Impact of Technology Explored in Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury

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Have you ever sat at a table surrounded by friends whose eyes were glued to their phones? According to ABC News, kids spend an average of seven and a half hours on technology and only 38 minutes of reading in a day. In Ray Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451, the society is very similar to ours. Technology has taken over and has made society very closed minded. People are unwilling to remove their eyes from large TV screens to see why things happen, and to notice all the little things in life that make it worth living. Without open-mindedness and curiosity, society would corrupt like in Fahrenheit 451, all because of an overuse of technology. Technology causes society to become a dystopia and once the society is one, there comes a point where you cannot reverse it. Bradbury emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the world and what happens when you become addicted to technology.

When a society forgets to pay attention to the world beyond the parlor TV walls, everything corrupts. People live their lives without thinking twice, like Montag, a fireman who never questioned the way he has been living his life, until he realizes that people in his society are like robots, programmed to use technology. People have been brainwashed by the technology that has taken over their community. Clarisse, Montag’s neighbor, is an outcast in this society filled with “robots” because she has a deeper knowledge of what goes on around her, why things happen and how things work. Clarisse started pointing things out to him; as they walk down a cold deserted road, Clarisse looked up into the night sky and told Montag, “’If you look…there’s a man on the moon.’ He hadn’t looked for a long time” (7). Montag has been sucked into their society’s w...

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...creen. They were filled with a false sense of happiness. Once they became addicted, they never rethought their changed lifestyle. But, Montag was one of the few that did because his mind was opened to nature and he discovered what real happiness was. In modern society, many people believe they are happy with technology until they realize they actually are not. No matter how much or how little technology someone uses, everybody needs to take a moment and realize that the characters on the television are not real, along with the models and advertisements. They are not real because they are manipulated to fit society’s messed up idea of perfection. But, nature and the world around everybody is real and pure and that is why people always need to keep that in mind.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. “Fahrenheit 451.” New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 2013.

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