Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
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
He is right, its just a distraction. When my internet access goes down, I actually get something accomplished. All of our toys mean nothing. That said, I need to log onto warcraft and forget how sucky real life is.
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
Books are a bit easier to use when the power's out, or a router's down, as well. They also serve as better kindling than the Kindle, if it comes down to that, too. I think Mr. Bradbury wrote a story that touched on that, actually.
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.
So instead of an intelligent point of view you are projecting a frightened and ignorant POV onto this man. Why? Because he is old.
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?
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
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.
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.
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
I am. A lot of people are scared by things they don't understand. Why should he be any different?
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."
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?
"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
Gal darn kids and their newfangled information technology ... where's my newspaper? Hey you! Get off the grass!
>
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
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
You can read some books on "the Internet". I just had a look for a few books that were important to me at one time or another. "Big Tiger and Christian". Nope, reviews, amazon listings, but not the book. Not Tolkein's Ring Trilogy (though I could probably find a pirated version on USENET or BT). Not Rockwell Kent's illustrations. Not Jung's "Man and His Symbols". Not Reyntien's "The Art of Stained Glass". Not Minor White's "Mirrors Messages Manifestations" (even if one could find it online, the image quality would be degraded, and probably take forever to load). In fact, not most books published since the 1920s (since we now have perpetual copyright).
If you read online, you almost certainly read fewer books. When was the last time you read an entire book online (or downloaded)? (Yes, I know attention spans have been growing shorter and shorter, and while that's not entirely due to the Internet, it's almost certainly a factor.) For me, probably a month or two ago, and it was a crappy pdf scanned from a hard copy, complete with distortion in the gutter (it had many pictures that spanned pages). Even if you use a laptop or ebook reader, it's far harder to read unless lighting conditions are just right, and it's far harder to get comfortable while you're reading.
And digital media are far more ephemeral than paper. They get bit rot. They depend on access to technologies that have become obsolete, unless one continually re-records things (hardly anyone does). What's on a website may change from one day to the next, making it easier to rewrite history, whereas printed copy is frozen in time when it is printed. (That can be an advantage of digital media, but it can also be a disadvantage). Sites come and go, a significant number of the bookmarks I've accumulated yield 404 errors. I'm told that a literate Chinese can with naked eyeball alone read documents that were recorded 2000 years ago. With a computer, you're unlikely to be able to read something recorded 20 years ago (sure, I could send you an 8" floppy with the text in Displaywrite format, but you couldn't read it).
These days, I do most of my reading on the Internet. And that means I read far fewer books. Yeah, Bradbury is an old fogey, and his writing was always more poetic than scientific anyway, but I can understand why he feels as he does.
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?
My opinion of Bradbury has dropped a notch or two.
I will grant him this: There is a lot of nonsense on the internet. But there has always been a shitload of nonsense on the shelves of your average library. No library, no matter how up to date, represents the end-all, be-all pinnacle of human knowledge and wisdom. A good proportion of it is valuable, timelessly relevant observation of the human condition, and good hard historical fact. But an equal or greater amount of it is mythical nonsense and hackjob bullshit fit for reading at the beach and little else.
In the end, the most important thing people people have to realize is that they need to learn how to THINK CRITICALLY and not accept things as fact simply because they were told to believe that it was fact or that it fits their previous assumptions. They need to be ready to admit that their previous assumptions were wrong and that they can change their minds when new and better information comes along and not feel threatened in some way.
And this applies equally to a book in the library, a news report on CNN or FoxNews, the pronouncements of a government (or the protesters against that government) or the statements on a webpage. Don't believe anything right away but think about it, chew on it, digest it, analyse it, compare it, test it, and then do it all again. No matter where it came from or where you found it.
He could also be(and his depiction of the "TV room" in Fahrenheit 451 suggests he might well be) one of the people, who you'll find from time to time scattered across the spectrum, who is deeply skeptical of people's ability to respond intelligently or appropriately to the availability of massive choice.
For better or for worse, the internet is a virtually perfect medium for encasing yourself in a constant barrage of information agreeable to your current point of view and desired level of engagement. If you fall into the camp that holds that people are rational agents who, individually, can make good decisions, that is the best thing ever. If you suspect the contrary, as I am inclined to believe he does, that is by far its most unnerving feature.
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.
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
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.
Ray Bradbury is 88 years old. Odds are high enough that he has dementia that a demented point of view is about as likely as an intelligent point of view. Just because he was intelligent enough to write Fahrenheit 451 at age 33 does not mean that his brain is going to be able to keep making new memories/adapting to new concepts at age 88.
