What Is The Role Of Technology In Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 Essay

Do you ever feel that our world is affected by the vast amount of technology within it? That our society has been overcome by electronics? The bottom line is that technology, from phones to TVs, has the ability to affect whole populations. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, Montag’s society has been greatly impacted by this. He, his wife, and nearly everyone else has become mere shells of the people they could be. They spend their days listening to their parlors or their seashells rather than interacting with others, learning, or doing anything else that may be productive. Due to this, education has plummeted, people no longer feel for others, and the entire community has been overcome by depression. A world

For instance, in Bradbury’s novel, Faber says: “‘ten million men mobilized...but say one million. It’s happier’” (Bradbury 88). He’s explaining the current situation the government is portraying to them through their electronics. The people in Montag’s society are being told only a minute amount of truth. While the government feels that this will lead to peace and happiness, it is really creating ignorance. No one knows the reality of their world, and therefore they can’t see how much it’s been destroyed. They are kept in the dark and continue to live aimlessly and without much direction, and this is made possible by the fast communication technology allows. In addition to this, Beatty tells Montag that the government’s plan is to “‘cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information...they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving’” (Bradbury 58). People are being fed seemingly random bits of information that won’t help them in the real world. They learn nothing from school, and come home and learn nothing as they stare at their parlor screens. TVs are just crammed with show after shows of loud noises, bright lights, and pretty colors. No real questions are thrown at society members. They don’t think; they just follow directions. They don’t learn anything, and spend most of their time enveloped in a world of electronics. There’s nothing to gain from this. Also, because of this, “‘people don’t talk about anything...they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else’” (Bradbury 28). They repeat jokes they hear on TV, or stories they pick up from their seashells. Nothing they say is original, and therefore people rarely hear anything new. The things people hear on their electronics are most likely