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.'"
God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Funny)
Who are you? Who's talking? Are you in the air somewhere? I'm confused!!!
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically, the internet is the largest library of information ever known to man. To dismiss it only shows his inability to truly grasp it.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's more useful information on the Internet? I think not.
While there is plenty useful information on the Internet, a lot of the useful stuff you find there comes from primary sources (printed or digital) not easily found on the public Internet.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason for a book not found on the internet is people like Mr. Bradburry.
Why his book isn't on the net?
Because he didn't want it.
What can i say about this?
MEH. Your wish.
Eventually books will vanish, just like stone tablets did.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Well, as the number of computers dwindles from the billions to the millions and eventually the thousands, perhaps someone would be kind enough to hit 'Print' before things wind all the way down.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Laugh if you want, but keeping digital data is hard. Really hard. Once you've printed a book on acid-free paper with good quality ink, you can pretty much assume it'll still be readable in a hundred years. The lifetime of most computer media is measured in years, not decades. And most printouts fade quickly, because they're done on laser paper, which doesn't last very long.
So I wouldn't accuse Mr. Bradbury of being senile just yet. I agree he's a curmudgeon, but we need curmudgeons to keep us honest.
OBTW... Get off my lawn!
Punk. :')
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, it's entirely possible to retain digital data over long periods of time. It's not impossible. It's just substantially more difficult than retaining printed media, for many reasons. Let me count the ways:
1) Hardware changes. This past spring I was involved in a project to archive source code and executable files for a late '90s "smart toy" game called Redbeard's Pirate Quest, in which the player controlled the game by moving figurines equipped with RFID tags around the deck of a plastic pirate ship.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Speaking as a film and digital photographer, with a sometimes-career in digitizing archival and library special collections, I do love Epson's archival inks. However your operative word there is "projected". We know for a fact that traditional paper and ink lasts over 500 years when cared for. In the next 500 years do you even think we'll be using ink or paper or optical discs for our day to day lives? But those books will still be there. Two-thousand years of human history will still be there, unless
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Given that many libraries use electronic sliding doors I would say Google has better redundancy in place for power failures.
Which has higher availability/uptime?
Which will survive trial by fire?
Which has backups of all their data?
Which doesn't have homeless bums sleeping on the steps?
Which does not give you papercuts?
Which does not require leaving the basement?
Which does not carry the risk of human interaction?
I think I made my point....
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
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'll echo this sentiment w/ a reference to A Canticle for Leibowitz [wikipedia.org], by Walter Miller Jr., as well as noting that although I have documents stored on 720k, three and a half inch floppies within arm's reach, I've got no similarly handy way way to retrieve those docs.
Obviously the fact that they're orphaned on a media for which I have no required hardware is my own fault, but it does serve as an example to illustrate the temporal nature of contemporary storage. I have a hardcover book from the 1920's in great shape, very readable and physically robust; yet even a printout of my fourth year honours thesis (one of the docs stored on the aforementioned disks) would be in rough shape by now had I printed it using the 9-pin dot matrix printer I had 20 years ago.
I can guarantee that there will be *no* post-apocalyptic need for anything I cranked out in 1989. But I take Miller's central question to heart - how to preserve man's scientific knowledge so that we're not doomed to rediscover electricity (or whatever) again and again? Forever is a long, long time.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Give it a few decades, please?
How long the stone tablets held out?
How long handwritten codexes held out?
Just because books won't disappear tomorrow, it is no reason not to do the format shift before it is too late.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Open wikipedia in a tabbed browser. Go to a topic you're moderately interested in. Open every hyperlink you think you might like in a new tab. After about an hour, count up the tabs you have. If they're fewer than 10, something's very wrong with your sense of curiosity.
