The Hearth and the Salamander

Despite the fact that this book was written nearly fifty years ago it predicts a future ruled by technology. Although the fictional world of the story is much more extreme in depicting the reliance on technology than today it shows the slip inot ignorance. The statement 'Ignorance is Bliss' might be the ruling ideology of the first chapter in Bradbury's fictional world. Ray Bradbury's predictions of the future are eerily similiar to the problems faced in society today: extreme political correctness, sensless violence (possibly caused by the violent media streamed constantly), and overuse of technology. This people once had the ability to choose between right, wrong, educated and ignorant and above all chose ignorance. However, this morality is a characteristic unique to the human speces and as the characters in this book begin to loose their sense of morality and individual thought process through technology they begin to lose the very thing that makes them human. In a world of technology it is in fact the technology that dehumanizes the race of mankind.