Postmodernism and Science Fiction (commercials in our brains??)

Living in a postmodern world can be overwhelming. I think teenagers are particularly steeped in this idea of looking at the world through already-presented ideas and images, just from how we are constantly bombarded with them. A ton of commercials and advertisements are targeted toward people aged 13-20. We have almost always been the most valuable demographic to most companies, and even more so in the modern and postmodern era. Baby boomers often shake their fists and grumble that we are consumerist and lazy and THIS CLOSE to having ads piped right into our brains. In fact, a lot of recent science fiction speculates on that exact idea. The book Feed by MT Anderson is a great example of this; so is the play Jon, as well as the short story it's based on. Both deal with this concept of futuristic meta-teens with a constant stream of advertisement and entertainment running in their heads. And both also have characters who, over the course of the story, feel a need to escape their hyper-consumerist state and experience "real" life, for better or for worse.

Because it must be better, or more moral or natural at least, to live in the real world, right? Rather than having every piece of media catered to you, having every possible technology at your fingertips (or neuron-tips), having your every need looked after. Right? Science fiction authors think so.

Some advocates of postmodernism might argue that this is a moot point, because there is no such thing as "reality" anyway. From the way humanity is accelerating, it is not completely ridiculous to expect that in the near future, the kind of inner-brain technology and advertising techniques described in Feed and Jon could become reality. As in the stories, this raises all kinds of moral questions. And, I mean, right now we have these books and movies and plays that warn against this kind of hyper-consumerism and predict the downfalls of such advanced technology, so who knows? Maybe humanity will heed science fiction's gospel of doom. And maybe, if we don't, it won't be as terrible as these stories expect. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.