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Ray Bradbury Loves Libraries, Hates the Internet
Hugh Pickens was one of several readers to let us know that, according to a NY Times story, the 89-year-old Ray Bradbury hates the Internet. But he loves libraries, and is helping raise $280,000 to keep libraries in Ventura County open. "Among Mr. Bradbury's passions, none burn quite as hot as his lifelong enthusiasm for halls of books. ... 'Libraries raised me,' Mr. Bradbury said. 'I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.' ... The Internet? Don't get him started. 'The Internet is a big distraction,' Mr. Bradbury barked... 'Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,' he said, voice rising. 'They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet." It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.'"
There's a lot to be said for libraries. The other day, my wife came home with a new library card. Big internet a holic, but there's always something about halls of books.
This is my sig.
Does he like them for the books? He knows you can read books on the Internet, right? Maybe he just doesn't know how to use the internet properly (he is old, after all) and it just confuses and scares him.
To hell with you and to hell with the Internet. It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.
It helps drive the economy forward. It helps people keep in touch. It allows people to access resources (such as Bradbury's works) they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
It's a shame how foolish and ignorant his remarks are.
Amnesty International
I wonder how he feels about African Americans... I have have a good guess.
It's strange for someone so vehemently against censorship to be against propagating information to ANY media.
"It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere."
Sounds like hes boarding the firetruck as we speak.
I'm somewhat disappointed such a prominent SciFi writer is so hostile to the internet and new technology.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
It's in the air, somewhere;
In some tubes, with rubes.
It's not in the back of a truck,
It's not in the flack of some shmuck,
It's in the air, somewhere.
Thanks Dr. Seuss!
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
"We are the librarians now"
Table-ized A.I.
Old Man Ray is also a flaming Republican. Sad to think of it since his work is so enjoyable but that's the long and the short of it. He went apeshit over Fahrenheit 9-11.
"No. 1, he didn't ask (permission), and, No. 2, he took it - period," Bradbury tells PEOPLE. "Even if he did ask, what he has done is a crime."
Speaking from his Los Angeles home Wednesday, the 83-year-old author says he never would have allowed Moore to use the name, "because it doesn't belong to him. It belongs to me. I have several new editions of the book coming out this summer. I have a new film version of Fahrenheit 451 with Mel Gibson starring, and it is going into production sometime in the next six months."
Bradbury says that Moore, 50, contacted him only last Saturday - months after the controversial movie started making headlines.
"He was embarrassed because he didn't want to call me," says Bradbury, adding that he felt Moore was "forced into" making the call and that the filmmaker hasn't offered to screen the film for him.
"He didn't want to face me," says Bradbury. "He is supposedly a big fan of mine and read my work years ago. Now suddenly he has to call someone he has been reading for most of his life and apologize for what he did."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
"I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money... 'To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.' It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.'"
Wow, someone's got a bad case of future shock
I grew up on newspapers & magazines, but I'm coming to grips with the fact that someday those will be effectively gone, too.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The Internet has taught me far more than my college education ever could, and more than any one book for that matter.
It's amazing how people will so stereotypically judge an entire artifact without fully understanding its purpose or potential.
The Internet is distracting? I bet he uses Windows...
You mean you would enjoy his works more if he was a staunch democrat? Whats wrong with respecting other peoples' opinions even if you don't agree with them? The world would be a much better place if people spent half as much time worrying about themselves instead of what others are doing.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
We don't need libraries anymore. Let's just burn them all down.
Ray loves libraries but hates the internet...
I love libraries and the internet...
All we need now are someone who loves the internet and hates libraries and another who hates both libraries and the internet and we can have ourselves a fully populated 2x2 truth table.
The ideas he presented in his books have obviously stayed relevant across generations. So he's fallen behind part of the culture he helped to create, so what? I suppose Yahoo loses out, but he's really the one missing out here. Maybe the people close to him can change his mind, but it doesn't do any good to go bashing one of our philosophical heroes here just because he became an old man. Libraries are not bad, maybe they're even good, it's not like he's giving money to a controversial cause!
I don't believe in libraries. I believe in cave paintings because most students don't have any animal hides to cover their genitals. When I graduated from climbing in trees, it was during the first great ice age and we had no fire or language. I couldn't go to the library, so I went to the cave three days a week for 10 seasons. The library? Don't get him started. The library is a big distraction, Gieco Cavemen growled... The library called me eight moons ago, he said, voice rising. They wanted to put a calfskin of mine in the Library! You know what I told them? To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the library. It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the dead trees somewhere with that soulless invention called language.
- Gieco Cavemen
So the Internet is a series of tubes in the air somewhere...?
OMG... the Internet is in the Mushroom Kingdom!
âoeItâ(TM)s distracting,â he continued. âoeItâ(TM)s meaningless; itâ(TM)s not real. Itâ(TM)s in the air somewhere.â
Many critics of digital media complain that the information is not tangible, like a book or a record is. That you can't hold it in your hands. But last time I checked, how a book physically felt in your hands wasn't important to enjoying and understanding a book. You read with your eyes, not with your fingers (braille notwithstanding).
So really Mr. Bradbury, what's your obsession with being able to hold things? Sounds more like materialism and hoarding instincts or misguided nostalgia than a genuine concern for the Internet.
Someone explained to Mr. Bradbury that the internets is operated by a conclave of androids?
>" To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.
>It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real.
>It's in the air somewhere.'"
Its amazing given the amount of sifi he's written that he takes this approach to the single most futuristic invention of mankind.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It is truly a shame that he feels that way and that he believes in such a false dichotomy. If he was a little less antagonistic about the subject he'd see the massive influx of new people into the libraries that the internet has helped spur. The poor especially benefit from free access to computers and their children are put in touch with a wealth of learning (books AND electronic information) that is truly unprecedented. Library usage is up across the board, from what I can see.
The man is almost 90 years old, but he's younger than my grandmother who regularly uses email and praises it as a wonderful way of keeping in touch with her mobility-impaired friends. Age and stubbornness are not excuses for a man of his intelligence to hold such a myopic view of the world which HE HELPED CREATE. It makes me wonder if he has been to a library recently during business hours to see the throngs of people using the internet there to find jobs and better themselves.
My girlfriend's mother is a school librarian, has been for decades. One day she was sorting through a stack of old books and came across a Bradbury book in which someone had scribbled across the title page in pen. I think it was actually as she was in the process of slamming her DISCARD stamp down on the book that she belatedly recognized the scribble as the author's signature.
She's normally got a good sense of humor, but she does NOT like it when you remind her about that dang Bradbury kid scribbling in her books.
How do you like L. Ron Hubbard's work then?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
All knowledge is "in the air", whether printed on paper or stored magnetically or transmitted across the universe. Knowledge exists whther or not it has physical form; if all the math books in the universe disappeared tomorrow, 2 + 2 would *still* equal 4 and force would still equal mass times exceleration.