Make a list of the topics, then go to the library and lookup appropriate physical books that describe the same subjects. See how much you can learn by reading those while allotting yourself only the same amount of time you give yourself to read wikipedia. Compare how much you learn.
yes, but (Score:3, Insightful)
There is much to be said for your way of reading,
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Just one example, there are many handbooks for the design, estimating, scheduling, and construction of buildings, roads and bridges that are not to be found on the internet. I have a shelf of those, and a good library will have them too. I have references for other fields for which internet resources are very scant except for popular general overview. Sure, CADD/CAE/CAM software can do some things, but not all. Most of man's knowledge is not on the internet, and it's tragic that young people think that because many popular things of the last ten years are there then most things are there.
Re:God Bless Him (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Hmmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Farenheit 451 required a visionary. But I think that Bradbury simply lost his vision. It's not about the books. It's about the minds BEHIND the books.
What to say about sites like fictionpress.net? What about webcomics with a deep story? What about Anime music videos?
The internet is a primordial soup for art and culture. It doesn't matter if it's in the air, or the tubes, or whatever. People communicate with the internet. If the internet is a waste of time, that's because WE have turned it into a waste of time (mostly because media cartels are enforcing so many copyright policies that the internet is being stripped away from creativity world wide).
Oh, and by the way... by the way... I wonder what Bradbury would think of his books being available on thepiratebay.
http://thepiratebay.org/search/ray+bradbury/0/99/0 [thepiratebay.org]
Not real anymore? Ray, I used to admire you, but you're losing touch with reality.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The internet is indeed a great gestational pool for new work. It's also a huge distraction, and a difficult place to concentrate. And once the new work is done, it's a dangerous place for it to live, both because it might be vandalized, and because the place where it is stored might go away. Sure, if everybody makes a copy it might work out, but people only copy what's popular and what's known. A system that depends on repeated copying over millennia to preserve a work for millennia is very vulnerable. Can you imagine getting something like the dead sea scrolls off of a two-thousand-year-old hard drive?
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
But the thing is, the internet is censorable from a central location. (Well, several central locations, actually, but the point stands.)
Remember what W. Smith's job was in 1984? Now it's not necessarily. The information can be altered in situ without anyone having any awareness of it. Web pages are a re-writable medium, so you can't tell what's been censored, and what's just been updated. The fact that it isn't the same today as yesterday doesn't prove anything. And the wayback machine is no protection. They'll remove things on request.
That's a part of the message that *I* took away from Fahrenheit 451.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Two of the ideas behind Fahrenheit 451 is that books should be preserved, and one way to preserve them is in the minds of people (literally, word-for-word memorization). So, how is putting books on the Internet, where they can be copied virtually infinitely, a bad thing? And furthermore, putting a book on the Internet is like the ultimate preservation technique. Would that there had been some sort of Internet where books could be stored when the library of Alexandria burned!
F451 was misunderstood. I think Ray is more concerned with the balkanization of society where narrow-minded groups decide which book is valuable and which isn't. The Internet provides a perfect venue for t self-indulgent 'mind feedback'. A moon conspiracy enthusiast can spend all day on the web digging up research demonstrating the moon conspiracy, chatting only with other believers. A communist can carefully and efficiently filter the web to demonstrate that communism works. A library is too heavy, slow and solid for this to easily happen. Try to remove all books of a particular political flavor from a library, and you'll have to read nearly every book at multiple levels. Is "The Grapes of Wrath" pro socialist? Pro-communist? Is "Moby Dick" an environmentalist novel? Are modern biology or astronomy textbooks anti-Christian? You quickly run into the case where the whole library must be burned. The internet has enough noise that no one would notice 'the Firemen' pulling out content with depth beyond the shrill political zeitgeist. Right wingers can spend all day on foxnews.com, left wingers can happy choose from hundreds of news sources which feed them what they believe.
Ray has a point here. I've been working on a book which explains the problem with putting all our eggs in 'the Net' more clearly than I can explain here. Think of it this way, 30 years ago you could talk to your neighbor about what was on last night and chances are, you would've seen the same "All in the Family" or whatever. Now we have hundreds of channels on TV and on the internet, at least one 'channel' per individual. We can create our own reality and then find somewhere on the internet that will back it up. It is very fortunate that a library can't do that. Another thing a library can't do is make content disappear without anyone noticing.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
F451 was misunderstood. I think Ray is more concerned with the balkanization of society where narrow-minded groups decide which book is valuable and which isn't.
