A Look into the Future

Since I was in eighth grade, I was repeatedly taught that utopia was a perfect society and that this society could not exist. Recently I have learned that utopia is not a perfect society and there are communities in the United States that are considered to be utopian societies. Many believe to have a utopian society involves having technology at edge of your fingertips.

In the novel, The Feed by M.T. Anderson, the people in this world have “the feed” implanted in their brain. The feed is a brain implant that allows people to connect with others and is a futuristic version of the internet with instant messages and advertisements. The feed is very similar to our smart phones and computers in 2017, except the feed is inside the people's heads.

The question is, what will our futures look like?

I believe that The Feed is very similar to what our future will look like. Eventually our computers will no longer be outside of our bodies and will be inside of our minds. Technology is already easily accessible and we depend on it very heavily, but we will depend on it even more in the future. We use technology for almost everything in our lives nowadays, and just like in the novel we will use technology for even the simplest things. In the future, we might not even have conversations out loud to one another and just communicate with instant messaging.

In The Feed, Titus is a teenager who has lived with the feed for his entire life. Titus and his friends have easy access to advanced technology. They can even travel into space whenever their hearts desire. “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck” (Anderson 3). This demonstrates that even going to the moon to them is an adventure that is taken for granted. Personally, I think if my friends and I were to go to the moon to hangout we would have so much fun. For us, the moon would be a new adventure since we have never been there before and there is zero gravity.

For Titus, Link and Marty going to the moon is taken for granted and is no longer entertaining for them. In today’s world, people having smartphones and access to information wherever they go is taken for granted. At the moment, computers are still outside of our body, but I predict that in the future our computers will be inside the body. “That’s one of the great things about the feed- that you can be supersmart without ever working” (Anderson 47). With easy access in The Feed and today, we can obtain unknown information easily without having to work for it.

In today’s society, people of all ages do a lot less thinking than we did compared to a hundred years ago. At a young age we are taught to just regurgitate information and to have no creativity. Our school systems make us take numerous standardized tests that include no creativity. As technology has grown, our creativity has declined. Having access to countless information is awesome, but at the same time we do not obtain any knowledge since we have easy access to it. Thanks to technology, we no longer have that creative side since we are constantly being distracted with technology. People can sound super smart since they have access to find out information without ever thinking. If you want an answer to a question, all you have to do is pull out your smartphone and google your question. In the future, we probably will not have to take out smartphones and can just have the computer inside of our brains the question.

There is not a place that you go nowadays where you do not see people on their smart phones. It is sometimes hard to think that there was a time before computers and smartphones. One day when Titus and his group of friends went to the moon their feed got hacked and they had to live without the feed for a few days. Titus explains how bored he was and the only thing he did was stare at the blank hospital walls. When his father went to visit him the hospital that he was staying in, his father was trying to communicate with him through instant messages. Titus’s father totally forgot that he actually had to communicate to his son by speaking and not by using a computer chip. Titus was first confused why his father was staring at him before his father realized that they could not talk through the feed. If Titus’s feed did work, the two of them could just be standing there, but would actually be having a full conversation.

This happens to people today. For example, when you go out to eat at a restaurant you see people on their phones texting the person right across from them. Thanks to technology, we really do not have to speak to one another out loud. Some people barely speak words anymore since they are constantly messaging or on social media and communicate to others that way. When I was in high school, every time my friends and I would go out to eat we would put our phones in the middle of the table. We would be able to talk to one another and take a break from the rest of the world, In The Feed, those individuals may not have that option since advertisements are always popping up in their brain.

After many years of being told that utopias cannot exist I am starting to believe that they might be able to exist. At this point in the novel, I might consider this world to be a utopian society. The people in The Feed have access to technology inside of their bodies and can travel to other planets in the solar system. They might not be able to take a break from technology, but they have been able to use technology since they were born. Maybe to have a utopia we need to have access to endless information and technology. I believe that technology will help people build a utopia in the future since they will have endless knowledge in the palm of their hands.

Works Cited:

The Feed by M.T. Anderson

Briana L. 1057 words