My daughters have educated themselves though physical and digital media; they are home-schooled, something that seemes near and dear to Bradbury's heart. The Internet gives them access to knowledge, ideas, and people they would *never* have encountered in a real library. The Internet EXPANDS our knowledge; it does not replace books, it COMPLEMENTS THEM.
All about me
The summary missed a bit:
"and get off my lawn!" he continued in a raised voice, waving a stick in what was presumably intended as a threatening manner
He is entitled to his opinion, of course. But I think he is missing the point by a few lightyears on this matter. And wrong as he may be on this matter, that doesn't invalidate anything he said/wrote previously.
Yes, the Internet can be a distraction, and it can be a wealth of information. It's up to the person using it. Just as I could walk into a library intending to learn something valuable, but be waylaid by the periodicals section - ooh, look, the New Yorker! Bicycling Magazine! Road & Track! and suddenly my hours have wasted away on trivia.
I work with elderly folks and when people ask me about my job, I joke that the biggest thing old folks fear is change.
As we age, our ability to absorb new information and get it to gel with existing preconceptions degrades. Elderly people aren't incapable of learning, but it takes much more effort to absorb and internalize new concepts that don't already fit into their world view or realm of experience.
Its really un-PC to say, but the older we get, the more inflexible our thinking becomes. We have problems adapting to new situations, information, and the end result is often fear, confusion, or the dismissal of new ideas as irrelevant.
If he's so intelligent and hates the Internet so much, maybe someone should tell him to take down the website that bears his name (http://www.raybradbury.com/) and lists all his books for purchase (http://www.raybradbury.com/books/books.html). After all, it's just a waste of time!
ANOVWL.
I still go to the library-- Because I'm poor, and need to get my e-mail and stay in touch with friends online, search for jobs, and more. To the man who calls the internet less worthwhile than the internet: Sir, how does it feel being a dinosaur? Our generation is the first to realize that we will never be able to reach a point in our lives where we can afford to be out of date and set in our ways. The internet is largely responsible for that, because it ensures that we can share our collective insights and experiences with each other and the world almost instantly. Now get off my lawn--I mean, LCD.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Technically, the internet is the largest library of information ever known to man. To dismiss it only shows his inability to truly grasp it.
Hmmm, no, I would not be so quick to dispute that statement at all.
There is so much crap on the internet that it undermines all the information that is out there. Conversely, if you go to the 500 and 600 sections of the library, you can be somewhat assured that you are getting at least -something- that is accurate.
Also, there's really not anything that approaches the value of a good textbook available on line. Seriously, how much will you google around before you spend a few bucks and go out and buy Steven's books before doing some sockets works. Would you monkey around with Perl and a bunch of fanboi sites with terrible examples, or why not just go out and buy the Camel book. Or, if you were doing Windows SDK work, would you wade through MSDN and all the Microsoft fanboi sites, or would you just go and get the Petzold bible.
If there's any problem with libraries, its more a lack of funding and a lack of societies attention to pay librarians seriously and to respect the field. A good librarian is a skilled position, somebody who can reach into all the various fields and find what's good, and gather it up into one spot.
This is my sig.
I agree; what an idiot. T
Until you write Fahrenheit 451, I wouldn't be so quick to call Ray Bradbury an idiot, no matter what he says about the internet. Or, are you starting out with the Martian Chronicle instead?
If anything, given the level of thought that the man has historically produced, you might find it instructive to understand what his criticisms are. If anything, it would only serve to improve the internet.
This is my sig.
I respect Mr. Bradbury and his contributions to the literature of SF a lot, but...
His comments here are like JRR Tolkein famously proclaiming that his Lord of the Rings was "too good" to appear in paperback books. Fortunately Donald A. Wollheim proved him wrong, while making him rich and famous at the same time. I was introduced to LotR in paperback, and might not have found it otherwise.
The Internet isn't going away, and the future of eBooks is as assured as the future of music as individual tracks on iPod players.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The same cannot be said for a given website. Google (or any other commercial website) might be big today, but once the ad revenue (business model) collapses, they're toast and their huge volume of books, videos, etc. will go offline. If their board of directors can demonstrate that Google (or whatever corporation that sells shares) would make serious bank in another industry (say, breakfast cereal or carpeting or concrete or maid services - whatever) the shareholders would vote for that product to get a better return on investment, and those jillions of books and videos would be reduced to essentially what they are: unwanted webservers that would be zeroed out and sold.
Bradbury's a bit of a cranky right wing dipshit, but even a stopped clock is right once a day.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
LEARN WITH B.O.O.K.
- R. J. Heathorn
A new aid to rapid - almost magical - learning has made its appearance.
Indications are that if it catches on all the electronic gadgets will be
so much junk.
The new device is known as Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge. The
makers generally call it by its initials, BOOK.
Many advantages are claimed over the old-style learning and teaching
aids on which most people are brought up nowadays. It has no wires, no
electric circuit to break down, No connection is needed to an
electricity power point. It is made entirely without mechanical parts to
go wrong or need replacement.
Anyone can use BOOK, even children, and it fits comfortably into the
hands. It can be conveniently used sitting in an armchair by the fire.
How does this revolutionary, unbelievably easy invention work? Basically
BOOK consists only of a large number of paper sheets. These may run to
hundreds where BOOK covers a lengthy programme of information. Each
sheet bears a number in sequence so that the sheets cannot be used in
the wrong order.
To make it even easier for the user to keep the sheets in the proper
order they are held firmly in place by a special locking device called a
'binding'.
Each sheet of paper presents the user with an information sequence in
the form of symbols, which he absorbs optically for automatic
registration on the brain. When one sheet has been assimilated a flick
of the finger turns it over and further information is found on the
other side.
By using both sides of each sheet in this way a great economy is
effected, thus reducing both the size and cost of BOOK. No buttons need
to be pressed to move from one sheet to another, to open or close BOOK,
or to start it working.
BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it.
Instantly it it ready for use. Nothing has to be connected or switched
on. The user may turn at will to any sheet, going backwards or forwards
as he pleases. A sheet is provided near the beginning as a location
finder for any required information sequence.
A small accessory, available at trifling extra cost, is the BOOKmark.
This enables the user to pick up his programme where he left off on the
previous learning session. BOOKmark is versatile and may be used in any
BOOK.
The initial cost varies with the size and subject matter. Already a vast
range of BOOKs is available, covering every conceivable subject and
adjusted to different levels of aptitude. One BOOK, small enough to be
held in the hands, may contain an entire learning schedule.
Once purchased, BOOK requires no further upkeep cost; no batteries or
wires are needed, since the motive power, thanks to an ingenious device
patented by the makers, is supplied by the brain of the user.
BOOKs may be stored on handy shelves and for ease of reference the
programme schedule is normally indicated on the back of the binding.
Altogether the Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge seems to have great
advantages with no drawbacks. We predict a big future for it.
He doesn't explain why he doesn't like the Internet, but I think I can make a good guess based on the "it's in the air somewhere" remark.
