While I love 1984, I think Fahrenheit 451 has become more true than Orwell's novel. People have willingly given into an information bonanza that is the internet, with headphones always in (seashells). We don't need the TV walls, as our cellphone has taken that role, altogether with the hyperactive delivery of such content.
A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporations have, although with similar results--while that part wasn't really part of Montag's universe, the part that is is that we have given up to the "firemen" on our own freewill, because it fits our narrative or it's our safe space.
Nonetheless, I am very optimistic. I think for all the faults that the internet and mobiles and social networks and globalization has wrought us, the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago. When ontop of oscillations, they are never obvious from the vantage point of a single wiggle. I still feel that despite many of the shortcomings of the previous few decades and years and months, we can still arrive on net at a better place than we were yesterday.
A collectivist state has not become the dominating power, but wealthy individuals and corporations have, although with similar results--while that part wasn't really part of Montag's universe, the part that is is that we have given up to the "firemen" on our own freewill, because it fits our narrative or it's our safe space.
Nonetheless, I am very optimistic. I think for all the faults that the internet and mobiles and social networks and globalization has wrought us, the world today still is a better world it was say 20 or 30 years ago. When ontop of oscillations, they are never obvious from the vantage point of a single wiggle. I still feel that despite many of the shortcomings of the previous few decades and years and months, we can still arrive on net at a better place than we were yesterday.