
We’re Reading Fahrenheit 451 Wrong (2018) - longdefeat
https://thefrailestthing.com/2018/06/15/were-reading-fahrenheit-451-wrong/
======
pram
I think the anti-intellectual theme of Fahrenheit 451 is pretty clear. The
story spends a lot of time describing the vapid media that everyone consumes.
I don’t see how anyone could interpret it to be solely about censorship if
they actually read the book, to be honest.

In my very humble opinion, I don't think the book has aged well. I believe the
internet really upended the central premise.

The book described society devolving into an illiterate, pleasure-seeking
dystopia. The main feature of the Fahrenheit 451 world is a centralized
monoculture which is established through trashy tv shows, advertising, and
comics.

Social media is extremely shallow, sure, but we also have historically
unprecedented access to almost unlimited information. We now have media that
is so diverse, and of such specificity, that it has essentially eliminated
shared culture and narrative.

It seems the path to the 21st century dystopia is having too much radically
decentralized information, rather than a lack of it. Now the concern isn't
people being deprived of information. To the contrary, the concern now is
people consuming the 'wrong' or 'fake' information. We now have intellectuals
intentionally depriving the world of revolutionary research because of this.

~~~
coldtea
> _In my very humble opinion, I don 't think the book has aged well. I believe
> the internet really upended the central premise. The book described society
> devolving into an illiterate, pleasure-seeking dystopia. The main feature of
> the Fahrenheit 451 world is a centralized monoculture which is established
> through trashy tv shows, advertising, and comics._

Sure sounds like 2019 to me. In fact, far more 2019 than the era when the book
was written.

> _Social media is extremely shallow, sure, but we also have historically
> unprecedented access to almost unlimited information._

And what we've learned is that access to information means nothing without the
ability to process it. And that too much information makes things even worse
drowning everything in a sea of noise.

> _We now have media that is so diverse, and of such specificity, that it has
> essentially eliminated shared culture and narrative._

On the contrary, I find that we have solidified an once diverse culture to a
couple of monocultures.

Case in point the Top 20, which is almost all the same kind of music today.

~~~
pram
Not a new development in the 21st century. The closer you get to the advent of
recorded music and broadcast radio, the more homogenous the music selection
was. Accessibility to alternatives was expensive/impossible. This goes for
every other kind of media.

If you don't like the 'Top 20' then I presume you listen to alternatives. How
did you find them? The internet perhaps?

~~~
coldtea
> _Not a new development in the 21st century_

The global monoculture of BS commercial music is a new development in the 21st
century.

Peoples and cultures used to have a huge variety of music and styles all over
the world, even if "accessibility" to it from the comfort of ones home outside
a specific region wasn't cheap/possible.

> _If you don 't like the 'Top 20' then I presume you listen to alternatives.
> How did you find them? The internet perhaps?_

Doesn't really matter, as culture is not what people consume in private, but
what most consume and influences their public discussion. Some obscure artist
I only share with 10K or 100K people might as well not exist culturally.

~~~
kortilla
It’s not a monoculture if you can listen to something else. Nearly everyone I
know who listens to top hits music also listens to other genres.

Top hits are just designed to be as agreeable to society as possible. That’s
what makes them more popular than anything else.