Whenever anyone discusses the merits of books over digital literature, somebody always saying something like "Nothing can beat the feeling of a nice book: the paper, the ink, the smell of it, the weight of it, the warm, friendly..." blah blah blah. Indeed, that usually seems to be the ONLY argument presented in favour. This is basically just re-hashing the same idea: that books and paper are emotionally better because they're tactile and look nicer than [insert technology under discussion]. Bradbury's attitude seems to be no exception.
While I don't dismiss emotional attachment as being insignificant, it would be useful to list something else about books or paper that give them an advantage over digital media. Here are a few I can think of:
1. Paper (and to a lesser extent books) fit a particular mode of use that digital media cannot yet fulfil: I can jot something down on paper, hand it to somebody who can then adjust that jotting if need be, and we can use it for high-level, fast communication. The recipient can then carry it around for a short while until its purpose is served, and then dispose of it. Similar use cases can be played out on walls with chalk or charred sticks, on sand, or on steamy windows.
2. Books and paper are robust within specific common parameters and don't need a power source. Properly stored, a book can last thousands of years. I can also abuse a book in a variety of ways and it will still be fit for purpose. Burn it, however, or tear it into tiny pieces, and I better have another copy or all the information in it is lost forever.
3. Properly produced, books and paper can be far more environmentally friendly than digital media, or at least the hardware that delivers that media.
4. Er, that's it. Every other property of books or paper I can think of are either disadvantages, or are matched by current digital media.
Any other suggestions for the objective advantages of books over digital media?
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"
Ray Bradbury hates the internet - or, I'm guessing, "hates the world wide web" would be the more accurate statement. And, apparently, he's also a Republican according to some posts here.
So what? Isn't he entitled to his opinions? Why do some people here think they can only enjoy the work of someone with whom they're in agreement on everything? Take this to the logical extreme: A lot of people really liked ReiserFS - does that mean they must think it's okay to murder someone?
Bradbury is even helping raise a bunch of money for a library. How much of your time and money do you put into causes you believe in?
C'mon, give the guy a break. Reading his comments, I'll admit I was half-expecting "and you kids get off my lawn!" included in there somewhere. But man, it never even occurred to me that I should change my mind about his stories because some of his opinions are different than mine.
#DeleteChrome
Bradbury a Luddite - who woulda thunk?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Give the man a Kindle preloaded with more books than his library. All that, in the palm of your hand.
Someone just needs to show him how to download porn. Most libraries don't have porn.
Internet:1, Libraries 0!!
I like the idea that anyone can publish something, anyone can remark on something, and anyone can seek out your comments. People can communicate in a neutral medium without worrying about immediate personal repercussions because then they don't fear to speak their minds.
You don't learn a lot when you can only see one shade in the spectrum, but on the internet you have everything, and this feels like a more realistic representation of what people think. You can see peoples' arguments instead of a finished product that can never be changed. You see the etymology of peoples' thoughts.
We haven't really had much structure in society, in terms of interpersonal relationships. They are wildly different. Personalities are wildly different. We all have different goals and different reasons and different opinions. Everyone has to learn about being on this planet together, but you aren't really privy to everyone's personal process. You just hear whatever comes out of their mouth at one given time, even though what they think, and what think they know, is constantly evolving.
The fact that you can observe all perspectives can help people learn about all of the different ways of thinking about something, and different ways of dealing with ways of thinking that are different than yours, but the internet is like a social equalizer. You may have search rankings, and ad priorities, and certain computers will ship with a general default configuration, and you may have favorite bookmarks that you load up every day that may put a bias on what a given individual will be exposed to. Invariably, however, people will find their way into many different areas of interest, which will present them with many different groups of people who will speak about things that they have picked up from many other places, and points of view are dispersed widely and vary widely, yet they are all available.
On web sites, you can have discussion forums with different topics that have different posts and within them, different threads, and different arguments. On Wikipedia, you can move through any topic by clicking on the area of interest, and you can see how the article changed and why. On Slashdot, you have people writing stories and comments and voting each other up. On 2chan you have unmoderated discussions on a wide variety of interests. Anyone can step in and drop some heavy knowledge, or they can blurt out an off-the-cuff remark, but we get way more variety than our every day communications, and we can seek out any topic we can come up with to get such perspectives.
I think it makes us healthier that we can see all that and take it in in a more unbiased manner. It drives home the point that the truth is the truth no matter where it comes from, because bullshit is less tolerated and picked apart. Conclusions may be drawn, but topics are forever evolving and nothing really ever stays the same on the internet. Even though there's a lot of stupid shit on the internet, I feel like I'm learning a lot of important stuff that I couldn't in school or a library, and even a lot that I can. But it's all easy and accessible.
Twinstiq, game news
1: Become a famous published author.
2: Sneak into libraries all across the country and secretly autograph all your books, thereby increasing their value.
3: Write a book afterwards about doing this.
4: GOTO 2
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Yeah, but there is nothing like the internet for conducting research, especially scientific research. It saves a huge amount of time compared to libraries. Not to mention the amazing ease with which ideas can cross pollinate into major breakthroughs. Of course, Mr. Bradbury understands the power of the internet. The man is not dumb. He's just being old fashioned and nostalgic, that's all. Halls of books have a strong romantic side to them that the internet cannot replace. Forgive him and please let him have his library. He deserves it.
Or is that in the air as well?
Ray Bradbury wrote some good books. One book in particular was truly great, providing a social commentary on the value of information and what it means to have open and free access. This makes him a man who was forward thinking for his time and perhaps means future societies will remember him.
Unfortunately, he's become a bit of a cranky old man. That's okay. I suppose he's earned the right to be one.
The value of his works shouldn't be diminished but certainly, time has passed him by.
Particularly ironic considering the events of the past week in Iran and the internet's enabling role in that continuing saga.
At how much Farenheit degrees a Kindle burns?
Put your book on it, and the whole world can see it.
anyone can go to a library, and assuming the locality is solvent and can pay the paycheques for librarians, acquisitions, and cleaning staff, the library can stay open indefinitely. This is not to say that libraries never close down. What I am saying is: given adequate support, libraries can stay open indefinitely. Two examples: NY Public Library. Library of Congress.
The same cannot be said for a given website.
RTFA, moron--it's all about Bradbury raising money for physical libraries that are in danger of vanishing, just like a server with the plug pulled. Saying that websites vanish and physical libraries are permanent bastions of knowledge is monumentally retarded. Some libraries will wither and die, and some will survive. Some websites will wither and die, some will survive. Or do you honestly believe that archive.org is going to disappear anytime soon?
"What I am saying is: given adequate support, libraries can stay open indefinitely."
Given adequate support, websites can also stay open indefinitely.
What I am saying is: That's a pretty big "given".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Did anyone actually read this book?
Do you know what he foresaw with the loss of the printed word?
Please at least check out the cliffs notes, for heaven's sake.
Gal darn kids and their newfangled information technology ... where's my newspaper? Hey you! Get off the grass!
I don't give a shit what this dude likes or doesn't.
I read that as Ron Burgundy...
given adequate support, libraries can stay open indefinitely
Google (or any other commercial website) might be big today, but once the ad revenue (business model) collapses, they're toast and their huge volume of books, videos, etc. will go offline.
