Technology In The Veldt, By Ray Bradbury

As technology is advancing, it is ruining our reputations and everyday lives because we use it too much. “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury is a story of parents who use too much technology to spoil their two kids which rely on technology and use it to kill their own parents. The Atlantic is an article on how technology has changed the concept of the community and how it affects people’s daily lives in mostly negative ways. In both sources, humans rely on technology too much, having a negative effect.

Technology is both a blessing and a curse. It can make the lives of people better or it can completely make everything inconvenient. Technology has gone from something that was once complex to something used on the daily. It, in fact, may be destroying and taking over society. This idea is proposed in both “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benet and “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury, however, presents the most disturbing and cruel views on technology and society.

In today's culture people use technology to their advantage all the time. They use it to hack, to learn the latest gossip, or to see breaking news around the world. But, sometimes they get obsessed and instead of a handy tool, it becomes a necessity and a lifestyle. In the story, The Veldt, Ray Bradbury uses imagery, symbolism, and internal conflict to express that misuse of technology can lead to unforeseen disadvantages.

As technology continues to develop throughout time, humanity relies more and more on it. Technology surrounds everyone today from the cars people drive, and the phones people are constantly on. Technology is consuming our lives, and Ray Bradbury worries about our future. He portrays this message in his short story “The Veldt.” In this short story, Bradbury creates a family who live in a house with advanced technology. The purpose of the house is to make the families’ lives easier, but the parents soon realize the damage they have done by letting their kids rely on technology as another parent. Ray Bradbury uses personification and foreshadowing in “The Veldt” to show the separation of parents and children because of neglect occurring from the dependence on technology.

Michael J. Fox once said, “Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” (Michael J Fox) However, in Fahrenheit 451 and “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury this idea is aggressively rejected. The characters in Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, live in a society where technology negatively impacts their family and relationships with each other. Similarly, the characters in Bradbury’s short story, “The Veldt” are captivated by technology which has a huge toll on their family and relationships. Fahrenheit 451 and “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury discusses the negative impact technology has on family and relationships through the use of symbolism, imagery and character development in both stories.

“All kinds of creative possibilities are made possible by science and technology which now constitute the slave of man, if man is not enslaved by it” as quoted by Jonas Salk during a speech about the technological advances in modern medicine in the 1950s. In the short stories by Ray Bradbury, he illustrates how the characters are struggling to live with the futuristic capabilities of technology. “The Pedestrian” focuses on a man named Leonard Mead who is the only person in society who does not use the technology in his home, his hobby is to walk. However, he is viewed as an outcast. “The Veldt” focuses on how George and Lydia Hadley figure out how their children’s nursery is powered by their mind and how they use it to have a tragic advantage over their parents in the end. While technology can let people connect to others much more efficiently, Ray Bradbury shows how the characters in his short stories “The Pedestrian” and “The Veldt” prove how technology is capable of isolating people from reality.

Technology is great to an extent, the limit ending at when it takes over someone’s life, or even their kids. Now when technology is mentioned, it’s not a new Keurig that kids just won’t stop using, I mean an entire nursery built to recreate a scenario in your child’s head instead of them using their imagination, or an entire house that does all your housework for you, where you and your family rely on it more than you. In “The Veldt,” Ray Bradbury show shows the importance of self-care.

In the short story "The Veldt" by Ray Bradbury, the theme of people needing to not let technology run their lives is present. "The Veldt" is about a family living in a machine operated home that does everything for the family. Bradbury points out that

It is unbelievable how fast technology can change the way society lives today, compared to how we lived in the past and what the future has in store for us. Technology can be beneficial in the health care system by helping us create medicine and find new cures for disease we have been battling for years. However, when technology is not used to benefit us it is quiet disturbing. Technology can help improve one’s way of life, but it should not be your way of life nor control your life. In The Veldt by Ray Bradbury technology ruins family life by starting to eradicate verbal communication, family bonding, and parental responsibility.

In this fast-paced society where our lives are surrounded by technology and is apart of our everyday lives, it of utmost importance that we consider and are able to understand the role of technology, not only in our lives but also in society. In his 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury demonstrates the damaging role that technology has on society. Throughout his novel, he constantly reinforces the negative impacts that technology has on us, namely how it replaces meaningful relationships, keeps us oblivious and controls us. As stated, Ray Bradbury uses his novel Fahrenheit 451 as a canvas to show and argue that role that technology has on society is to control and influence the lives and minds of citizens.

In the past, families lived a technology- free life: waking up by the sounds of birds, communicating face-to-face, and walking in order to travel. Today, it is almost impossible to find means of entertainment not involving a colored screen. This demonstrates how modern technology has corrupted society. Despite the advantages of technology, it has contributed to an inactive population that is unable to think for themselves. Ray Bradbury was born on August 20, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois. Bradbury won the Pulitzer prize in 2004 for his literary work, like “The Veldt.” The overall theme of Bradbury’s short stories and novels is that the world is undergoing a "too rapid and pervasive technological change"(Bradbury). “The Veldt” discusses

Both authors use their thoughts about how is technology can make you completely oblivious to the mother nature in both of their literature. ”The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury’s and a short poem “Touchscreen” by Marshall Davis Jones. In “The Veldt”, the technology is taking over the children's mind just like a drug takes over your brain, children are mentioning technology as their parents. In the “Touchscreen”, the talker expresses his feelings about the how technology is becoming a needs in our life, like air, we need it to survive. In both “ the veldt” and “touchscreen”, we learn that relying too heavily on the technology can result in changes in the individuals and society as a whole.

In “The Veldt,” Bradbury is stating that society’s biggest problem is our addiction to technology. The 21st century provides several viable examples of technology reliance; the constant use of cellular phones is a shared trait of millennials. While in public, it is almost inevitable to not catch sight of someone on their phone. In “The Veldt” the children and the parents are addicted to technology; however, it is not cellular phones that they are dependent, but on a house. A quote that undoubtedly shows that they are addicted to their abode is when the father states, "Matter of fact, we're thinking of turning the whole house off for about a month. Live sort of a carefree one-for-all existence.” The child horrified by his father’s statement

One of the problems in The Veldt by, Ray Bradbury was that, the kids, Wendy and Peter, got too attached to their technology. As seen on the graph below, made by statistics, by a well known car company, American Automobile Association shows that, since using a cell phone is 12% of the cause of getting in an accident and listening to music is an other 6% together that makes using technology the biggest cause of accidents. This shows that technology can have bad consequences, such as getting in a car crash. In The Veldt technology also had a bad consequence just instead of phones and car crashes, it was advanced AI rooms and death. This ended up in bad consequences in both situations.

Before today’s modern technology ever existed, Charles Percy Snow, a famous chemist and novelist, once said, “Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you gifts with one hand, and stabs you in the back with the other.” (1). In Fahrenheit 451, the author, Ray Bradbury, shows this happening to Mildred who gets her entertainment from technology, but it leaves her incoherent with life. As a society, our use of technology grew to an extent where we now stand as victims of Bradbury’s prediction. Technology provides a sense of relief from daily tasks, so everybody uses it for their own advantages. As a result, the usage of technology today cultivated into a more prevalent asset in everyday lives where we accept our classification as blunt, ignorant, and idled. Bradbury’s prediction of a lazy society now stands as modern day’s reality.