Matthew Tobin Anderson - Feed

Feed is a young-adult novel focusing on the lives of teenagers in a future America. Within this dystopian society, young people are implanted with "the feed", a computer chip that connects them to a global network of advertisements, images, audio messages, and text-based communication. The government uses the feed to profile everyone to show what their interests and dislikes are. Anyone who tries to 'beat' the feed can be denied later when they try to get information or help from the sources. The novel's themes are corporate power and consumerism. Feed has also been regarded as a literary source for young adults to not only expand their knowledge on citizenship outside of the everyday youth status, but also increase their capacity for social change. The novel also focuses on the dependent nature of the characters; everyone is so dependent on the feed's transmissions that everything else in society decays. Feed received a lot of praise, mainly due to Anderson's wit and imagination. His unique use of language in the novel is noted as one of the major positive qualities in novel, projecting a glimpse of what teenagers, and adults in general, could be speaking like in the future. Feed won the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award. Feed was also selected for the American Library Association's best book for young adults.