So on the one hand, if you assume an infinite amount of funding, libraries can stay open forever. On the other hand, if you do not assume an infinite amount of funding, an online library may close.
What happens if we assume an infinite amount of funding for an online library? Oh look, it stays open too. And libraries without an infinite amount of funding? Apparently those might eventually close.
This logic thing is certainly weird.
>
Bradbury's a bit of a cranky right wing dipshit, but even a stopped clock is right once a day.
Actually, a stopped clock is right TWICE a day....
Bradbury wrote some really good stories but that doesn't prevent him from exhibiting old man syndrome. He probably wants the kids off his yard too...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
No biggie. He's still a great author, and libraries are definitely ftw. As far as the internet is concerned, however, it is what the user makes of it.
other than that, no strong feelings on the subject?
haven't heard of this dude till now
*goes wiki...
... young people today, with their loud hair and long music, and their propensity for lounging in a most insouciant manner upon his lawn.
At this point in the diatribe, well known sci-fi writer and self-proclaimed "Master Storyteller" Mr. Harlan "I don't take a piss without getting paid" Ellison mounted his soapbox, two milk crates and a folding chair, thus barely getting his eyes above the seated audience. "You tell 'em, Ray! Fuck the Internet!" Mr. Ellison sputtered in a cracked and whiney voice.
Mr. Bradbury inquired after the publishing date of "The Last Dangerous Visions", whereupon Mr. Ellison threw his false teeth at Mr. Bradbury, whereupon the two aged scifi writers began to box each other about the head and shoulders. The assembled crowd wagered upon who would be the first to fling the contents of their Depends at the other, while several witnesses used their iPhones to upload video of the struggle to YouTube. Others in the crowd were content to chant, "Codger Fight! Codger Fight!" at the geriatric combatants.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
The only difference between the Internet and a library is that the library is moderated.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
... is to not accept the future when it finally reaches us.
What internet gives us today would have been called 40-50 years ago "sci-fi". Is not an utopia, nor almost pure abstraction that could be painted fully black or white as treated by most of the genre, but is the future or at least an important part of it, something that you can point and say that is a game changer from whatever you had in old times.
For him it's about words on paper. And why shouldn't it be? He's one of the best writers of the 20th century, and words on paper have been his life. I love his work.
He hasn't yet seen the value in the Internet, but then much of its value is hidden behind mountains of dross, so it's not surprising. I'm willing to overlook that ignorance; it doesn't devalue anything he has done.
Nobody does creepy with words like Ray Bradbury. He is Edgar Allen Poe's Edgar Allen Poe.
I piss off bigots.
At school I would read 10-20 books a year. When I started work, I found I have a hard time finding time to read one or two books. I don't have time to go to the library, the bookstores are expensive, and I find hauling a book with me to work and back a hassle. For some 6 years I read maybe 4 books total.
Over the last 3 years I read maybe 100 books. All thanks to getting an ebook reader (Palm Vx actually), and books in electronic form. I can spend 15 minutes downloading and converting them, then have enough reading for another 3 months, and enough storage memory to keep several various books to pick something matching my current mood.
I can read in bed with the light off, when the roommate is asleep already. I can read in public communication. Sometimes I buy a beer at a pub and read. And so on.
Paper is overrated. It is limiting as a medium, expensive and unwieldy. Sure it has better contrast and doesn't require recharging, but if I was to carry the paper kind of library I carry with me now, my back would break.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"Among Mr. Bradbury's passions, none burn quite as hot as his lifelong enthusiasm for halls of books..."
Whoever wrote that article has a great taste for irony.
Anyway, if Ray Bradbury wants to hate the internet, that's fine, but I think he's missing the good parts that are in between the bad parts. For example, it's a much more interactive and creative medium than the passive one he derides all the time (i.e. TV). For that matter, it's much more interactive than the "author writes books, everyone else reads" mode of communication he prefers. I can also search the collections of most libraries online, and then request the books -- at far less cost and trouble than the traditional paper ways allowed. It is great for people who can't physically get to a library easily. The internet is great for doing research -- not comprehensive, but useful as a start. Finally, it is the way to find and buy the most obscure used books from anywhere in the world, and a great means for making books available FOR FREE once their copyright expires to the public domain. Even for his favorite thing in the world -- books -- the internet is really useful.
He's an elderly gentleman and apparently set in his ways. Maybe he just hasn't thought enough about it.
Heck, I'm living in a different country and across the continent. Without the internet, there was nearly a zero chance I'd ever have read the article about him in the New York Times or in the Ventura County Star, and thus learned about financial situation at the H.P. Wright Ventura County Library. And, look, I can find all the details about what goes on at that library.
The Internet by itself doesn't matter so much. It's the people that are connected to it that matter and what they can do en masse. I'm tempted to make donation to his beloved library, and send them a note saying "Please let Ray Bradbury know the Internet does matter!" (They accept donations by credit card and paypal there). Maybe if he saw a demonstration of why the internet mattered, it might sink in?
From a different article, also in the internet: "Donations also can be sent to Save Wright Library, P.O. Box 403, Ventura, CA 93002. Checks should be made out to Save Wright Library."
Forgive the man, he has never been the same since he was invited over by the Bushes.. oh the torturing he endured.. *shaking head*
I was tortured by the Bushes
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Blank Reg: "It's a book. It's a non-volatile storage medium. It's very rare. You should 'ave one."
He came to my university my freshman year where he was supposed to give an hour long speech about censorship. Instead, he gave an hour long speech about how awesome he was and all these cool awards he earned throughout his life.
Honestly, I don't care how great his books are, he's an idiot.
Bryan
What does he think, who and what is responsible for most of the scientific books in libraries? I like libraries, too, but I also like institutions of higher education, as well as the Internet.
I only dislike pompous second-rate sci-fi writers whose only reason for fame is striking a populist cord in his overrated novels. And I don't like Fahrenheit 451 - what an overrated piece of crap.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Funny that you mention it, but a lot of MIT stuff recommends that you buy books, or, tada get them from the library!
MIT Opencourseware is not all as good as you might think. I was working on my own ultimately failed solution to P=NP last summer and so I spent a lot of time surfing various universities to get myself up to speed on information theory. MIT's stuff turned out to be pretty lame in that, they might have some syllabus notes and a few things like that but its hardly a good online experience.
To almost put together a good knowledge base, you have to really go almost university shopping on a class by class basis. There was another university that had almost an online course that explained how to properly transform SAT into another NP Complete problem and thereby prove a problem was NP-Complete and they explained it clearly and simply and walked through a few trivial examples to show it. Funny thing is, I can't remember which university it was. I want to say Northwestern...but I'm not sure.
This is my sig.
I love libraries, I love the internet. Both have their uses. I find it quite comfortable to search my local library catalog. This is grumpy old man who is sticking to what he knows and is comfortable with. Just ignore it. I know other grumpy old people who hate technology because they don't know it and thus are afraid of it.
it is indeed, and one with infinite lending time of its content, and endless copies to lend out...
