The Beginning of the End of Civilisation

Ray Bradbury (as reported by Kingsley Amis):

In writing the short novel “Fahrenheit 451,” I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.

Kingsley Amis, New Maps of Hell (London: New English Library, 1969; 1960), p. 96.