A Mirror to the Future

Nineth Annuall Hemingway Contest (Galella)

Ray Bradbury is one of those rare individuals whose writing has a revolutionary effect on his readers' minds. Once read, his words are never forgotten. Even though it was not my first time to read a fiction book; the experience I felt when reading Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was unique and surprisingly exciting. The book tells a story about an imaginary period in the future where books are banned and firemen are hired to burn them. The main theme of the book was about the possible effects of the banning/censorship of literary items on people and how it would contribute to a corrupt society. However, now that I am writing in 2016, I think that the most astonishing thing in Fahrenheit 451 was Bradbury's accurate predictions of our own present in the age of technology.

In terms of technology, Sam Weller notes that Bradbury "predicted everything from flat-panel televisions to iPod earbuds and twenty-four-hour banking machines." (Gutenberg) This appeared in his vivid illustration of the small radio tele-communicators, called seashells, which allowed for people to listen to shows, music and podcasts, in his description of a 4-wall large TV "Parlor" where people spend their lives just watching interactive shows and through many other descriptions and examples. The most significant invention Bradbury predicted, however, was the artificially-intelligent robot that can take over other living-organisms' traits. The Mechanical Hound was a revolutionary device predicted by Bradbury who could sense and make decisions accordingly without the need for any human intervention. Interestingly enough, we can relate The Mechanical Hound to The Automaton we came across earlier in this course in Hugo. The automaton resembled the fear of surrounding one-self with technology and machines in every aspect of life, which appeared in Hugo's dream of turning to the automaton himself; while the hound represented the fear of the fault of technology along with the paranoia Montag experienced for hiding books in his ventilator and fearing he would get caught. That fear of the fault in technology is a feeling we get every day in 2016 due to the fact that some inventions actually proved to be of more harm to consumers than they do any good. From that, we can see another prediction in Fahrenheit 451, the effect of the evolution of information-sharing media.  For example, when Mildred's friends were at their house, they were talking about a "five-minute romance", which reflects on how the most deeply emotionally-engaging genre has become as condensed as 5 minutes in the new medium of television. In our age, it is even worse; you can see online videos talking about "a compilation of..." anything without any depth, analysis or engagement; they just state what there is as it is and create a catchy title to attract viewers. Faber, one of the main characters in the book, also talks about how the value in books is in the information itself rather than the covers and highlights that the problem is that it is not transferred through the new medium of television. Right now, the same problem actually arises with the medium of the internet in how it does not reliably communicate the valuable data as we concluded in our final essays. 

In the age where all these inventions are available, people were having a lot of corruptions in their behaviors in the settings of Fahrenheit 451 similar to what we experience nowadays. People were more of technically living, but not actually living their lives to the fullest; they were missing on a lot of things any civilized society may have. The introduction of the parlor walls (TV) has provided them with the virtual reality they may live in. They allowed that new medium to shape their lives and isolate them from the real purposes of life. In Fahrenheit 451, people used these technologies to hide behind from their fears and confrontations; we saw Faber's cowardice to confronting the world with his views and how he hid his talks with Montag inside his modded seashell. We live in the same reality right now with slight differences; we restricted our main daily activities to our phones, TVs, laptops and gaming consoles, we began to lose the real touch of arguing, talking and presenting views with each other, we use our gadgets as a shelter from confronting real people and opposite views. We are in-deliberately becoming more passive to our decisions in life and are basing our futures on how things look and how popular they are. Interestingly enough, this was also another prediction Bradbury made in his novel; we saw how Mildred's friends were talking about how they would never vote to a certain presidential candidate, because the other one looked better... without regard to any offered policies, plans or views. Rings a bell? 

Speaking about policies, it was easy to point out some policies adopted by governments in Fahrenheit 451 that perfectly suit our governments' actions nowadays. Firstly, we saw how Montag mentioned that nobody wants to talk about war, because they are not directly affected by it and they don't care. In analogy with that, we can see developed countries ignoring crises happening in the third world, because it doesn't affect them and even if they interfered, it would be for their own selfish sake; they would exploit the situation to extract the resources from that country. Another thing that appears to be dominant in today's world is how the advertisements in Fahrenheit 451 were too frequent and intrusive to the extent that it kept people away from thinking; Denham's Dentifrice ad made it very hard for Montag to read more than one sentence from the bible while he was on the train. This is analogous to modern-day media platforms that are mainly manipulated by governments to present misleading information/ invaluable content to brainwash and distract the public from the real problems. Last but not least, we were able to see the brutality and the lack of values, morals and empathy towards innocent citizens residing in the city during the war. Such brutality can only come from ruthless sadistic people who can murder kids, women and elderly just for the personal benefits gained in return. Whenever I remember this, I can only see Dr. Iman's face when she teared in class about the Aleppo attacks; we have come too far in this that our lust for power dominates over our sense of value to other people's lives. Bradbury once described himself as "a preventor of futures, not a predictor of them." (Gutenberg) Yet still, we see these brutal actions every day in every region in the world; it was predicted before, we were warned against that... But do we even read?! 