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
...and a willfully blind one, too. You'd have to be a tool to refuse to see the single greatest technological change vector since at least Berthold Shwartz or Gutenberg. Sure it's up in the air. So is all of literature. So is his renown, fame, reputation, etc. These are all virtual, ephemeric phenomena.
Hi Ray, Sorry to be so critical. I grew up reading your works and they have greatly influenced my attitudes. That being said, at a bare minimum, the Internet is the worlds largest and most accessible library. As with every new communications medium, it comes with a learning curve and a maturity necessity. I grew up in a lower income family and took large advantage of the public library system. Denouncing the Internet as a "distraction" is either a sign of ignorance or stubbornness. By creating the ability of everyone with access (yes, that is a whole other debate) to have access to all information best promotes the dissemination of information, which (correct me if I'm wrong) is the essence the library system.
Actually, a stopped clock is right TWICE a day....
You're making a very big assumption here - it's a 12 hour clock. It doesn't have to be, and even analog clocks can be 24 hour (like a sundial: east is 6, south is 12, west is 18, north, if it were visible, would be 0)
You can't tell me that wasn't on purpose. :P
Put books on the internet. That'll confuse him.
Oh, wait...
While wikipedia is good, you are wrong about the meaningfulness of its content relative to good reference material that has been correctly organized and available in a printed tome of work. Wikipedia might one day provide this level of information by they are not even close to that goal today. The "C Programming Language" by K & R is small compact and inclusive of much valuable information. It takes me about 40 minutes to read it cover to cover. It takes me about 2 or 3 hours across several references to find that same material online. The main difference is the internet is a mish-mash of information with no real organization. Knowledge is basically organized information and is typically represented in books. When there are more online books, I'll be satisfied.
By the way, I'm a computer professional and not some idiot that barely knows how to use the internet. I've written webservers and email servers and basically done more technical crap than 99 percent of the people on this forum.
So, feel free to have whatever opinions that you want about this subject and my post, but also be conscience that I'm not speaking from a mal-informed perspective.
I like libraries and the internet as do most people, I think.
I'm not surprised he thinks that way. There is definitely something about most people when they get old. They start getting grumpy, hating everything that's different from their youth and generally losing the ability to adapt which generally turns them into hypocrites as well.
I can only hope this doesn't happen to me and I don't think it will but if I do turn into an old miserable shit, I hope I realise it soon enough and snap out of it.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
"It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere."
Sounds like he's describing that fictional heaven that crazy old kooks seem to believe in.
That "distraction" is being used to loosely coordinate a revolution. Not to mention that, in the first days after Iran's election, the Giant Distraction was the only way we could get information about what was happening in Iran, since the mainstream media either didn't care enough to cover it, or the reporters there were under lockdown and not allowed to report on anything.
Great author, but sorry, he's being an idiot.
Of course, he would never use a sundial, the source is 93 million miles up in the air!
That is a problem with the web, not with the internet. I agree that it desperately needs to be fixed, but I am unaware of any good solutions. Freenet distributes content but at a great cost of speed and usability.
Find the invisible man and you'll have a power set...
I didn't even realize Mr. Bradbury was still alive!
there is tons of stuff that was on the internet a few years back that just isnt there any more and is not on archive.org
try finding the xxxexpose.com video for example. its just disappeared, along with the site and most information about it.
"The Internet is a big distraction"
Thats why I look at internet porn!
he grew up most of his life under the threat of nuclear annihilation of the entire planet. and it almost happened several times.
the whole book is about mankind gone mad, one obsessed with technology but with no wisdom about how it is to be used,
and a world in which nobody asks why we are doing what we are doing.
he is not against technology, he is against the misuse of technology. that is kind of the point of the whole book.
and as for the internet.... he kind of has a point. most of the 'development' is about 'doing it because we can', not 'why are we doing this at all'
Mr. Bradbury shook his cane at the reporter, and demanded that he remove himself from Mr. Bradbury's lawn.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If you normalize out the usual "tax" of Slashdot bullshit, this article has generated a better discussion than most. That said, it is remarkable how many of the contributers appear to be far more reactionary than Bradbury himself is accused of being. A couple of points:
1) Wouldn't it make more sense to read his anti-internet rant as provocative rhetoric in pursuit of a pro-library agenda? After all, he also denigrates a college education in the same breath. In nine decades of dealing with the media he likely has learned some tricks for gathering attention and staying on message.
2) And what about his stated distaste for universities? Other than one or two home school proponents, nobody has even commented on that.
What does it say about Slashdotters that they jump to the defense of the role the internet plays as a static archive and ignore the dynamic role networked technologies (like Slashdot on a good day) can play in developing and extending online communities analogous to universities? There are also far too many here who seem ready to accept unsubstantiated assertions about Bradbury's politics, while investing no weight to this widely regarded author's body of work. Do yourself a favor and read a few of his books.
The remarkable thing here is not that an author would support libraries - in particular, that the author of Fahrenheit 451 would - but rather that members of this technology-aware community would have such an inert view of the internet.
It isn't really all that surprising that an author who was educated in and made his life writing has nostalgic feelings about a place that was instrumental in his life. The fact that he hates the internet is no more surprising and is likely just part of a generational gap. People/Companies who master one system will always resist the next one, especially when the next one does not improve on the old one for the niche part they have mastered. This is just an old master shaking his cane at the young upstarts and being upset that they don't respect what he accomplished and more to the point how he accomplished it and one day the large majority of us will being doing the same thing. Just because you're visionary one day doesn't mean that most don't become the inertial force against the new visionaries the next. It is the rare person that can adapt and shift and remain visionary through more than a few changes.
'I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in the internet because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to on the internet seven days a week for 10 years.'
Sad. He is confusing the medium with the message. Libraries don't matter. They are elitist collections that restrict access. Putting his books on the Internet would make it so that more people could access them. People who like himself couldn't afford to go to college. I live in a rural area. We farm. I can't waste time going to the city to the library for books. College is a waste of time. I can get the info online. Libraries are old tech and just a tool, not content. Bradbury is lost in the past. Too bad. So sad.
Until you write Fahrenheit 451, I wouldn't be so quick to call Ray Bradbury an idiot, no matter what he says about the internet.
Bradbury also wrote The Veldt. The first significant story about the hazards of deep immersion in interactive entertainment: particularly for children.
Writers of Bradbury's generation have some very interesting and perceptive things to say about "cocooning -" social isolation and a pathologically extended adolescence reinforced by the new technologies of instant communication.
1: Become a famous published author.
2: Sneak into libraries all across the country and secretly autograph all your books, thereby increasing their value.
3: Write a book afterwards about doing this.
4: GOTO 2
5: PROFIT!!!
GOTO considered harmful...
Old guy hates new things, news at 11.
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
on the whole planet. I heard him speak at the LA WorldCon a few years ago, and I was blown away. There was an immediacy, a direct contact he made with what felt like every single one of us in that huge audience. Somebody who can have that effect in -- and probably from -- realspace might well feel that the internet is lacking something.