It’s like claiming salt is causing a food monoculture because so many people
are using it.

~~~
coldtea
> _It’s not a monoculture if you can listen to something else. Nearly everyone
> I know who listens to top hits music also listens to other genres._

A culture is what people (more or less) share. That part is very narrow today,
when it wasn't e.g. in the 60s and 70s.

Niche genres people listen in addition to the top hits but don't share don't
enter the cultural sphere.

> _It’s like claiming salt is causing a food monoculture because so many
> people are using it._

No, it's like claiming that whereas once people used to see a variety of movie
types in the theaters, now every second movie is a superhero one.

That's true for what people see in the main, and it's true as to what the
celebrated, talked about, and influential movies are, even it's easier that
ever for everyone to also download and watch some niche movie from whatever
era (which most don't bother).

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almost_usual
I read Fahrenheit 451 again a month ago and it was much more relatable than
the first time I read it.

The pattern of going from point A to B and being told to do that by someone or
something as quickly as possible is the norm. If you have a demanding job and
a family at the end of most days it’s easy to tune out and only have the
desire to feel comfortable. You’ve been exhausting yourself to be ‘accepted’
by society.

Thinking for yourself and finding moments to do whatever you wanted whenever
you wanted was dangerous in Fahrenheit 451. I think that is becoming very real
nowadays. If you told someone you went for a walk aimlessly in a park and
stared at flowers for 20 minutes with your phone turned off you could be
viewed as a social deviant to some degree. Your wife or girlfriend might be
upset because they couldn’t get ahold of you. A friend or coworker might be
frustrated because they needed to tell you something that “couldn’t wait”.

That’s where the danger lies. Society dictating how you think and how you
should feel all the time. Technology is only a tool that makes it more
efficient.

During the Summer of Love thousands of people just up and left their lives to
spend a summer doing whatever they wanted. The only way they could be reached
was by telephone or letter and that was if they wanted to be contacted. I
honesty don’t think a movement like that or an era like the 60s is possible
anymore. People are too attached to their phones and what society expects out
of them.

~~~
capedape
I knew someone who’s former partner called him a narcissist solely because
he’d randomly walk places or go to different coffee shops depending on if one
was busy, or if one was just near a park where he wanted to exercise etc. She
believed this after watching a YouTube video titled “narcissists live in the
moment.” Strange times for a person to be called that when all they want to do
is have a human moment outside of online connection and algorithms.

Society needs dopamine detox days as much as we need holidays.

~~~
pjc50
> She believed this after watching a YouTube video titled “narcissists live in
> the moment.”

Micro-radicalisation. Not quite the same as flat earth or anti-vax, but still
junk.

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rayiner
The Denham’a Dentriface example is a pretty accurate prognostication about
what would happen to the Internet. On many sites today it is impossible to
think about the content what with the interposed advertising that pops up in
the middle as you’re scrolling, pops out of corners, etc. Informative content
is whittled down and shifted from text to low-density media like video.

The Internet is a shadow of its former self. As a teenager I’d avidly read
tech sites. This sort of in-depth article was common:
[https://www.realworldtech.com/jaguar](https://www.realworldtech.com/jaguar).
Gamers overran most of then. Today, you go to something like Toms Hardware and
it’s advertising encrusted trash. RWT has been reduced to posting a couple of
articles a year. Ars no longer has anyone who knows how a computer or
operating system works, though at least its ads aren’t the worst.

~~~
Waterluvian
It feels like I forgot to renew to the internet so I'm stuck with the demo
version.

As you said, it's just so light on content and heavy on ads in places.

~~~
geitir
I would say this has a lot to do with the increase in accessibility and
subsequent marketization reducing what used to be a fairly niche service
attenuated to like minded scientific or at least exploratorily minded people
to a common denominator that maximizes profits

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christophilus
It’s been a while since I read 451, and I definitely remember it differently
than this portrayal. It sounds to me as if it was more insightful than I gave
it credit for.

I’ve fallen into the pattern mentioned in the article and book: too distracted
to sit down and have a long, quiet read. Part of this is due to having young
kids and little high-quality spare time. But part, too, is due to addiction to
distraction (such as Hacker News)!

~~~
jerf
I can give you one secret, which is that despite what you hear in the press,
the phone can be a double-edged sword, one that can also cut _for_ you,
instead of against you, with just a bit of discipline. Non-zero discipline,
but not impossible amounts of discipline. With a book-reading app, you can get
through anything, even War and Peace, in ten minutes here, ten minutes there,
and maybe 40 minutes in the evening if you can scrape it together.

I'm saying this not because I lack the attention span to read for three hours,
because I still can... the problem is assembling those three hours when you've
got a job and young kids.

I've also been learning a foreign language for about an hour a day over the
past year and a half, and believe me, very few of those hours have been
contiguous. But I can recover five minutes here and five minutes there, and
finish up in the evening, and I'm making real progress. (Unlike reading, where
the attention being cut up will diminish the impact, once you're memorizing
vocab and such, it's actually possible that breaking it up throughout the day
is a _benefit_ rather than the same amount of time in one block. It may help
convince your brain that what you're doing is important and shouldn't be
discarded, because it keeps coming up, rather than being something it can
compartmentalize easily.)

