In Fahrenheit 451 Bradbury's chief fireman tells our hero, Montag that the reason that the books have been outlawed and are burnt on site is that through technology the act of reading became obsolete, so to speak, and then so did the need to learn reading and thinking skills. Therefore the the well read and educated man became the minority and the unfamiliar to the majority, and the unfamiliar is dreaded. So reading and thinking became dangerous, “a loaded gun and the book was the ammunition”, therefore, burn the books and empty the gun. So the technology essentially took over the minds of the people and made them slaves of their own doing. Many people believe that technology is ruining the kids of today for several reasons. Spending too much time in front of the television watching or playing video games, surfing the net in front of a computer screen, or texting and playing on the cell phones.
The special effects of today's television and movies have gotten so advanced that they paint the picture for you and leave nothing up to the imagination. A picture is worth a thousand words, but what is the imagination worth. Many people would say that painting a picture in the imagination is worth much more. Watching television is meant to be an escape from reality, although with the ever growing popularity of reality TV I'd say an escape from one's own reality. But what if the fantasy of television takes over reality. Bradbury refers to the characters on the three wall sized television screens that Montag's wife watches as “the family”. I would be extremely concerned if the characters on a television show were more family that my own family.
Another way that people could argue against technology would be the texting and e-mailing shorthand and abbreviations. Are people taking the importance of good spelling and grammar seriously? Many would say that yes, spelling counts, and the use of the shorthand and abbreviations is affecting people and their ability to use spelling and grammar correctly. And being that almost all writing is done electronically anymore handwriting is also being affected. Will cursive writing be a thing of the past?
There is, however, an argument that technology is doing some good things for our literacy. The amount of readily available information at the stroke of a few keys makes it easier than ever to look up and validate just about any piece of information that one could think of. Entire libraries of books can be downloaded electronically to these new text readers that are becoming available. They are pretty expensive right now but I believe that text readers, like everything else that was the latest and greatest, will be quite affordable fairly soon. We are referring to these times as the information age, in fact almost everything these days is communicated in some form of text, "with so much written chatter, being able to read and write have become definite social advantages. There is simply much more pressure to know how to read than in the past when it comes to conversation, shopping, or work." Technology Review .
The statistics of people that read books these days are quite staggering. However I do not think that Bradbury was right about technology destroying the ability for people to read and think critically. I think that as long as people hold on to the importance of reading to their kids and reenforcing the ability of their kids reading and thinking skills, then it will remain intact. I do not believe that the people of this world, certainly not America will tolerate the burning of books so easily, the last time someone tried he had the world to deal with.
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