Technology In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

#1: Although Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, was written more than sixty years ago, it serves as an accurate prediction of how technology interferes with the quality of life for not only fictional characters, but also the humans of 2016.

The obsession with technology in Fahrenheit 451, is drawing people into a daily habit of watching TV, however, because they watch so much television and don’t read, they are mindless, not remembering a thing about what they watched. Intelligent things, like reading books, are of nonexistence and even illegal. Only a small portion of people wish to retrogress to the time of books, but instead people grow up with more uneducated things like watching television and joining in on crime. In Fahrenheit

Alienation occurs in the story, not because of racial differences, but because of the way the human race socializes and the amount of time they spend watching television. The average person would rather be sucked into a virtual world with virtual people, than into our real world with real people. Video games, apps, and texts are sucking up the time humans have in life. The main character, Guy Montag, yearns for connection with his wife, but she doesn’t talk to him because of her electronic obsessions. Later on, Guy meets Clarisse, a young girl who is very talkative and observant. She is considered “different” for wanting to communicate, or enjoy earth's natural surroundings. To be considered, “not different,” you must want to be home, rather than anywhere else. Social to Clarisse means, “...talking to you about things like this, or how the world is…” (Fahrenheit 451 pg. 27)Guy finds a new view on life through the conversation and connection they had together. Looking back on the quote from Mildred in the previous paragraph, and comparing it to the quote from Clarisse, one sees that social is taken two different ways. When the majority of people in Fahrenheit 451 do talk, it always involves the programs seen on TV, or other virtual world events. Conversation never involves you and me, or real world events, as Clarisse prefers. The same applies to our world today. If

Robot dogs, or mechanical hounds, have replaced the police force. The mechanical hound is a government programmed surveillance system that tracks down felons, to keep peace and order in society. People frequently make mistakes, while the hound offers no error. The ravenous mechanical animal, “...can remember and identify ten thousand odor indexes on ten thousand men without resetting.” (Fahrenheit 451 pg.118) Bradbury's hound is agile, quick acting and can think on its own. Our police force, of the present day, is made up of far more people the hound force in Bradbury's story. However, it appears, one hound can accomplish its task before one officer is even deployed. Error, which didn’t make people happy, was the reason of demise of the police force in Fahrenheit 451. To get out of work, the civilians of the story result to the use of mechanical beings to do their jobs, so they can enjoy their “family” back at home. The sad part is, they consider the “family” to be the television, not their husbands, wives, and children. Riots break out in our world today because of mistake after mistake in law enforcement. It seems as if, we could see some major changes in our law enforcement, just like Bradbury’s police force. Robots now preform 10% of manufacturing tasks, and by 2025, study shows, they will take 25% of U.S. jobs. Therefore, we see just how close our world is to the life of