Ray Bradbury Loves Libraries, Hates the Internet 600
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.'"
Re:Why does he like libraries? (Score:2, Informative)
So instead of an intelligent point of view you are projecting a frightened and ignorant POV onto this man. Why? Because he is old.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Informative)
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Informative)
'I agree; what an idiot.'
The really idiotic thing would be to take one quote out of context and assume this represents the world view of a very thoughtful writer. It's pretty clear from what he's said elsewhere, as in 'Bradbury on the Internet':
http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html [raybradbury.com]
that he recognises the net's value as an information resource and commercial tool, and relishes the irony of using it to communicate his own criticism of the medium. His main concern is the danger of people 'playing their lives away with too many toys' by wasting enormous amounts of time on the trivial, a criticism that extends to the output of the other mass media, and which any reader of 'Fahrenheit 451' will understand.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:2, Informative)
To be fair, the guy was so dense that he wrote a book about how awesome books are compared to television. The fact is, he will be remembered for something he did by accident. He didn't intend to write a book about censorship, and he denies that the book is about censorship.
That book? Fahrenheit 451 [wikipedia.org].
And I quote [laweekly.com]:
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:3, Informative)
I think I would agree with his point, though:
* a library is a place where you find books 'by chance', standing near the book you are looking for, but it may still catch your eye. A google search only gives you whatever your search terms give you, anything 'like' the stuff you're looking for will not be there, if it doesn't match the keywords you're looking for.
* thanks to SEO guys, looking up '-insertrandomarticle- specs' finds *loads* of pages saying 'reviews, specs, infos about -insertrandomarticle-', the page you're actually looking for is not even on the first page, because guys peddling the product made sure their 'search-ratings' make them appear higher up. (Yes, to me, google's search results are beginning to fail me -- but not to fret, if another search engine should ever 'upstage' them, it will only be a matter of time before SEO will make it *less* usable, too... (Note, before the flames come back - I'm saying it's becoming more difficult to find relevant pages for everyday items because of excessive SEO optimised pages -- I'm not saying it would be 'unusable').
* In a library, the librarians build the index and order the books accordingly, so you will find information grouped, and noone interferes with this index on a regular basis (excepting the occasional idiot putting a book back in the wrong place).
* In a library, you're not constantly staring at your email inbox or other distractions. Your phone is turned off / silent, and if you need to talk to someone go out so you're not distracting anyone else -- a library is a place where distractions are being minimised, and people violating the 'quiet'/'undistracted' nature of a library are generally 'frowned upon', to say the least.
* On the internet, distractions are ever present - being that emails, twitter messages, IM, or constant links from one document to the next and to the next and to the next, each ever less to do with what you started off with, but still entertaining enough to make you click them anyway. In a library, there are 'links' between books - usually the 'bibliography' part of a book, but sometimes mentioned in footnotes -- but since it requires you to put down your book and go and find the 'linked' book yourself, you think twice about whether the look up that reference, or try without it first. On the internet, more often than not, the easy temptation to click on a link and looking at the resulting page interrupts your workflow.
Personally, I'm quite fond of the internet, was never much of a library-person, but I can see where Bradbury is coming from. And, personally, I'm cutting down on some of the stuff I did follow up on 'too much' for my own good - e.g. rss2email, which is nice if you want to stay on top of the current news, but in most cases, I can wait for the evening news on the telly; or look at some newspage when I'm on a break -- I no longer want my work interrupted with those constant news updates...
Of course, I can turn them off - but it also feels wrong doing it, as my own curiousity is now constantly hunting for whatever else is new, whatever else happened, ...
While 12-13 years ago, I totally loved finding a job where we had internet access on our workstations, now I'd rather like one where I wouldn't have it, I'm sure it would boost my overall productivity.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:3, Informative)
I agree; what an idiot. There's more useful [mit.edu], educational [youtube.com] information [wikipedia.org] instantly available on the internet than any library in the world will ever hold.
A simple question: I've seen basically everybody access Wikipedia, and a large fraction of the internet users I know have used Youtube... but I've never seen anyone use MITs Open Course Ware. Do you people have any success stories with that?
I only tried once, and the material was not useful for what I wanted to learn (programming, it seems MITs courses are/were far different from the rest of the world. I will try to learn different paradigms someday...)
BTW, I just visited it again, and I'm glad to see some courses are starting to be translated, and the site is far better than what it was when I first visited.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:2, Informative)
How was it out of context? Is he not railing against the Internet?
How do you propose that this will happen? Why would everyone willingly go back to a pre-Internet era?