An online post on Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 is, in my opinion, steeped in irony. My digital shackles do however tighten themselves ever onward, squeezing even this dystopian novel that warns of an apocalyptic media-drenched future onto your small, consumable screen (you’re welcome).

The specific meaning behind Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel has shifted in emphasis over the decades, providing for a contextual adaptability that makes the narrative as timely as ever. 

Casting a bleak caricatured cloud over our contemporary relationship with computers, the protagonist fights for the survival of a few remaining books left in a society whose concentration and imagination have been completely corrupted by the flashing colours on their screens. 

Disturbed by the ever-expanding metropolis of post-war LA, Ray Bradbury created a world that reflected his fears of the consumeristic future in which we were headed. He took market forces as the basis of our demise, where the collective, manipulatable masses were not beaten down by regime, but instead watched it live-streamed. Together, they become the distracted players in a system designed to make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class consume more.  

While the story warns against the exact thing a platform such as Instagram has become, it provides hope in the rediscovery of books. As the world of literature shrinks to ever smaller pools, and bookshops close at unprecedented rates, the future of slow things and gentle thinking seems fraught. 

My digital log of Fahrenheit 451 does not deny this hefty technological weight, but instead shares its message regardless, hopeful that tiny ideas still matter in the rolling Wi-Fi cosmos.

See Moss_Lit #1 here.