Such state in our world has made the unique contrast between Mildred and Clarisse a reality; you can easily see depressed people who intentionally keep themselves in the dark about things while you may come across others who are cheerful, civilized and well informed. You can also reflect to the distinction between Faber's and Beatty's personality; two people who know equally enough knowledge and value, but one of them appreciates it and the other one despises it. This has been a consequence to the fact that we no longer know enough true knowledge, media is being manipulated for personal benefits and our lifestyles have become sedated and dull-routinized by some preset systems.

In the book, we see many occurrences where books are referred to as mirrors to one-self's past, memories or views, but the only way I can look at them right now is how they may be a mirror to the future of mankind. After all, books contain our minds and our minds are the main shapers of the future. "The magic is in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the Universe together into one garment for us.”

Works Cited

"Fahrenheit 451." Project Gutenberg Self-Publishing. World Heritage Encyclopedia, Web, http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Fahrenheit_451. Accessed 12 Dec. 2016.

Galella, Ron. “Author Ray Bradbury attends Nineth Annual Hemingway Contest on March 10, 1986 at Harry's Bar and Grill in Century City, California.” Getty Images. 1 Jan. 2010, http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/author-ray-bradbury-attends-nineth-annual-hemingway-contest-news-photo/103543840#author-ray-bradbury-attends-nineth-annual-hemingway-contest-on-march-picture-id103543840. Accessed 12 Dec. 2016. Image.

The final before the actual final

The homonym of “shooting”

It all started about 3 weeks ago; our project in the freshmen seminar course. My course topic was about “Vision Machines”, where we look deep into the origins of inventions, their implementations and their potentials. We were all engaged in critically analyzing our topic; we looked at the inventions timeline, the true purposes of inventions and their impacts on our lives. We applied that on our study of different inventions, namely the incandescent light-bulb and the camera. Accordingly, our midterm project was about one of the most important inventions ever made: the camera. Applying the same principal of analysis, and with a more engaging and hands-on experience, we started by understanding the camera mechanism by making one of our own; we assembled the cameras from scratch in groups, gathering materials and combining them into a single simple, yet precise, construct. It was a tough objective, because we experienced a lot of limitations from lack of materials to the great difficulty in light-proofing the whole thing. However, after almost 3 long days of taking photographs and completely failing in developing them, we finally succeeded in making our first successful prints. However, not all photographs could be taken by the class model. Actually, only a couple could.

In the process, we looked into various readings, from popular and scholarly articles, and watched the movie Hugo along with some other short videos, initiating discussions and analysis. We found out that inventions hold more than what everyone would think they do. For example, our main theme, the camera, may be looked at from many different aspects. This is because photography is more than just taking photos; it may be considered as a form of art, in how it captures the beauty of nature and frames gorgeous scenes, or as a form of magic, in how it can produce stunning displays and unbelievable moving pictures, and even as a form of power, in how it can be held as evidence for certain causes and in how it makes the photographer in a vantage point with respect to the one being viewed and so much more. And so we divided these themes on pairs. Each pair was to research their theme thoroughly and analytically to be able to bring up even more ideas and critical open-ended questions. I partnered with Yousef Mohab in a relatively wide theme with many branches to research in: The Power of The Image. Personally, I see that the camera particularly resembles power the most in how it aids the government in control and maintaining power over the public.

