Info on feeds
Sep 25th, 2007 by sallen
Check this out for info on how feeds work. This will help you better understand — if you don’t already — how Anderson is conceptualizing the “feed” in Feed. 
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This was revised and expanded from an e-mail I sent Dr. A:
“In our discussions of ‘Feed’, I noticed a couple of interesting things. First, there was an awful lot of criticism of Titus’ culture—they all sound ‘stupider,’ they don’t have to remember anything, etc—but I can’t help wondering if those same arguments have a more pressing relevance. Couldn’t we, essentially, argue the very same points about the transition from oral to written culture? Or, at least, the transition to widespread literacy?
“I guess I’ll start with the ‘sounding stupider’ issue, since we touched on it a little in class. It’s a matter of language, and whether language is ‘degrading’ or whether that change is good. I mean, look at our vocabularies. What sounds smart now—or what sounds stilted, or what sounds silly—may sound normal in the future, or in the past, or never. Who are we to tell? Since when does language have absolute values as ‘good’ or ‘bad’? And besides, if Titus’ language is, in fact, bad, then who’s to say that we aren’t also a part of that same downhill slide? Maybe Dickens would have picked up a book about life today and gone, ‘Wow, these kids sound stu-pid.’ It’s hard to know, and foolish to pretend to know.
“I also want to touch on the question of memory, since one of my peers suggested that, because of the feed, Titus and his friends were freed from the need to remember things. Frankly, I don’t see it as such a shocking development. Think how much mental ability we have now, in comparison to individuals in cultures that had to remember—literally—everything. Compared to, say, Beowulf’s people, we don’t really have to challenge ourselves to conjure up words or facts. We have the option to memorize, but nevertheless we can always look things up. Our system of writing is like a proto-proto-feed. It’s just another resource at our fingertips—granted, more cumbersome than the feed, but we depend on it in a lot of the same ways. (Don’t even get me started on the Internet.)
“Here is my illustrative ‘activity’ of sorts:
(a) How long would it take you to figure out the density of water if you had to do the experiment and the calculations yourself?
(b) What if you had access to the books in Simpson library?
(c) What if you had access to a computer?
(d) What if you had a feed?
“Essentially, we are dependent on these tools in one way or another. Without information resources we would be in real trouble; we no longer keep all the information we need to survive in our brains. Most of us know this—we know that the grocery store holds the key to satisfying our hunger; we know that the doctor holds the key to our health. And worst of all—here comes the shout-out to Adorno—the media knows and exploits our dependence. Any situation where knowledge comes from outside the self—be it a phone number in a Rolodex (even before cell phones, I used a cheat sheet instead of having to remember) or advice from a medic—is a vulnerable situation to be in. Yes, Viola’s vulnerability to the feed actually kills her, but our vulnerability is just as real.
“At the risk of losing my bearings, I’ll wrap this up. Ultimately, I think some of our fear of the feed may be a general case of neo-phobia. New technology is scary, especially when one hasn’t lived through the gradual step-by-step changes that give rise to each new paradigm. So while ‘Feed’ is, on the one hand, a warning against future mismanagements, it’s naïve to think that we’re standing—objective—on the edge of the precipice, wagging our fingers at the fallen and saying, “If only you’d stayed smart and moderate, like people are today…” This book has relevance. This book could also be Anderson’s gesture towards how things got the way they are today.”