No, it's pretty clear it's about removing books altogether.
Wall screens replace books, people pick their political candidates on their looks. There's really not a hint allusion of balkanization in the book at all.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:4, Insightful)
If I had bought the hard copy of the newspaper, I would at least have proof that there was in fact an earlier version of the story, but relying on the net is foolish.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone so quick to dismiss the greatest communication tool man has yet devised as nothing but 'air' deserves harsh criticism, regardless of past accomplishments.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention how sad it is for a science fiction writer to not understand the importance of the Internet
He didn't say it wasn't important. He said it sucked and he preferred libraries. For him, perhaps, the whole human face to face side of libraries, the visible comradery in a culture of learning and self improvement, outweighs the utility of search.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:5, Funny)
I'd really like to make some lofty comment on the grandiosity of the internet, and what a great driving force of intellectual progress it is, but I would be doing so on slashdot. I'm not sure the universe could take the irony.
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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
Re:Hmmm.. (Score:5, Funny)
When 900 years old you reach, sound as smart you will not. Hm?
The Veldt (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
To truly appreciate the writings of Bradbury and others, one must remember that his education preceded World War 2. No man had yet "walked" in space. No man had yet exceeded the speed of sound. No atomic weapons. No lasers, except in a few fantasy stories. Fairies and elves were as likely to be proven real, as a man walking on the moon.
Some of the greatest stories written as late as 1960 were based on hypothesis and premises that have since been proven wrong.
And, of course, Bradbury isn't strictly a "s
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would expect a science fiction writer to have a decent enough understanding that the information is the important thing, not the medium in which it is stored.
Nope... Not all SF writers write technical SF.
Books are heavy, clumsy things. They say the Library of Congress is about ten terabytes of information. That could be stored in a briefcase, instead of taking up over 500 miles of shelf space, in three separate buildings.
Great. If people like you ever have anything to say regarding the LoC, I'll turn up with 100TB of hard disk space and trade it for as many books and manuscripts as I can carry. Let's see. A Gutenberg Bible in reasonable condition. A rought draft of something called the Declaration of Independence. And some other nice stuff worth having. Of course, I will provide high quality scans of everything I take with me - because, according to you, the medium is irrelevant
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly not an idiot. Out of his element, yes, but absolutely NOT an idiot. I'm almost two decades younger than Bradbury, but I can sympathize with him. The internet can confuse even the young bright boys - just start a discussion on internet security, and see how many really smart young people get lost real fast.
Books. I find myself reading more and more of my favorites on the LCD screen, but books have something that the computer will never have. Books are solid, and real - the pixels on my screen are fleeting. A solid book and a cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter's night, listening to the storm blow outside......
Oh well, either you remember it and love it, or you don't.
But, don't call the old dude an idiot. Bradbury may not rank with Asimov and Clarke, but he a bright enough star in the SciFi and fantasy firmament. Never an idiot.
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:God Bless Him (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree; what an idiot. There's more useful, educational information instantly available on the internet than any library in the world will ever hold. Just because he's too old and blind to find anything other than Yahoo games doesn't mean that the internet is distracting and meaningless
The library organizes information. It attempts to separate the meaningful from the meaningless. It is outward looking - not inward looking.
In following the threads here on the Thomas case -
some things become painfully obvious:
The geek doesn't understand the most basic distinctions between civil and criminal law.
He doesn't understand evidence, the burden of proof.
He doesn't know how a jury is selected.
He doesn't understand the roles played by the plaintiff and defendant, the judge, the jury, the court of appeals.
It is easier for him to find refuge in talk of conspiracies, in talk of corruption.
The geek has access to infinite information - or at least thinks he does.
But mostly he listens to himself. He tunes out dissenting voices. He doesn't ask the right questions - and again and again he makes the same mistakes.