Through ages, photography has contributed to the fulfilment of the authorities’ forever lust in maintaining control. One of the very first examples of that was when the Paris police “appropriated photography as an instrument of class war when they documented the faces of the survivors of the commune of 1871” (Sekula 94-95). However, that was a very primitive example, being “the first instance of the photo ID”, compared to the paramount power the image provides for authorities nowadays. As claimed by Neil M. Richards in his article The Dangers of Surveillance, the introduction of new technologies, “from surveillance cameras and web bugs to thermal scanners and GPS transponders”, have made our lives more accessible and trackable. (Richards 1936) In fact, it was recently revealed that the NSA was running a project called “OPTIC NERVE” that collected photos and information from the Yahoo network users’ webcams. Almost 1.8 million users were targeted by the UK agency in six-months only. (Ackerman and Ball) With all of that at hand, the government could see everything that you do anytime, and would almost certainly know if you do anything that may shake their grip. This is very crucial for the authorities, because if they can’t see what you are doing, they won’t be able to take steps towards manipulating your ideas and insights about your rights and your country.

 However, it doesn’t just stop at surveillance; the governments are depriving the other side –general public- from exploiting this power. In other words, they are using their power of control to choke the expressive power of the image the public may have to reveal problems, create propagandas or uprisings; they are trying to be the only heard voice. In North Korea, their internet is limited to only 28 websites, most of which are government-controlled websites that only focus on their leader, Kim Jong-un. (Griffin) This way, governments could manipulate the public opinion, by displaying only the facts that would keep the citizens sedated. In fact, any attempt at breaking that, revealing a problem in the order of the country or covering a movement against the government, is very discouraged, illegal in some cases; The LSC photographer, Alshebl, was recently arrested while covering an anti-government protest at Tripoli Martyrs' Square. (CPJ) The photo in Figure 3 shows the complete rebellious feelings and the diversity of the protestors, which is a great power these protestors possessed; a threat to the government that had to be covered up. The photo did have power, like a weapon armed against the government, and the government just fired back.

Speaking about weapons, photography and surveillance were taken so far to be included even in wars and political issues; Intelligence personnel from US JSOC’s Task Force 48-4 have used surveillance technologies, with the aid of pictures and satellites, to track and locate targets in Yemen for drone-strikes. (Currier) The picture in Figure 4 shows proof of the sequence of operations of drone strikes on Yemen, it demonstrates another form of power here: the power of proof. Now, this is scary, but what’s even more frightening is the fact that researchers have now invented a “Microcamera” –Figure 5- that is no larger than the size of a grain of salt (Pachal), just imagine its applications in spying and international wars. Imagine the potential power in the hands of those who can see you, without you noticing them. In that sense, we can see that the camera has developed from being just a point-and-shoot device to take photographs to be a tool to point-and-shoot with fire and take lives…

The myth of having security and privacy is now invalid, everything is accessible and trackable by those in power. Photography indeed is a weapon, a strong form of power, primarily one of the greatest inventions ever. However, just like most inventions, we abused it- or the authorities abused it- for selfish greedy benefits. Photography has shaped a lot of aspects in our lives, but we should be aware and avoid it being a source of control on us. The government gained their power from being able to control the media (Sekula 95), and with the modern social media platforms and freedom of speech rights, we could be able to control the media too. We would be able to regain that power.

Works cited

Ackerman, Spencer and James Ball. (2014, Feb 28). Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo

Anonymous. (2016, Aug). Photographer arrested while covering a protest in Libya. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Retrieved from https://cpj.org/2016/08/photographer-arrested-while-covering-a-protest-in-.php

Awaga, Yasmin. “Ghost”. Core Project Album. Photo.

Cardy, Matt. “Met Police Launch New Special Operations Room”. Getty Images News, editorial no. 73934515. Photo.

Currier, Cora. (2015, Oct 15). The Drone Papers: The Kill Chain. The Intercept. Retrieved from https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-kill-chain/

Griffin, Andrew. (2016, Sep 21). North Korea accidentally makes government websites available to the world. The Independent UK. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korea-accidentally-makes-government-websites-available-to-the-world-a7320211.html.

Pachal, Peter. (2011, Mar 10). Researchers Create World's Smallest Camera, No Bigger Than a Grain of Salt. PCMag. Retrieved from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381752,00.asp.

Richards, Neil M. “The Dangers of Surveillance”. Harvard Law Review, vol. 126, no. 8, 2013, pp. 1934-1965.

Sekula, Allan. “On the Invention of Photographic Meaning”. Thinking Photography, edited by Victor Burgin, Macmillan Education UK, 1982, pp. 84-109.

Zeitouni, Ismail. “Protest in Tripoli Against French Military Intervention in Libya”. Reuters, 22 Jul 2016. Photo.

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