Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Pedestrian", shows the not-too-distant future in a very unfavorable light. The thinking world has been devoured by the convenience of high technology. This decay is represented by the fate that befalls Leonard Mead. Although it is only an isolated incident, it foreshadows the end of the thinking, literate society. The world in the year 2053 is populated by people who are more dead than alive. Their technology has made them very lazy. Walking has become obsolete, as the title of the story indicates. Leonard Mead is not a pedestrian; he is the pedestrian, in a city of three million inhabitants (105). Walking had become so rare that the sidewalk "vanished beneath the flowers and grass" (104-105). Bradbury further illustrates the lack of foot traffic by stating that Mead had walked for ten years without encountering other people on the street (105). If the process of evolution were true, the inhabitants of Bradbury's future world would soon be left without legs. Bradbury vividly describes the way these people hold their automobiles with an almost divine reverence, describing them as “beetles” (105). The scarab was revered in ancient Egypt as a sacred symbol of the soul. Complementing people's lazy bodies are their lazy minds. Cutting-edge screens have reduced the population to couch potatoes. The ease with which they live their lives has transformed them from lively, thoughtful people into dull, lifeless zombies. Bradbury describes them in front of televisions as "[sitting] dead, with the gray or multicolored lights touching their faces, but never really touching them" (105). Bradbury's description of the "fainter glimmers of firefly light [appearing] behind... the center of the paper... is more obvious than in the description of the police spotlight, which "held [Mead] fixed, like a specimen museum-like, with a needle stuck in his chest" (105). The achievements of Leonard Mead and his ilk will soon be nothing more than televised museum exhibits. A more subtle allusion to Leonard Mead's fate is the street he lives on, St. James of the South (105). James was one of the twelve apostles, one who became a martyr for his beliefs. The story of Bradbury is a bizarre twist on the Peter Principle man The police car, carrying Leonard Mead, passes his well-lit house. The bright lights represent the illumination of knowledge. Although the house is Mead's, the police car passes it, ending the. last hope of a victory of humans over machines..