"About 13% of Americans over the age of 65 have Alzheimer's and half of those over age 85 will develop Alzheimer's -- or a closely related dementia."
http://www.isnare.com/?aid=282530&ca=Aging
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Partly for the same reason that I don't especially like the new compact, ultralight, but fuel efficient automobiles. I grew up with two tons of steel, 300 HP or more, a smooth ride, and room for a grown man to lay across the back seat. I never hit my head on the roof of a car until about 1975. There was room and comfort inside those huge old boats that I grew up with. Yes, I've adapted - today, I drive a Mazda that gets 30 mpg. It's cramped, I feel the gravel and the cracks in the road surface through the suspension, it's noisy - AND MY HEAD ALWAYS TOUCHES THE ROOF!!
We adapt as we have to. Bradbury has little need to adapt to the internet. He can stay in his comfortable niche. Some of us don't have that luxury. In a way, I almost envy him.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
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!
Find the invisible man and you'll have a power set...
"I am. A lot of people are scared by things they don't understand. Why should he be any different?"
Let's not forget that he is 89, and declining faculties go with the territory.
Instead of grumbling at change, we should be readier to admit when we are too old and scared to deal with it.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I didn't even realize Mr. Bradbury was still alive!
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."
I sympathize. I just wish the so-called bibliophiles would realize that for a good book, the content is all that matters. If I can carry around my most precious books on my Centro to read at a moment's notice, it is WORTH the inconvenience of not having the secondary stimuli of the papyral feel or the smell of the non-acid free paper volatilizing in oxygen :P. To people for whom CONTENT and the ability to read more often and multiply (in the sense of having 5-6 books going at once - yeah, I thrive on that) without lugging around a piece of ... well ... luggage (though if I had one with thousands of feet, I'd go luddite in a sec ;)), the digital age has been the advent of biblio-heaven. And I'm not talking about overpriced and unwieldy Kindles either (just a personal opinion/choice). A simple $100 Centro (that I needed for a phone anyway) and my good ol' friends are right there with me, anytime I wish. Hell, if I want portable, I'm getting something TRULY portable.
:). Since the arrival of inexpensive ebook readers that fit in a pocket, my reading has nearly tripled! This is one instance where the self-styled "bibliophiles" who keep whining endlessly about the feel and smell of paper seem more pretentious than a bunch of wine snobs. Not referring to parent - he/she brought up some really good points in favor of physical books. But y'all have seen the kind of people I'm talking about. What's amusing is that these whiners are getting younger and younger. Sheesh, youth's supposed to be adaptable - you're not old enough to throw kids off your lawn quite yet :P.
:'( Though I guess if I drop my insistence that ereaders be pocketsize, the Kindle may just have the capability to show equations well. Chances are, I'll probably break down and indulge in one a few years down the read *sigh*.
Most people won't find the following relevant but when I worked in a class 100 cleanroom for a month (14 hours a day with a lot of dead time waiting for processes to finish), no books were allowed (particulate contamination from regular paper). But guess what? Electronics, properly wiped down, were fine
Hardcovers especially, are a colossal waste of good paper, not to mention a frakking pain to carry around. I just want sooooo bad for an elegant solution to the math expression problem on handheld readers. That's about the only reason I cannot go all digital (except when I'm actually at a computer screen) - the hard sciences are pretty well screwed when it comes to portabilizing [sic] them
Lastly, and not to sound like an anti-geriatric tool, but old folks just have a lot of time and money on their hands and can afford to indulge in the pleasures (and I have never denied that aren't any) of physical books. It is simply a limiting experience in my opinion. Take the newspaper debates for instance. Isn't it nice for once to be able to just google the disgustingly ubiquitous obscurantist allusions and dime-a-dozen "important" geopolitical figures or countries or the even more pathetic string of abbreviations that pelt you in the news instead of looking at the screen like an idiot? I simply refuse to watch or read any news if it's not on the internet because my curiosity MUST be satisfied - I will not be denied answers and TVs and newspapers have none for me.
SO there! *walks away in a huff waving fisted Centro at crowd*
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.
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...
When reading large amounts of text, particularly boring text nothing beats a book. I don't see universities doing away with text books any time soon, but that's not to say libraries are the way to go. I have never even used the library I just purchase the textbooks required for my course and everything else is online.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
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.
I understand, but frankly, that is your opinion. I vastly prefer e-books, and would probably happily drop a few hundred dollars to get an ebook version of every last book I owned, as a PDF, even the books nobody seems to ever have been interested in but me. I'd much rather have the whole kit & kaboodle in one device (that I use, and backed up a few dozen other places), and only keep my hardbacks and reference books around on my bookshelf.
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
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
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--;
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.
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.
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.
Aren't libraries ran by the government and corporations?
Why are you posting as AC? They know who you are.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
What are you talking about? College is for parties, not reading books.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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.
I could write a program to make the computer do a "shhhh" sound if I'm too noisy?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
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?
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?
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.
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