With a bit of creativity you can turn this to your benefit, or at the very
least, _somewhat_ to your benefit rather than merely to your continued
disadvantage.

~~~
quicklyfrozen
I had pretty much stopped reading for enjoyment before smart phones. Have
plowed through a bunch of books now thanks to the Kindle app. It's a
combination of always being with you, remembering where you were across
devices, and being able to adjust the font size to whatever's comfortable at
the time. The kids getting older doesn't hurt either :-).

~~~
nvarsj
I consumed a lot of books with Audible last year when I had a commute. It's
amazing how much time you can fill during those getting from A to B trips.

------
kijin
That's exactly what Ray Bradbury himself said. He was responding to the
invention of television and the addiction to shallow entertainment he believed
it would bring to the society.

We don't always need to interpret literature in accordance with the author's
original intentions, but it helps to acknowledge and remember them.

Having said that, though, I'd like to ask why Bradbury bothered to include a
powerful image of censorship (burning of books) in the story if that was't
what he intended to focus on. It would seem that a population addicted to
shallow entertainment won't even need firemen to burn their books; they'll
just let the dead trees rot in a basement somewhere.

Perhaps censorship was needed because there's always a small number of people
who find books interesting. Who are attracted to deep thinking. Who will
develop and harbor subversive ideologies as a result, and who can incite a
revolution when the conditions are ripe. As long as these people exist, the
powers that be have a reason to fear. As long as some of us are reading books,
there's hope. Or at least that's what I think Bradbury was trying to say,
especially at the end.

~~~
gshubert17
Yes. Bradbury himself here in an article from 2007:

[https://www.laweekly.com/news/ray-bradbury-
fahrenheit-451-mi...](https://www.laweekly.com/news/ray-bradbury-
fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted-2149125)

------
trimbo
The Airpods article is interesting. Airpods seem to be changing the office as
well.

People are doing their entire routine at the office with Airpods: going to the
coffee maker, to the cafeteria, to the bathroom, going to meetings (then
taking them out there, I hope!).

I'm not sure the people who do it want to portray the image of "don't you dare
talk to me", but that's how I interpret it. If no one can talk to anyone
without deliberate interruption, it seems like we'd lose workplace
camaraderie.

~~~
1123581321
I agree. I don’t walk around with mine during standard hours. I usually also
only wear the one that people can’t see when they come into my hours, and I
apologize if someone says something to me while I have them in. I think it’s
very important to appear accessible and to hear and participate in
serendipitous conversation.

------
branweb
Previous discussion of a similar (and IMO better) article on the book:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14992956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14992956)
. The article under discussing there includes lots of quotes from Bradbury
himself.

------
zackmorris
As I've gotten older, I've started noticing that culture goes through endless
time loops like we're riding a toy train. Back in the 90s, we listened to
disco and wore bell bottoms just like our parents did. Today, I see teenagers
wearing overalls and boots and listening to Nirvana (which is quite
heartwarming, honestly - at least there is hope for the future).

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that social media is just another
cultural deviation. As a society, we haven't said yet that it's rude to talk
loudly into your cell phone in public, or stare into it when you're surrounded
by people also staring into it, or wear headphones everywhere like the gym
where you might learn something if you ever talked to anyone.

It's an eerie feeling to see the world a step or two back, to take in the big
picture when everyone else is jacked in. I can't really blame people for
putting on blinders, as bleak as these times are. Sure, we have unlimited
access to news and information. But news is mostly bad, because that's where
the money is. Even the best news like NPR leads to depression, especially when
you realize that the main news networks broadcast spin now instead of
investigative journalism, and they're all anyone watches.

I have no deep epiphany here. But I just want everyone to know that this
profound cultural cynicism we're experiencing right now is quite familiar to
me, because it's what I grew up with in the 80s and 90s while most of the
world was distracted with Monday Night Football. The world's been burning that
entire time, most people actively tune it out, and the people like us who see
through the veil see more than ever.

~~~
yesenadam
>Today, I see teenagers wearing overalls and boots and listening to Nirvana
(which is quite heartwarming, honestly - at least there is hope for the
future).

I'm puzzled what in that is at all heart-warming? Or hope-giving?

edit: They're genuinely curious, non-rhetorical questions!

