Post

Suzi Island wrote:

The TV family as described by Bradbury. The banning of books in the novel was accepted by society since they were replaced by mindless entertainment

There was a short story where an older teenager would go for a walk every evening when everyone else in the neighborhood was mesmerized by the vid screen. A robot patrol car happened by and queried the walker. Its programming registered the walker as a sociopath (obviously because he would rather walk than mindlessly sit in the house with his family). He was ordered into the patrol car and driven to an automated police station for processing.

Because his family didn't want to be disturbed by one of the best parts of the vidscreen program the picked up the receiver without answering and left it off the hook (iirc). The automated police station processed him as indigent and a sociopath. He was ushered off to holding. Since he had used his one phone call, he needed to wait for his family to call the police that he was missing. But they never did.