.