| Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
Sometimes, speculative fiction seems eerily on the mark:
Montag turned and looked at his wife, who sat in the middle of the parlor talking to an announcer, who in turn was talking to her. "Mrs. Montag," he was saying. This, that, and the other. "Mrs. Montag--" Something else and still another. The converter attachment, which had cost them one hundred dollars, automatically supplied her name whenever the announcer addressed his anonymous audience, leaving a blank where the proper syllables could be filled in. A special spot-wavex-scrambler also caused his televised image, in the area immediately about his lips, to mouth the vowels and consonants beautifully. He was a friend, no doubt of it, a good friend. "Mrs. Montag--now look right here."
"Spot-wavex-scrambler" is a great phrase. Someone should make it a product name.
That is a paragraph from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. I was not far into the book before its description of technology used to entertain — distract, occupy, sedate — the population began to seem eerily familiar. It's not what we have now, and there hasn't been anything especially AI-like in the story yet, except perhaps the sinister robot dog at the fire station. But the entertainment tech hits close to the mark. Mildred wears earbuds all the time, listening to her shows or just to white noise.
The timeline isn't perfect, either ("We've started and won two atomic wars since 2022!"), but the timing isn't all that far off. Almost everyone these days is living with a sense of disruption from the events of the last decade or so, including wars, which is in rhythm with the story. The fictional government, I presume, makes people happy by surrounding them, literally, with video and audio entertainment 24/7 — all the better not to think about what's really happening out in the world.
Reading this is eerie for me in another way. I read a lot of Ray Bradbury when I was growing up, and for a long time I thought I had read Fahrenheit 451. But then I wasn't so sure, because I couldn't bring to mind any memory around reading it, let alone any memory of the content. (The latter is common for many books I read in high school.) On my last trip to the library, I checked out a copy in order to fill either the gap in my memory or the gap in my reading.
It's a prescient book. I see why it remains a common text in high school and college lit courses. I look forward to the rest of the story.