~~~
astura
The person that you are replying to presumably grew up with overalls and
Nirvana.

~~~
zackmorris
No hah :-) I grew up in the the Donny Darko era of pastels and nanny state
1950's era abstinence of the late 1980s and early 90s which resulted from AIDS
and the war on drugs. Grunge/alternative/Nirvana was the first "real" cultural
experience I had. Saying no to materialism by wearing overalls is the visible
expression of questioning authority and the status quo.

I miss many aspects of the 90s and what they stood for. But I'm inspired by
today's youth and how they will pierce the veil in their own way.

------
anonu
> Bogost examined Airpods’ potential long term social consequences. “Human
> focus, already ambiguously cleft between world and screen,” he suggests,
> “will become split again, even when maintaining eye contact.” A little
> further on, he writes, “Everyone will exist in an ambiguous state between
> public engagement with a room or space and private retreat into devices or
> media.”

I do think the Airpods are pretty revolutionary. For starters - Apple built a
custom chip for them. There are very few companies that have the resources to
do such a thing. As a result, even though they are imperfect, they are still
far and away a pretty revolutionary technology.

It is interesting to look at the social consequences of the Airpods. For
starters, they are expensive, so in some sense they are a status symbol,
especially for the younger generation.

The Atlantic Article the author mentions is interesting though - the thought
that a technology melds so well into our daily lives and workflow that it
creates a further social rift is scary.

------
matchagaucho
Reading this reminds me how my High School Teacher prodded a cold-war,
Orwellian, censorship interpretation out of us in exams.

But Bradbury was definitely on to something deeper.

I'd forgotten all about the Seashells and 4 walled televisor in this classic
novel. Definitely a great metaphor for today's social media.

------
gkfasdfasdf
FYI the audiobook version narrated by Tim Robbins is _fantastic_. It is more
of a performance than a reading.

------
denart2203
I enjoyed reading this post, thank you. The cultivation of attention and thus
self care is a significant theme in the work of Bernard Stiegler, which, if
you haven’t encountered it, may be of interest.

------
mizzao
Our attention is a valuable resource that we too easily give away for free.
Social media (and in the past, television) are the junk food of information.

------
AlleyTrotter
required reading for Professor Brody's class. Stevens Higher Institute of
Technology circa 1966. I still don't understand what it had to do with fixing
radios tvees and computers.

------
Fnoord
(2018) June 15, 2018.

~~~
sctb
Thanks! Updated.

------
tlholaday
Wrongly.

~~~
yesenadam
Actually "wrong" seems OK here, according to the first and only page I
consulted:

"... _wrong_ can also be an adverb. There’s nothing in the least new about
this — the _Oxford English Dictionary_ has examples from the thirteenth
century onwards.

Robert Burchfield noted in his 1996 revision of _Fowler’s Modern English
Usage_ that “The subtleties attending the various uses are considerable”,
pointing out that the OED devotes five times as much space to adverbial
_wrong_ as it does to the notionally correct _wrongly_.

The quick and easy rule is that _wrongly_ appears before the verb being
modified (“the earlier case was wrongly decided”) and _wrong_ after the verb
(“he answered the question wrong”). Like most such rules, it’s not even half
the story. Style guides and grammars for learners try to give more complete
guidance, variously stating that, if the situation is formal, _wrongly_ may be
the better choice in either position; if the adverb comes before the verb,
_wrongly_ is the only possible form; if the verb is a common short one, such
as _do, get, have_ or _go_ , it often forms a set phrase in which _wrong_ is
the idiomatic choice (“don’t get me wrong”, “she did him wrong”, “how did he
go wrong?”); _wrong_ is preferred after the verb when the intended meaning is
“in an unsuitable or undesirable manner or direction” or “incorrect” (as in
spelling something incorrectly); if it means “falsely”, then _wrongly_ is the
correct form (“rightly or wrongly”, “the award was denied him wrongly”, “he
was incapable of acting wrongly”..."

[http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-
wro2.htm](http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-wro2.htm)

So..maybe your objection stems from the over-informal feel of adverb "wrong"
in a headline.

