'Our Future Envisioned in Fahrenheit 451'
             Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury, is set in the twenty-fourth century in which the first amendment has lost its value. As a result, people in this society are depressed, ignorant, and uneducated. To the contemporary American losing freedom of speech seems highly unlikely. However, Bradbury provides a convincing account of how books came to be burnt in what was once a free nation. The character Beatty describes how technology displaces thinking, pressure from minorities started censorship, and the educational system failed to produce educated people.
             First of all, technology replaced all thought process in a person's brain. "The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour." (Pg. 56) New inventions were created everyday, all of them making life easier and quicker paced. A man got more done in a day than he would have done in a week a year ago. Because of this, everyone's expectations to get things accomplished rose, but their expectations to think diminished. "Radio. Television. Things began to have mass. And because they had mass, they became simpler." (Pg. 54) The idea of looking at something rather than reading about it appealed to people. So images began replacing pieces of literature. Books were made simpler and shorter, and soon they became dull. With so much technology everything became less complicated. People weren't challenged, and therefore, their minds developed to a smaller extent. Right now, twenty- first century America is not far off from Bradbury's made believe society. The fact that we have gone from large bulky cell phones to simplified mass media is an indication of this.
             Next, the population grew and minorities increased, it was the pressure from these offended minorities that caused censorship to
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