I'm sure Wikipedia alone has orders of magnitude more educational reading material than you could read going to the library three times a week for generations.
But why are you sure?
The geek likes big numbers. The geek trusts big numbers. The number of apps in his distro's repository. The number of pages in his Wiki....
Re: (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 s
I wouldn't be so quick to that. (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:I wouldn't be so quick to that. (Score:4, Insightful)
> Also, there's really not anything that approaches the value of a good textbook available on line.
????
All it takes is a single suitable PDF on some guys laptop plugged into his mother's cable modem to make that claim bogus.
Just because you can't seem to find your way out of the trashy romance novels, it doesn't mean that a particular "library" is complete trash.
The net just makes it cheaper and easier for ANYONE to publish.
Re:I wouldn't be so quick to that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because you can't seem to find your way out of the trashy romance novels, it doesn't mean that a particular "library" is complete trash.
That's rather the point of a library, is it not. The internet is not a library, because it does not have a librarian. The idea of a library is to have good material in it for a community to share in. The choices that the library makes are as much of a statement of humanity as anything else. When you use the internet, and filter noise yourself, you aren't getting the same level of service.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked at the library.
They had a bunch of romance novels. Yeah, they're smut, but they're also donated in droves and worth about 50 cents. We didn't even bother to catalog them - they just got the 'romance' sticker. If I remember correctly they didn't even get security tags put on them.
When people checked them out, we just tallied the amount on a piece of paper, they didn't even go onto that person's record in any way, shape, or form. Ultimately, we didn't even care if the books came back, although we did
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Libraries were never about pretense of the Librarian or even
of the local community. They were about having a large
collection of published works when acquiring suck works was a
highly expensive prospect.
Whining about the web or the internet is much like whining about
TV. It's very popular among the pretensious but all it really
demonstrates is that the whiners never really bothered.
Modern technology makes searching and filtering rediculously easy.
Beyond access to more information than you would have the money
to
Re:I wouldn't be so quick to that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wanted to add that while the signal to noise ratio my be high, the signal is so incredibly strong that the noise is easy to filter out.
I could break down your arguments by saying things like, "Why rely solely on a book? If so inclined I could probably contact a few reputable PERL devs online and get real feedback and samples."
Books are great and have their place, but they pale very quickly when compared to the possibilities the internet offers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because you can't seem to find your way out of the trashy romance novels, it doesn't mean that a particular "library" is complete trash.
The whole point of the library is that the noise tends to be filtered for you. Thus, the internet is a dump, not a library.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"Technically, the internet is the largest library of information ever known to man. To dismiss it only shows his inability to truly grasp it."
While some of that sentiment is expressed in hist post he has an overarching point: On the internet it's hard to get stuff done because you're just a mouseclick away from distractions (youtube, email, music, videogames, etc, etc)
When you go to a library there is much less potential for distraction and so you focus on what you originally intended to go there for.
While
Re:God Bless Him (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a lot to be said for libraries. Bradbury may not like it, but these days one of the most vital things libraries do is provide free Internet access to the poor, as well as the elderly and disabled who may require the assistance of a librarian.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Big internet a holic, but there's always something about halls of books.
Have to agree on this. Yes, information is much easier to find on the internet, and there is a lot more information on the internet than you can ever find in a single library (I've looked through all the libraries in my area for a physics GRE prep book and came up dry, but found information easily through Google). Yet nevertheless, reading a book is just much easier - having something physical, tangible, can be taken anywhere somehow just makes reading much much easier. I suppose that this is only true in s
Internet (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [raybradbury.ru]) they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
It's a shame how foolish and ignorant his remarks are.
Re:Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Gutenberg printing press and the Xerox machine makes changes easy.
OTOH, being able to instantaneously copy something to every outpost
of human existence (including a server that may be sitting on Mars)
makes it a lot harder to completely destroy something.
HELL, there's controversy over which version of Metropolis is the real one and that was a movie made 100 years ago.
Re:Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
The point of Fahrenheit 451, like the point of Brave New World before it, is that people choose an easy lie over complicated truth. They prefer their entertainment and their illusions.
