FEED PART DEUX

• How close are we to the the society of Feed? Are our present systems (Google tracking, single accounts into multiple services...) a simple precursor?
• What struck you most about the society of Feed? (e.g. acceptance of lesions, twist on the Digital Divide, people don't know how to write...)

We are certainly close to the society of Feed, as I talked about in my previous post about the book. I think we will get even closer...and that is frightening. However, maybe there is some hope that people dont want it to get to that point, hope like in this article from FoxBusiness. Maybe we will all come to our senses and realize we dont want Google to know everything. Look, the technology is going to be there for a Feed society. Its going to be up to all of us to refuse it. Perhaps up to those of us in the library industry to take a lead and make sure folks know what we could be getting into. Making sure people always, always understand that when we stare into the great abyss of the internet, the abyss stares back.

I think the aspect of the society of Feed that scared me the most is one that I see happening already: people not knowing how to write. I use write to mean more than the physical act of taking pen to paper. THAT aspect is being lost already. Have you seen most folks signatures lately? I mean young people, healthy people, people without physical conditions that might preclude them from writing better. We all type or text everything these days, and the art of physical writing is most surely being lost. I mean the ability to read, comprehend, analyze and express an opinion on a poem, and article, a piece of music, a work of art. In Feed, everyone is TOLD what they need to know, they are given information, and any independent analysis is superficial and torn apart and lost by the constant barrage of media going on in one's head. I think Google and Wikipedia are steps in that direction. People use these tools to search for information, find it quickly, and thats it. There is very little analysis and evalution that goes on for most people. How much less will there be when the Web is inside us????