Technology In Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury

Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories - Fahrenheit 451. The 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451 (F451) by Ray Bradbury is a timeless classic that had lived through generations. F451 is set in a future America in a society where books are illegal and firemen burn them. The protagonist, a fireman named Guy Montag, begins to doubt his actions and turns against his mentor, Captain Beatty. Bradbury’s book is a must-read for a teenage audience as it relates to the world we live in today.

One of the main themes in F451 is technology. Throughout the book, Bradbury wanted to show his audience that television was/is not a replacement for literature and reading. Apart from the four wall televisions in the parlour which Bradbury predicted and the in-ear headphones like Apple's air pods that Montag called ‘thimbles’; which helped Mildred (Montag’s wife) fall asleep (which are used by teenagers in the same way). In F451, books were keepers of knowledge and ideas. Bradbury feared

Teenagers live in a new world of data and pixels so seeing someone my age reading a physical book which they turn the pages with their hands and not a swipe is a rare sight. Therefore, our world is slowly turning to the world Montag lives in. To quote from the book, “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the Twentieth Century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume.” This shows the audience that there will be no time for reading and books are slowing