Fahrenheit 451 Predictions

Bradbury’s Predictions of the Future “Sometimes writers write about a world that does not yet exist. We do it for a hundred reasons. (Because it’s good to look forward, not back. Because we need to illuminate a path we hope or we fear humanity will take. Because the world of the future seems more enticing or more interesting than the world of today. Because we need to warn you. To encourage. To examine. To imagine.) The reasons for writing about the day after tomorrow, and all the tomorrows that follow it, are as many and as varied as the people writing” (Gaiman). Some writers compose books about future utopias just for their own delight and amusement, but others may incorporate their thoughts onto pages of books as a way to send out a message
The use of technology was not as reliant as it is today, and people back then were unaware of its capabilities. Entertainment consisted of watching programs on a boxed television set with less than five channels to pick from, listening to the radio to tune into local baseball games happening that day, or playing records on a record player to dance to music. Compared to the fifties, the people of the world today are more consumed with entertainment than they are with knowledge, which fulfills a prediction Bradbury made in the novel. In Fahrenheit 451, the use of television walls was to show how it can take control of a person’s well-being. Mildred was so consumed with the entertainment the television walls or the parlor brought to her life that watching the walls became more of a necessity than it a leisure. Children, adolescents, and adults are consumed with watching Netflix or television series that it causes them to put off their educational growth opportunities or work life. Apps on cell phones and computers have taken the place of physical activities meant for enjoyment through interpersonal
Social media allows the user to post or share information freely through the use of the internet, but information being shared every minute of every day is capable of being tracked even if the user does not personally share their location. In Fahrenheit 451, the hound was an accurate representation of a tracking device since it was able to track Montag’s location based on basic information. “The mechanical hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark corner of the firehouse” (24). The hound was always able to sense where Montag was at any given time even if Montag did not know he was being tracked. This being said, the role of the hound in Fahrenheit 451 could have been to represent another aspect Ray Bradbury had predicted of the future: how privacy and security will change. The present technology that is being used in today’s world has the ability of finding locations instantly or can unveil where people are located based on what they recently posted on the internet or social media. Therefore, some internet users are not fully aware nor are they well-educated about the internet’s capability of breaking through their wall of privacy. The Global Positioning System, also known as GPS, is a common aspect in technology in our current technical society, found in almost every