Did you ever have to read that awful book Feed? I had to teach that book my first year as a teacher. It sucked. It was a decent idea - what would life be like if the internetz were part of our brains, implanted in infancy? How would that change interaction and communication and stuff? - but the delivery was, shall we say, somewhat less than delicate. Even my dumbest students didn't like being smashed in the face with the equivalent of "IT'S A BAD IDEA. IT'S A BAD IDEA. IT'S A BAD IDEA." for a hundred fifty pages. One of the first great conversations I had with Andy's little sister was a shared dislike of that book, which she'd had to read for college, and how she'd suggest teaching it so that my student's didn't automatically dismiss my class as a bunch of crap.
It didn't help that the (weak) plot was all mixed in with weird bits on things like thought control, and what about this girl's weird hippy family who don't get her the implant till way later in life, and meat being grown on farms (just the muscles, not whole animals), and stuff. Ugh.
In case you can't tell, I didn't like that book. Hated teaching it. Thought less of the two students who claimed to love it - though to be fair, one of them was almost certainly high and hadn't read the book, so I'd have thought less of him anyway. I'm an asshole like that.
But this morning, I was like, yo, my life would be easier if I could just, you know, surf the web in my brain instead of on my phone. I'm reasonably sure they're tracking our internet use at work, in large part because they assured us they aren't without anyone accusing them of doing so, so if I feel like taking a two-minute break from editing boring stuff like forestry laws, I'll check a tumblr or two, but I use my phone. Which is less than ideal.
Now I feel like I maybe need to reread that shitty book just to remind myself that IT'S A BAD IDEA. IT'S A BAD IDEA. IT'S A BAD IDEA.
How would you feel about being able to browse the web and communicate with people with only your brain?? Ever read that book?
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