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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.'"
It makes changes too easy, makes hiding what was there before too easy, and it makes telling what's an actual, factual authority and what is lies and deception too easy. I mean, come on -- if the guy actually believes what he wrote in F. 451, then how does this NOT make sense for him to believe? But then again, the Internet's ability to edit information for forge reality has been a major boon for the population of African elephants...
Ray Bradbury, while one of the greatest living SF writers, is actually something of a technophobe. Not a luddite, as far as I know, just someone who doesn't care for technology outside the scope of fiction. He doesn't know how to drive a car (while living in LA!), and he was ... oh, I don't remember, but old when he first travelled by airplane. So most likely, he doesn't understand the internet much. Or he understands it differently.
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.
Not to mention how sad it is for a science fiction writer to not understand the importance of the Internet.
Bradbury isn't an SF writer the way Clarke, Heinlein and Asimov were. His work always had the thinnest possible skin of technology surrounding a story about people. We was one of the more humanist writers of the day and the technology in his stories often made little sense.
I remember him ranting after the 2001 movie came out that it was 90% due to Clarke and 10% to Kubrick. His friend Clarke politely told him to shut up.
I think this is just Ray being Ray. His contemparories wouldn't have acted the same way. In fact, Clarke was a strong advocate of communications technology to the end.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
How do you know our civilization's ability to produce personal computers isn't going to vanish. At least a book is good for three centuries on proper paper, is our ability to produce hard drives so robust?
"I'm not convinced a bubblejet or toner laser printer onto paper will produce a product with the robustness of a good printing press, ink, and acid free paper "
You'd be wrong then. Epson's pigment based inks are archival grade, are projected not to fade for over 100 years; I have a $99 printer that uses them (never mind it's $160 for new ink).
Brian Reid did a test where he printed two indentical pages onto (forget name of fancy acid free archival grade paper) and put one through the dishwasher. After a full cycle it looked the same as the original. He tore down darkroom after seeing this.
There are more books than you can imagine. The google books poeple say even if we ramp up increadably we won't even scratch the surface and there's zero chance all books will be digitized in our lifetime, or several lifetimes - there's that many.
Having said that I still think, and always have, that Bradbury is a moron. But am glad he's supporting libraries. They are, very very important.
Need Mercedes parts ?
most of the last five centuries of heavy western civilizations publishings ain't there, nor would it be short of a few decades of very intense labor. Don't like books, fine, show me the plans for a 800 ton double action stamping press from the mid 60s on the internet, or a six axis milling machine with 120 foot bed. That's USEFUL knowledge for keeping our civilization together. but it ain't on the web.