Ray Bradbury

When Bradbury first wrote Fahrenheit 451 it only took him 18 days in a library basement with a typewriter to flush out the dystopian future where the majority of society is ignorant to the knowledge within books.
I think that Bradbury's major motivators were the failing education system and when Hitler and the Nazis were burning books in Berlin. Bradbury wrote through his characters. Bradbury's characters wrote themselves, as he put it. Bradbury probably felt that he needed to write a novel where the main character rebels against society and its ignorant ways. Clarisse was the spirit that people needed to have; curious, questioning and positive.
I definitely think that if our society keeps heading the same way it's going, that we could very well end up like the the society in Fahrenheit 451; ignorant and uncaring. I believe that Bradbury wrote this novel as a warning to our society; if we keep heading in the same direction, we will burn to the ground.

The Final Frontier......

Today was the first time I have ever watched Star Trek other than the newest movie. I was really captured by the way the Gene Roddenberry project all kinds of new technologies 45 years ago. Flip communicators are easily seen as cell phones. Phasers*(?) are something that we are decades, perhaps centuries away from, and yet Roddenberry dreamed it and projected it into Star Trek. Another interesting piece of technology was the transporter. When I first saw the transporter in the movie I thought to myself, "Wow, that would be awesome!" To think of something that ingenious back in the 60's is unheard of. "Space: The Final Frontier", on July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Star Trek had already gone interplanetary, to other galaxies, everywhere. Originally airing in 1966, Star Trek must have been influenced by the writings of Robert E. Heinlein when he wrote Starship Trooper a futuristic novel, they were off on different planets in powered armor, jet-packing. Bad ass. I do give Gene Roddenberry credit for giving scientists inventive new ideas. I don't think we would have cell phones if we didn't have Gene Roddenberry.
So, all in all, I think Roddenberry influenced the technology that we have today, and continues to challenge out scientist with his old ideas of space travel and matter transport. Oh, and lasers.