Has anyone else noticed that for the last 3 or 4 decades, Ray Bradbury has been consistently a tool?
I'm inclined to give scifi writers a lot of leeway when it comes to personal stridency and being fuckheads, because the best ones are visionary and creative and therefore get a little bit of license.
Certain ones, however, have crossed a line where their body of work has to be re-evaluated because of their non-literary activities. Orson Scott Card is one such prick-with-ears. George Orwell is practically the template. Ray Bradbury is arguably on the steering committee of scifi writers who need to STFU.
Fortunately, death sort of wipes the slate clean for this archetype. Because Orwell's no longer around to embarrass himself, and his contemporaries who were virtually unanimous in hating him have all passed on, his work can be seen on its own merits. I think, in the case of O S Card, that the quality of his work has followed his own personal path to wankdom and triviality, and the few worthwhile books he's written probably won't last the time it takes to forget what a jerk he was (after his demise, I mean).
Bradbury's got a little more goodwill built up because he's written some important things, so despite his best efforts to destroy his personal "brand" his work will endure. However, there will be footnotes in his bibliography mentioning what a nasty old cocksucker (and victim of abominable taste in facial hair) he was.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Sure books are good, but I'm not willing to stop using the Internet. Sure the Internet is OK, but I'm not willing to burn all my books just yet. There are legitimate uses for each, and each have their problems. The Internet has the advantage of immediacy of information delivery, but even with Google's help you often have to dig through a lot of dirt to get to a nugget of useful info. Signal-to-noise is lower with books, but by the time you buy the book the information it contains is obsolete. Turning the Internet off is unlikely, but still possible. Books don't require electricity for their use, but you do have to cut down some trees.
My point is, I wonder how Ray feels about people buying his books through Amazon.com.
It's a very dark ride.
He might not be serious, this could just have been a troll.
"Science ran too far ahead of us too quickly, and the people got lost in a mechanical wilderness, like children making over pretty things, gadgets, helicopters, rockets; emphasizing the wrong items, emphasizing machines instead of how to run the machines. Wars got bigger and bigger and finally killed Earth. That's what the silent radio means. That's what we ran away from."
(from the martian chronicles)
I am 30, and I have been using the internet since the years of the BBS and I probably don't read as many books as I should. That being said I personally think books and the internet are two forms of media both with their own limitations and benefits. I always seems to turn to a well researched book if I want to learn anything in depth. Books are more densely packed with "useful" information on a subject than most websites. Cumulatively it takes accessing many web pages to find that kind of depth and even then I think a good book will more often go beyond my expectations whereas I find that web research will more often fall short. Maybe e-books are the solution to this, but I doubt that an entire library of information will be accessible anytime soon and of course there is the longevity issue. The internet on the other hand can publish/disseminate ideas faster and at little cost to the author. User applications that collect and process data are also a big plus. But I really don't think this discussion is about tooting our horns at the internet and how many wonderful things that Mr. Bradbury is missing out on. For frig sake the man is 89 cut him some slack. Most kids give me crap for not being on facebook, which I truly think is a useless waste of time. Probably he means that for him the internet is a waste of time. I once tried to teach my 65 year old mother how to use a mouse, it was not pretty. Relatively books are much easier to interface with than a PC, and I'm sure I'll be cursing the IO device that controls the future of computing. Oh god please don't make me sixty when the first brain controlled computers roll out.
In the end maybe we need an old curmudgeon like Mr. Bradbury to remind us of how cool books are so we tear our eyes away from the monitor and focus on a library book every once in a while.
It's not the information it's the experience. The internet offers no experience except the keyboard, mouse, monitor and a speaker if you so choose. The library offers an entire experience, which the internet will never have. If you dismiss the physical world for that of the virtual on the sole merits of information, then you might as well stay living in your moms basement.
Instead of reading this thread and saying "Oh, what's this book? I'll go look up a synopsis on Wikipedia" you should go buy/borrow a copy (or inevitably, since this is /. , download the eBook) and actually read the damn story. It's very interesting and has all the elements of big brother-ism that all of us slashdotters love to cause a fuss about. There's police states, robotic dogs, firemen that START fires instead of putting them out, full-wall televisions, neolithic societies, people burned alive... It's well worth the read.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
The internet is not the web. I agree with him: the web has a massive noise to signal ratio. There are massive problems with spam, quality and advertising that reduce its effectiveness.
I would rather read a text book on a subject than use the web. What about you?
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. -Borge
It is hardly surprising that the author of Fahrenheit 451 would be a fan of books and libraries. He is also smart enough to know that the Internet is rapidly making traditional libraries obsolete.
With real books, you can hide them in the attic or cellar or in a secret compartment in the walls. But if they are online, then the government does not have to find all the copies of a book to wipe it out... it only needs to find the server and delete the files. Censorship is easier in the digital age.
And this guy writes science fiction? Geez - how short sighted of him. Libraries are neat. I have fond memories of them from my youth. But the Internet is awesome.
Ginny Keller
I often lament that electric lights cannot replace a good whale oil lantern as I take my buggy down to the barber for some blood letting.
He can tell the Iranian's the Internet is meaningless, anybody want to pay for his plane ticket?
Sure, the internet is useful. But there are differences in the links you posted. The difference between Wikipedia and MIT is that the former has no controls over who can provide content (and does not participate in the socially accepted methods of knowledge accumulation/distribution, e.g. universities) whereas the latter uses the internet as just a tool to further their non-Internet related works. Arxiv, various open access/"free" as in money journals all do their work within society's accepted frameworks. Things like self-publishing books do not.
In the above sense libraries are more trustworthy than Wikipedia. Quality (should) trump timeliness.
Wikipedia users seem to have the mindset that the Internet is a worthy end in itself, and hence will put up any and all sorts of information (like obscure film characters)
things can change a lot in a few decades
just ask the people in tehran revolting against a regime that was established 30 years ago in a revolution of the people
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think its funny when people talk about books being outdated. Yet they will spend 40 grand or more to go to college and what do they do there? Read books.
If its all on the internet, just go to wikipedia and save yourself 40 grand. Its all just information, right?
I think not.
Your way would win easily, until you consider how many of those wikipedia articles are what, 5-20 paragraphs? And how disjoint are your interesting tabs after an hour of browsing? It's mind-boggling how disparate the topics are after an evening of browsing. Then consider a single book, good luck finding one under 200 pages, and even a moderately focused book will bind your mind to a depth of thinking quite unlike most (though certainly not all) web pages.
There is much to be said for your way of reading, just as there's much to Mr. Bradbury's. There's also room for people whom do both, and I prefer a world where such variety runs rampant.
The Internet is no less distracting and ephemeral than your works of fiction, Mr. Bradbury, although chances are good your comments were misinterpreted and taken out of context.
I find the comments about the longevity of paper to be very interesting. The Internet is a wonderfully fascinating and useful tool, but it is inherently fragile in numerous ways. Most fundamentally, it relies on _electricity_, produced in large quantity. This is a non-trivial task. Then comes the process of manufacturing the hardware, the silicon wafers and circuit boards, and so on...
