Tuesday, June 14, 2016

How is our world of 2017 similar to the world of Leonard Mead in 2053?

Consider the world of Leonard Mead—people stay inside, they watch TV, they have very little social interaction, and everything is automated. But for Leonard, the world is different—he walks outside, his house is not lit by TV screens, and he sees his neighbors as different in their "scarab-beetle" cars. He notes that "The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time." For Leonard, the outside world, the world away from television and automation, is the real world, a world he revels in and loves.When Bradbury was writing this story, television was a relatively new medium. Families would gather around the television at dinner time, eating their "TV dinners" and being transfixed by I Love Lucy, This Is Your Life, and Leave It to Beaver, all shows we in the future see as representative of 1950s culture. Bradbury saw this encroachment of technology upon the family unit as something to be wary of, an issue he brings up in his novel Fahrenheit 451 as well (Mildred with the wall TV screens, for example).
Now consider our automated world today—people have very little interaction with their neighbors, and we consider "social media" to be our social interaction. You may see a few folks outside walking or running, but you do not see very many kids outside playing. Instead, they are inside, playing video games or being "social" on "social media." We consider someone popular or important based on the number of Facebook "friends," Twitter "followers," and Instagram/Snapchat "followers" they may have. Our in-person circle of friends is shrinking while our "social media" circle of "friends" is ever expanding.Another way the world of "The Pedestrian" and today's society are similar is the idea of constant surveillance. We live in a world where we are watched via security cameras, we post constant updates on social media, our cell phones are tracked from tower to tower, and reality TV is king. The police in "The Pedestrian" have become fully automated, with only one police car for the entire city, and no police officers—the car is literally the police department. While we have not completely traveled down this road, Bradbury is also warning us about our acceptance of constant surveillance and our allowing a loss of the expectation of privacy.We are becoming a truly digital society, and Bradbury is warning us about this through Leonard's experiences in "The Pedestrian."

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