AirPods and Fahrenheit 451
What the1953 classic predicted...and what it means for you.
In 1953, the American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury, published the novel he would be most remembered for: Fahrenheit 451. This novel would go down in history as one of the most popular books against the government censorship of literature ever written. In addition to this, it would deal with topics such as the evils of blind conformity and social alienation. This work is often taught in high school literature classes merely as a story that outlines why censorship is wrong. This in and of itself is ironic because, as a quick Wikipedia search will reveal, an expurgated version (aka a censored version) of the book was marketed and sold specifically for high-school use by its publisher from 1967 through 1980.
But this science fiction classic has value far beyond its traditional face-value reading. There is something in the book that Bradbury got right that still speaks to the hearts of readers today. What Bradbury got right in Fahrenheit 451 has to do with what humanity gets wrong. Specifically, what humanity gets wrong about our relationships with each other and with technology. In the following, I discuss one example of Bradbury’s expression of this as well as what this could mean for readers today.
Throughout Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury paints a picture of a world where technology and convenience have separated humans from each other. One of the first and most profound examples of this occurs near the beginning of the book when Bradbury’s protagonist, Guy Montag, enters his bedroom where his wife is sleeping. The passage is as follows:
“Without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look. His wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time” (Bradbury, 10).
This passage introduces the reader to a technology unique (at the time) to the world of Fahrenheit 451, the Seashells. Bradbury describes them as small radios that are shoved into the ears so that no other sound can get in, and that bathe the ears with constant noise. This noise is described as something that appears to provide rest, but eventually only makes the listener more tired. The usage of the terms “unsleeping mind” and the idea of “floating her, wide-eyed, toward morning” don’t exactly indicate true rest. Bradbury here shows us that this technology changes the person who uses it, and changes them for the worse.
Additionally, it is during this scene of the book that the reader begins to see how distant Montag is from his wife. I find it fascinating that Bradbury chose the use of the Seashells to help the reader to see this distance. This takes on another level of significance when one considers that we now have, seventy years later, a comparable technology in the form of the Apple AirPods. In Bradbury’s text, the Seashells (which he interestingly capitalized, suggesting they were name-brand radios…) are in-ear speakers that are portable and able to play a variety of media, including white noise, music, and speech. If this does not describe the Apple AirPods, I don’t know what does.
In closing, there are two responses that I would like to leave the reader with today. The first is one of amazement that a science fiction writer from the 1950s had the foresight to create a technology that he could only dream about, but that actually came to exist seventy years later. This is truly amazing. The second is one of self-reflection. If Bradbury had the foresight to predict Apple AirPods, did he also have the wisdom to predict their effect on humanity? My answer is “yes,” but you have to come to your own conclusion. So please consider, does your use of AirPods, or a similar technology, bring you closer to people and allow you to rest? Or does it leave you feeling restless and alienated? If the latter is true, it may be time to begin your own journey of disillusionment, and read Fahrenheit 451.
Citation: Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. 1953. Simon & Schuster, 2013.