Technology is advancing quick, so quick that things that
seemed like science fiction (floating cars, virtual reality) are far closer
than we could think. M.T Anderson’s book Feed
illustrates what life would be like with and without a global link to the
internet, which everyone knows is like the lifeblood of everyone from their
tweens up til their early adulthood.
Okay, so think about this: It would be pretty awesome to be hooked
up to the internet, right? No need to carry extra devices, no need to strain your
fingers typing and no need to damage your eyes with a bright screen. But what
about the negatives of it? I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t want
advertisements interrupting my thoughts. And if that wasn’t bad enough:
“But
the Braggest thing about the feed, the thing that made it really big, is that
it knows everything you want and hope for…Everything we think and feel is taken
in by the corporations, mainly by data ones like Feedware an OnFeed and
American Feedware, and they make a special profile, one keyed just for you, and
then they give it to their branch companies, or other companies buy them, and
they can get to know what it is we need…”(48)
…that’s not cool, guys. I don’t want my thoughts taken (don’t
probe me, bro!) and passed around to other corporations to be like “oh, look,
his innermost desire *takes peek*.
Ahem, anyway I
decided to dwell on this a little. Is this taking things too far? If you have a
company peeking into your brain folds all the time, is anything really ever
private? While reading this, I immediately connected this story to an anime I
had watched recently called Psycho Pass.
Psycho Pass in the long run is about a criminal detection
system that has been implemented and networked throughout this entire city.
Seems pretty great, right? With such an advanced system, nothing could go
wrong, right (foreshadowing)?
The entire grid links everyone’s mind to a massive index,
called the Sibyl System. This criminal detection program uses a scanner to read
someone’s “psycho pass” and determines how great a threat to society an
individual is with some arbitrary number called their crime coefficient. It’s
the job of inspectors to take their human hunting dogs, the enforcers (who, by
the way are also latent criminals) to capture and therapize or pin down and
neutralize the criminal with special auto locking guns called dominators.
Dominators can only be fired by authorized users at people who have been deemed
unfit for normal life in society.
Dominators are the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. Depending
on the criminal, it will either be fired stunned like a stun gun or turn the criminal into a
fine pink mist…why it has to be so brutal, I have no clue.
Not seeing a connection yet? Keep reading.
What isn’t really thought about by any of the Inspectors or Enforcers is what exactly raises a
crime coefficient? Well within the first episode, you can see that…well
basically every thought running through your head.
Walking down the street, sunshine and rainbows; Crime Coefficient
54
Bump into pedestrian, “man he was rude”; Crime Coefficient
OVER 9000! (No, but seriously)
The biggest issue is how much the law enforcement industry
changed because of it. Similarly to how the Feed greatly influenced the lives
of those who actually owned them, the Sibyl System altered the way criminals
were brought to justice.
The real point here is how people changed without them.
In Feed, when
Titus and everyone’s feeds were hacked, they were all twiddling their thumbs
like morons. There was nothing there to entertain them; they didn’t even care
to talk to each other, really. It may not be too obvious, but at that point,
Titus begins actually thinking. Majority of the story is him just thinking
about what is going on around him, but then he begins to actually think like we
do today.
In Psycho Pass, there are a select few who don’t appear on
the grid of the Sibyl system, and those select few cannot be fired upon by the
dominator. So how does one deal with someone that, to the knowledge of the all-powerful
Sibyl System, does not exist? Well, you resort to the old style detective way
of doing things: think like a criminal to catch a criminal
.
Wait a minute…FLASHBACK
“Walking down the street, sunshine and rainbows; Crime Coefficient 54
“Walking down the street, sunshine and rainbows; Crime Coefficient 54
Bump into pedestrian, “man he was rude”; Crime Coefficient
OVER 9000!”
-Me <3
And that’s where enforcers come from.
More to my point, both of these scenarios throw off the new
balance that has been set in by newfangled technology that’s supposed to make
life better for everyone. But the sheer fragility of it makes me wish for normal
computers, normal police officers…hell, give me old west sheriffs and parcels for all I
care, anything but this!!!
Taylor R.
Anderson, M. T. "Missing the Feed." Feed. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2002. 48. Print.
Psycho-pass. FUNimation Productions, 2013. Film.
Oh I'm so loving this post right now. it makes me see not only your view of the story and the anime you chose, but it also opens my eyes to how relatable this topic is. I personally just don't want a chip in my head and then be on my merry way. I feel that would kind of be degrading to us as humans. Even in my post I show the good and bad of this idea of the "Feed" or the internet at our access just in a flash second, but with this generation of numbskulls we would be searching up on ways to get away with cheating on our girlfriends and how to shoot a gun upside down.
ReplyDeleteBack to the topic, I relate to your story and your post very much so. I wouldn't change one bit about it. It feels like another part of me is typing this post with you. And I can understand what "feed" is really about during that time. Plus now I have another anime to watch. Maybe next time I should make the comparison to Naruto, eh? Well done my fellow friend.
P.S. - Still mad at you.
Who is this? you have to include your first name, last initial to receive credit for the post.
DeleteI really enjoyed the text-to-text connection that you made in this post. I've never heard of Psycho-pass before, but now I definitely want to check it out. With regard to the implications re crime prevention, what happens to the hacker in Feed? He's literally beaten to death, right? (Anderson 123) No due process. No judge. No jury. He's simply executed right on the spot. But he was a criminal, right? He protested the system. Much like in Psycho-pass, and the world, there is a controlling body who decides what actions, thoughts, etc. are criminal and what are not. Psycho-pass, as I saw in the video you posted, even takes it as far as labeling a member of law enforcement with a high crime co-efficient simply because he can "think" like a criminal, so there are thought police, right? The point is that those in power are the deciders. The Feed or Psycho-pass monitors only give them more leverage to neutralize threats to the system because they can locate and eliminate dissidents before they even carry out any action. Titus' parents even talk about suing the police for not getting there in time, as if they should have been able to hack the offender's Feed and arrest him before he committed the actual crime (126-127). But how is any of this really that different from the goals of programs like "Stop and Frisk" in NYC today or the NSA collecting emails and tapping private phones?
ReplyDelete