A really amazing book- it’s supposedly for “young adults,” but there are enough elements for an adult discussion.
In the future, everyone in America has Feed- a wireless connection directly into your brain, which is like TV, radio, WWW, email, and instant messaging all in one. It also has incresingly-intrusive advertising. Titus, the main character, falls in love with Violet, someone who isn’t rich like him. Unlike him, she knows that US consumerism is destroying the world. Pollution is so bad in the future that normal childbirth is no longer possible. When pop stars start getting the mysterious lesions everyone has been getting, giant gaping open sores, the lesion fad sweeps American teens. Affulent high-school students get lesions surgically installed, because “seeing what’s inside you, all your guts, is just so sexy.” All too realistic. Feed isn’t all a complete bummer though. The products in the future are really funny- the privatized school system is called School(tm), there is a reality show called America’s Unlikeliest Allergy Attacks, a soap opera called Oh? Wow! Thing!, and a store in the mall called Bun in a Barrow which sells you an entire wheelbarrow full of hot crossed bun.0763617261