I believe the global communication network will be our gift to humanity, perhaps as important as Renaissance, but its essential fragility is sad and disturbing to me. I would like our gift to have the durability and solidity of the Pyramids. A server farm or a fiber bundle is a shabby monument indeed for our culture and civilization. Perhaps our monument will be the landfill...
Still, I think there is hope: the structure is not without beauty, and has the potential to become a true artform, in the same vein as architecture. The space is virtual, not physical, but the concepts are the same: useful space that is also beautiful, even monumental.
I hope to see great things develop in the realm of information art and architecture. It's an exciting time to be alive.
respect--;
Internet is a COMMUNICATION tool. An exchange tool.
As such, it can be used for great things and stupid things. Will you condemn the telephone because most people use it for senseless chatting?
It does not make sense to compare it to a library since only a part of internet is used for books and information.
As for libraries (described as the greatest thing), what a joke!!
Does he really believe that libraries are not biased? That they contain all the existing knowledge?
- Look at the controversial books, including sex-ed, adult topics, etc, do you find them easily on the shelves? I don't.
- What about obscure authors or older books? You'll probably find the latest "Harry Potter", what about this 18th century classbook that my parents have at home?
- They can't be a distraction? I don't believe that all the books are educative/highly intellectual (see "Harry Potter": a lot of books are about entertainment)
Truth is :
- libraries have finitive shelf space
- they can't buy everything
- they can't display just anything (adult books)
- librarians are biaised (or have to obey their community rules with the same result)
- they won't store foreign books (not a lot anyway, see problem #1)
- many books are written for entertainment
Librairies are great. That's for sure. But they are also very limited. Internet has plenty of problems and stupidities, but it's also an invaluable tool. Both have their role to play. They are more complementary than opposed.
Maybe cold calling 89 year olds isn't the most effective way to do this thing?
THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
by Ray Bradbury
Copyright 1946, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1958 by Ray Bradbury.
Copyright renewed 1977 by Ray Bradbury.
For my wife MARGUERITE with all my love
THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES
CHRONOLOGY:
January 1999: ROCKET SUMMER
February 1999: YLLA
August 1999: THE SUMMER NIGHT
August 1999: THE EARTH MEN
March 2000: THE TAXPAYER
April 2000: THE THIRD EXPEDITION
June 2001: --AND THE MOON BE STILL AS BRIGHT
August 2001: THE SETTLERS
December 2001: THE GREEN MORNING
February 2002: THE LOCUSTS
August 2002: NIGHT MEETING
October 2002: THE SHORE
February 2003: INTERIM
April 2003: THE MUSICIANS
June 2003: WAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR
2004-2005: THE NAMING OF NAMES
April 2005: USHER II
August 2005: THE OLD ONES
September 2005: THE MARTIAN
November 2005: THE LUGGAGE STORE
November 2005: THE OFF SEASON
November 2005: THE WATCHERS
December 2005: THE SILENT TOWNS
April 2026: THE LONG YEARS
August 2026: THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS
October 2026: THE MILLION-YEAR PICNIC
"It is good to renew one's wonder," said the philosopher.
"Space travel has again made children of us all."
January 1999: ROCKET SUMMER
One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with
frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on slopes, housewives lumbering like great
black bears in their furs along the icy streets.
And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it
seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and
bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows
flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises.
The snow dissolved and showed last summer's ancient green lawns.
_Rocket summer_. The words passed among the people in the open, airing houses.
_Rocket summer_. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the
art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the
town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.
_Rocket summer_. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening
sky.
The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The .
rocket stood in the cold wintar morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty
exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for a brief moment upon the land. . .
February 1999: YLLA
They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea, and
every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or
Having a huge amount of physical books is great, but like everyone else has pointed out, it can't hope to match the raw amount of material on the Internet. But, amazingly, it does provide a lot of arcane stuff that you just won't find.
Try finding the January 1974 issue of Popular Mechanics online. Try finding the archived reports of the State Department for the last 50 years. Libraries are a veritable eBay of finding lost treasures of information.
I think it's the feeling of being surrounded by lost information that makes libraries such an interesting, satisfying place to study. Far more satisfying that in front of my plasma TV with my wifi laptop, getting distracted by So You Think You Can Dance.
An old fashioned science fiction writer? The dude needs to fucking die and be be buried already. What a sorry piece of shit.
Buying a R.Bradbury book - 4$.
Seening a sci-fi writer in a future shock - priceless.
I don't know about the states, but in the UK, city libraries were among the first places to offer free access to a computer and the internet - all you need is a library card (basically they want your name and address and that's it).
I practically live on the internet, but I love libraries for what they meant to me as a kid (or someone without the cash to purchase his own books) and for what they continue to represent - free access to information and culture. These forgotten little buildings embody the very spirit we are fighting to keep alive on the wires - they should be revered for that reason alone.
Well, without the internet I wouldn't have bought Fahrenheit 451 from a webshop and read it. Books and the internet are both good tools. But the man does have a point. Just think how much of your time online you actually spend learning and how much time you use for entertainment. Sure, people now spend a part of their television time browsing the nets. But it's for the same reason: entertainment.
Distracting from what? Does libraries have live video of the riots in Iran? I didn't think so.
Once you own a book, it's yours and nobody can take it away from you. But if you only read on the internet, then you are dependent on your ISP or other providers for access; you are effectively controlled by corporations and the government. Even if you read on the internet from internet cafes, there is a camera somewhere recording your face and your screen contents. Worse still, even when you are at the privacy of your own home with your own ISP connection, there is a government-mandated server somewhere recording every page you visit. So, they know what you read. They know what you think of them. And if they do not like it, you will become part of the national suicide or car accident statistics pretty quickly. The internet is a big spy that tips off the police every time you read a webpage.
At age 89, he might still be in for an awakening like the Wise Old Eagle in Thurber's "A Glass in the Field" who also gets to find out (the hard way) that there is indeed such a thing as "the air crystallizing".
Let's hope he'll be blogging about this (and how he should have listened to the goldfinch ever since 1994) as he turns 100.
At length.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The internet has many librarieans.
Google, and more importantly, Google Scholar
Yahoo
Bing!
DMoz
For reference - my wife is just about to finish her undergraduate degree in Sociology, and I think she visited the library for maybe ten of the 50-100 papers and assignments she has done over the past four years.
The need to visit a library even for scholarly works is quickly becoming obsolete. Everything is online, even well referenced source material. The Google book project is only going to speed up the transformation. And frankly, it can't happen fast enough. All a free public "library" shroud end up being is a big bank of PCs with free online access.
Is anyone surprised that an old man who generally wrote dystopian science fiction doesn't like new technology.
Not that I don't like libraries, good libraries are a fantastic place with all sorts of wonderful things. The problem is, for every library with an extensive book catalog, comfortable reading areas, and good enthusiastic qualified libraries, you'll find a few that have almost no books, unqualified or bitter staff, and poor facilities.
