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Essay / The Effects of Technological Progress on a Person
MT Anderson's Feed offers poignant critiques of technology and its apparent benefits. In a futuristic dystopia, seventy percent of humanity is equipped with the "flux", a high-tech device that essentially acts as a telephone and a computer. Through this device, people can receive word suggestions, read a dictionary and contact each other via m-chat (mind chat). Although this technology seems extremely useful, the main character Titus and his friends use food as a crutch because they have lost the ability to speak articulately. The word suggestion aspect of flow and high-tech society has taken a heavy toll on their verbal abilities, as evidenced by excessive use of slang terms and thinking in the email format. This shift in traditional communication is having a serious effect on traditional human interaction, as most people no longer talk to each other but instead choose to communicate through their feeds, even when standing side by side. These ramifications due to technology intended to improve and make life easier show how as technology evolves, more humans evolve and lose the ability to communicate and thus lose an important aspect of human life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay A consequence of Feed humans having technology from birth is that they lose the ability to speak well and articulate their thoughts without assistance. Titus constantly needs help from his diet to find the words he wants to say and has difficulty thinking clearly, such as when he couldn't think of the word "slip", "for a while we played a game with the ball and we were running around. the place, and we were like, as they call it when you scratch the surface of something very closely, we were all the way to the ground with our arms outstretched” (Anderson 15). This problem appears throughout the novel, whether with simplistic or advanced vocabulary, such as when he tries to describe Violet's appearance: “I didn't know the word. His spine was like...? The food suggested “soft”” (14). This lack of basic knowledge of the language is further revealed by Titus and his friend's inability to understand more advanced vocabulary without a dictionary: "You put 'supper' back in 'suppuration'...he had no idea of what she was. speaking of one or the other…the rest of us…looked up “suppuration” in the English-to-English wordbook” (33). This reliance on food to understand language - a fundamental human function - shows the devolution of human memory, knowledge and intelligence, as humanity can no longer clearly articulate its thoughts or understand itself without help. Instead of using traditional language to communicate, Titus and his friends simplify language into slang, language derived from technology, and consistent use of the word "thing" to describe the world around them. They shorten words like low-gravity to "lo-grav" and use curse words to supplement what they don't know. Even adults fall prey to this type of language, as seen by Titus' father, unable to clearly describe what he means: "She's like, whoa, she's so stressed. It's... man " he said. “Man, that’s some really bad shit” (103). Titus and his friends commonly use the word "thing" when they can't find the appropriate descriptive word: "You broke up a...a thing," Marty said. “You interrupted a damn thing” (55). Even beyond.