While many science fiction writers are techno-optimists who assume the advance of technology will improve human wisdom, Bradbury is a pessimist who sees the technology of mass media and electronic entertainment as leading to stultification of the human spirit and a tyranny of the lowest common denominator of thought. He sees the very difficulty of books as their virtue and the ease of consumption of television as leading to a dumbing down of the populace.
In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury argues that mass media becomes a narcotic (similar to Marx's notion of religion as the "opiate of the masses") and that the way it contributes to its mental pacification of the populace is by avoiding anything that might give offense to anyone and thus anything that might awake people from their mental torpor.
On these grounds, Bradbury is especially opposed to all forms of censorship. Although when he wrote this book, the dominant anti-censorship battles had to do with issues of sexuality and religion, he would have found equally abhorrent recent efforts to stymie free speech under such guises as "trigger warnings" or "hate speech". He would not feel that college students should be protected from things they found offensive. Instead, he would argue that being offended is a form of active engagement and that the job of the writer is to make readers think and react—even if some readers are offended in the process.
He feels that to save society one must sustain the possibility of dissenting voices saying things that make us feel uncomfortable and that challenge accepted beliefs and certainties.
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