With the internet, and a few more iterations on the e-reader technology, and you might be able to deliver the library of congress to nearly everyone in the world, all for almost nothing. It wouldn't be as good as the best of current libraries, but it would be one hell of a lot better than most of the libraries that are actually out there.
Yes, but how different are today's inks and papers from those of the 1500s? Do we know with certainty that none of the differences will affect how the printing ages? More importantly: Do we know that with more certainty than we know how the newer stuff ages?
Between the invention of books and printing presses and the development of the internet, I would tend to say that combination of books and printing presses are "the greatest communication tool" ever devised, not the relatively short life of the internet.
Evidently, whatever imagination and insight led him to write his great stories has since abandoned him.
From http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/ :
I have no objection to some level of concern about television culture, and I have no objection to his advocacy in support of libraries. However, if he were really concerned about those things, he would support technological efforts to bring literary and educational content to people surfing the net or TV, rather than just whining and moaning that there are young whippersnappers on his lawn who have no respect for books.
He also seems to be engaging in a bit of historical revisionism. He couldn't possibly have been too concerned with the television culture when he wrote F-451 in 1953. Maybe he ought to reread his own story, and then chase it down with 1984. No matter how legitimate his current complaints are, he shouldn't rewrite history.
I agree that libraries are wonderful places, temples of knowledge, one of the very few things I hold sacred. I love printed books. They are sensuous right down to their spicy scent between their leathery leaves. I have not yet been able to imagine the Internet providing the full sensory experience I get from books. Maybe in time...
However, it pains me that Mr. Bradbury, one of my all time favorite authors, has allowed himself to stop growing. I think it is very likely that some people reading this will never die unless they choose to. Imagine living to be 20,000 years old and hating whatever newfangled things replace the Internet, hating pretty much everything about the world because it has changed and you have not. Human history is tiny, the future potentially vast; why confine yourself to some small region of the past and let history race by you into the future?
I was just listening to something a little old, Alexander Scriabin's 2nd symphony. A month ago, I never even heard of Scriabin. I found him on the Internet and now have his music. I doubt I would have found him at the local library. Now I'm listening to Shpongle which is kind of new (2005) and goes shockingly well with mushroom soup and strolls through mossy eldritch forests as well as with computer programming. I wouldn't have found Shpongle at the library either. This Fall I hope to share my home with an 18 year old college student for the simple reason that she will bring novelty--both modern youth culture and her tribal culture which is completely and wonderfully alien to me. That's how I try to live, always throwing something new into the old brain pan so it never goes empty.
Now if you'll excuse me, my head feels like a Frisbee...
http://www.marxist.com/
I read online obsessively, but I also buy print books.
Increasingly, I'm finding Google Books a big temptation. Through a random search somewhere I discovered Strategic Computing, and after reading the first couple of chapters online decided heck with it and placed an order at my local bookstore for the real thing.
Without Google Books and the ability to read text I would never have done this.
One data point maybe, but for me it's pretty obvious: digitising books in the way that Google is doing doesn't replace print books, it promotes them.
Ray Bradbury's welcome to miss out on this if he wants. He's always been anti-technology, but I didn't think he was anti *reading*. Guess I was wrong.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Why is everyone surprised?
When television was first created, people thought that it would be this great tool for learning, education, etc. But it never happened. Instead what we have now on TV is American Idol and "reality" shows. Is humanity really better off knowing all the idiotic and mundane details in the lives of Real Housewives of New Jersey? Of course there are still a few stations on TV, like PBS and the Discovery Channel, which have some decent educational and cultural offerings. But very few people watch those. The vast majority of TV programming is utter garbage.
Likewise, the internet started out with a lot of promise. In its early days it was popular mostly in academia, with scholars sharing research and information. Businesses dismissed it as a waste of time since money couldn't be made off it. Until they discovered they could make money off it. And it's gotten progressively worse since then. Of course there are some niches within the internet, like archive.org and other sites, where some really useful information or learning material can be had. But very few people use the internet for that. Today the vast majority of people use the internet for buying stuff, playing games, tweeting, watching youtube, and downloading porn, DVDs and songs. Has the ability to watch videos of dancing bears on youtube really made the world a better place? Has the ability of pimply suburban teenagers to download anime backgrounds for their desktop really raised the cultural level of humanity to new heights? I don't think so. There is some good stuff on the internet, but it is a tiny oasis in a vast sea of garbage. Just like TV, the internet has unfortunately become a cultural wasteland. It's sad to me, because I used to really like the internet.
It's not a textbook, and it's not meant to be. So why are you comparing the two?
Read Workaphobia's perceptive comment again because I think you missed the point and we might in fact agree. W's comment, along with Bradbury's opinion of the Internet, is what lead to the comparison of Wikipedia (a tiny subset of the Internet) with books (though not just textbooks).
You're succinctly correct, an encyclopedia is not a textbook (though I'd say Wikipedia, even with its shortcomings and sometimes biased articles and moderators, still beats many dead-tree encyclopedia articles written by biased editors and some textbook chapters in quite a few ways). The minor point was a comparison of reading for a length of time, and choosing between disjointed articles and a sustained-topic book--with which one do you learn more? This question, interesting as it is, is too broad to answer generally; unless you consider "sometimes one, sometimes the other" an answer.
The main point is the world needs curious-minded people whom pursue their interests in a variety of ways, including Internet haters (e.g. Mr. Bradbury, if he really is so) whom exclusively prefer libraries and books even though the Internet includes many books, and some who prefer the Internet, and some who prefer both. And to add another group, some use neither (I have a friend who refuses to read anything except what's required for work; and not unlike /., she can be interesting, insightful, and trollish).
The Bradbury cyberpunk sequel?
By the time I get past the free internet terminals, the DVD collection, and the coffee bar, I recollect seeing a bookshelf way back there.
Libraries and especially librarians are anachronistic. I can't believe there are still people out there studying to be a librarian. All libraries should be cleansed of hardcopy and be turned into internet cafe's.
I bought Fahrenheit because I read it in Internet 1st. Remember me not telling him that.
I got interested in dystopias as a tool to signal possible errors in how are we guiding our present thanks to it.
And have bought some books (after downloading them from Internet and reading them in my cellphone).
I agree is the ideas not the books that have to be preserved. And technology can help us do that, in the totalitarian environment Bradbury dreamed and we are heading to, better than human memory. Heck, printing tech do that better than human memory (otherwise writing may not have been invented), that is the one think I didn't like about Fahrenheit.
Get off Ray's lawn!!!1!
Reminds me a lot of that show "Maximum Exposure" where the telephone repairman in South America didn't believe in electricity because he couldn't see it, up to the point where he got the shock of his life and fell at least one building story to the ground...
The Libraries around here don't get into the filtering business (IE: yes Virginia, you can get pr0n on the libraries here)... Hurrah for free-speech and all.. but man I'm sure it hammers their network with all the crap those free computers collect on them.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be