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I read an article earlier this summer (and of course now I can't find it) about how air conditioning is one of the contributing factors to less socialization, as of course it is. There was the lovely passage in the book about how people move out to their porches in the relative cool of the evening where they can interact with their neighbors as well as each other.
It's another interest where Bradbury offers up a contrast; getting along without air conditioning can be seen as a positive good. Yet on the stifling night when Doug would have died had Mr. Jonas not come to him with two bottles of cool air for him to drink we see the edge or limitation to that.
I suppose air conditioners are a type of Happiness Machine, as they fake a more salubrious climate but at a cost.
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