Feed B [HW #13- Revised]

Feed was artistically successful, only to all those resist the feed. Only those who (remotely) control their mental activities- not us, or allow/are forced to be guided by the (remotely) "enlightened"- us, would see that this is a reflection of our lives. For all the others- the people who read this book as it is, looking for the traditional plot, this book is just any ordinary collection of papers with the same tiny symbols, mixed and matched in different combination that tells the reader random stuff from a random outside source. The book is the Feed.

Being that I am one with guidance and thus able to perceive this as a piece of art, I suspected that M.T. chose to set this book in the future (yeah. blah blah blah. allegory. now. i got it.) in order to set us apart from our lives a bit. Normally, we would pretend like we're observers and exceptions, while we are in fact the subjects and the perpetrators. In this case, however, we are truly observing. M.T.'s decision in making this book take place in the future gives us the perception that we are the past. We are no longer the hip youngsters that keep up with the latest fad. When we read this book, we are the oldies- the ones who barely understand the new lingo and see this way of life as ridiculous. We are now the past generation, in theory. Having this external point of view on an allegory of our lives, we can see better understand how our lives may seem stupid.

One of the main things that M.T. does is that he focuses of the idea of feed and lesions. Though they might not quite exist in our world, they are used to help M.T. accentuate his point about disembodiment. When compared to the characters in Feed, the people in our world are more physical. We still take on physical activities such as writing and typing, which they do not. Most of the things that the characters do occur within their Feed. There really is no need for their bodies. They're just an accessory that can host lesions, which would just be the detail of the accessory. Both the feed and the lesions, combined, show that the distinction between characters is not within their thoughts, knowledge or insights. Their distinction depends on how superficial a person (e.g. Quendy) can get. This just reinforces the fact that this is an allegory.

If art was to be a hammer that shapes our lives, then Feed is an extremely small hammer that is given to only certain people. However, it is quite the mirror. For those who can see this as an allegory, many people would not do anything dramatic to change their lives. For instance, I know for a fact that I haven't changed any of my digital habits after reading Feed. Feed is simply a mirror of any image we've already seen, but prettier. Most of us already thinks that too much digitalization is bad for us, and that we should spend more time on the things that contribute to our education and our natural...ness. Although we are given this insight about digitalization, it does not necessarily mean that we are given the incentive to change our way of life. We might understand that Feed is a reflection of our lives, but we still, perhaps subconsciously, believe that M.T. exaggerates to some extent. And as a result, we do not grasp onto the fact that we're heading towards our own downfall. We still believe that we would ever reach such a tragedy. We still believe that there's still a chance to change. Feed, along with every other attempts, is not a strong enough hammer to save the world.