Ray Bradbury's Impact On Society

Not only is the technology today relevant but it also has its effects on society. It strains human relationships just like in Montag’s case portraying that there is “a wall between Montag and his wife” and that he blames the “parlor wall” for doing so (De Koster 36). Society begins to transform into a dystopia, a dehumanizing environment, with all the inventions distracting humans from what really is important in life such as the relationships one has with people seeing that “electronic mass culture is destroying the life of the mind, and altering life itself, causing us to confuse electronic reality (or virtual reality to us) and reality reality (Smolla 899).” Furthermore, books are greatly impacted by the advancements in technology

This much is obvious. What is not so obvious is the impact of this rapidly expanding, worldwide electronic network on the maintenance of a healthy life of the mind and the discovery of paths to a meaningful life (Smolla 907).”

Lastly, Ray Bradbury exhibits how privacy is a major issue being taken away from citizens with:

“What Bradbury imagined in 1953 we experience as reality today. With the cell phones, GPS systems, Blackberries, recordings of credit card and bank card transactions, security swipe cards, surveillance cameras, tracing of email and internet messages, recording of telephone calls, and the myriad other ways in which our every transaction, movement, and hiccup are watched and catalogued and stored by someone somewhere, to recapture any genuine zone of privacy one must almost pull a Montag, strip to the bone, and float down the river into the wilderness (Smolla 910).”

In summary, Bradbury presumes that the only way for humans to progress is not through technology, but knowledge from others- “Mankind is its own salvation to inform his final phase of development as a writer of science fiction (Eller

The novel, many instances, exhibits censorship with the banning of books, the beating of the “bright kids” because they are out of the norm, and the use of the mechanical dogs as weapons to control justice in society (----- 55).”Also, “No one house stands out (De Koster 89),” shows the government’s censorship on an individuals’ imagination and creativity to stand out from the rest of society in Fahrenheit 451. Coincidently, free speech was being threatened at the same time Fahrenheit 451 was being published (Mass 6). Another instance of censorship was of Bradbury mentioning that porches were stopped being made and viewed as useless because they did not want people to do nothing, rocking on the chairs, and talking which was an action against society. The main reason the government in Fahrenheit 451 did not allow the construction of porches was in order to prevent an individual from thinking and gaining a stream of consciousness (----- 60). Censorship was so significant in the novel that it led the governing officials to use their mechanical hounds to go and capture Montag, an advocate of free speech/thinking, which was a threat to society (----- 126). The whole censorship situation even went as far as viewing the word ‘intellectual” as a swear word in the community (----- 55). Lastly, in addition to the