Too much information, running 'round my brain

My son (14) and I read Feed together.

Me (horrified tone in my voice): Could you imagine having that in your head all the time?
Him (excited): OMG, that would be so cool! You could IM your friends all the time. You wouldn't have to go to school, you could just have it uploaded. You could just wish for something, have the money takn out of your account and get it just by thinking about it.
Me: Commercials running in your head all the time would be cool?
Him (shrugs): Yeah, why not? They're all around you anyway.
Me: OK, but where does the feed end and YOU begin? Do you determine what comes in on the feed or does someone else? At least with commercials, you can turn them off. The feed's running all the time.
Him: Um , never thought of that.

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I've said it before and I'll say it again: just because we can do something, doesn't mean we should. The most horrifying aspect of the dystopia in Feed (and it is a dystopia despite what my son might think) is that people have become sheeplike in their acceptance of the feed. No one questions it, when they are temporarily jammed they are paralyzed by the loss, and when people question the idea of the feed, they are branded as crazy. I like to believe that the minute someone tries to sell us on implantation of a feed in our brains that we as a society would stand up and say no, but these kinds of changes do not happen overnight, they sneak up on you. One minute it's the convenience of email on your computer, then your pocket, why not right into your brain? Although there may be many, many stages between the RSS feed as we know it and an at-birth installation of one, the fact remains we as a society love technology, love to consume, love convenience, and love conformity. This sets up a breeding ground for the possibility. Honestly, I love my ipod and itunes as much as they next person, but I would draw the line at having Apple implant itunes 27.0 in my head. My son, however, would do it right now if I called him up here and said it was available. Why? Because technology doesn't surprise him any more. He may not be able to put a name to it, but he knows that another "build" is on the way somewhere, and all he has to do is click install.