When I look at the internet, I see a lot of illusions, but very little that approaches the factual power of a good book. And I am a content publisher who has made the choice to put future writings into books, because I see how the internet has been progressively turning into television since 1996.
I will still love those resources, including Slashdot, which are useful. But I'll pick a real encyclopedia over Wikipedia, ignore those forums and blogs, and pick up a quality textbook for factual information.
Re:Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To make an obvious point: You can ban books, you can burn books, but try to remove a literary work from the Internet and see how far you get.
Do it surreptitiously so as to avoid the Streisand effect and you may actually succeed, depending on the specific literary work in question.
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Nor a Heinlein or Clarke.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"It's a shame how foolish and ignorant his remarks are."
On the other hand it's wonderful how wise and insightful his remarks are. Face it, the vast majority of time people spend on the internet is wasted in stupid, distracting ways. All that interaction and people in contact with one another? For what? Mostly so people can write abusive and idiotic things in forums? (Go ahead and include this one in there if you like).
Ray may be a bit over the top, but in an age where attention spans are roughly half t
Location, location, location! (Score:5, Funny)
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!
And in other news, old man shouts at cloud (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Oh really? (Score:2, Troll)
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.
So like... (Score:4, Funny)
How do you like L. Ron Hubbard's work then?
Re: (Score:2)
Nowhere in that quote does it say he's a Republican. He was just upset that Moore didn't talk with him about appropriating the title of his book.
Not that I much care what the demented old geezer thinks.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And in other news, old man shouts at cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans weren't so bad way back when they believed in small gov't and fiscal responsibility. Even if one believed that gov't had a role to play in society beyond simply maintaining the courts and providing for defense, one could still get along with, and even appreciate the perspective of, the old Republicans. A lot of old folk who call themselves Republicans may not be whatever the fuck today's Republicans are.
Wow (Score:2)
"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 [wikipedia.org]
I grew up on newspapers & magazines, but I'm coming to grips with the fact that someday those will be effectively gone, too.
To hell with Ray Bradbury. (Score:4, Funny)
We don't need libraries anymore. Let's just burn them all down.
The truth (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:The truth (Score:5, Funny)
Loves the Internet, Hates Libraries: Most Ignorant Teenagers
Hates the Internet, Hates Librarites: MPAA
give him a break (Score:2)
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!
Books are not real! (Score:5, Funny)
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
A series of tubes in the air? (Score:5, Funny)
So the Internet is a series of tubes in the air somewhere...?
OMG... the Internet is in the Mushroom Kingdom!
"In the air?" Come on! (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
People talk about reading books online or on a compute
Bradbury is out of touch with reality (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Sort of related (Score:4, Funny)
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.
It's all "in the air" (Score:2)
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, id
The summary missed a bit. (Score:2)
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.
Sure it's a distraction but (Score:2)
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.
Trying not to sound condescending... (Score:2)
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 probl
Libraries (Score:2)
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
Re:Libraries (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry for the typo in the second sentence. My girlfriend sat down in her bra and panties in front of the air conditioner as I was writing that. Yes, that's just as distracting for us as for you, guys. -_-
I Respect Mr. Bradbury but... (Score:2)
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
Libraries are public, websites are (usually) not (Score:2, Interesting)
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
LEARN WITH B.O.O.K. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Is there ONLY one thing to be said about books? (Score:2)
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, frien
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some important tradeoffs between paper and digital media. I'm assuming we're talking about original works here and that e.g. transcribing a newpaper article doesn't count.
* Books aren't just rugged, they're also non-ephemeral in a way that web sites aren't. Much of the efficiency of the internet comes from cheap communication with centralized storage. But this means that whoever controls the storage has the power to change history. You can't change a million books in people's houses but old web pa
How real is the knowledge in your head? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Need a termometer (Score:5, Funny)
Mr. Bradbury then spoke feelingly about... (Score:5, Funny)
... 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.
Re:Why does he like libraries? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (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:Why does he like libraries? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.