If Ray Bradbury Has a fear of technology why does he havea website and message board? O Bradbury your such a character!

I agree Gallagher Roolz! Maybe a fellow Bradbury Buff can sort this out for us. I mean...don't get me wrong.....i love Ray Bradbury...and I love the internet!! I don't know what to do. ;(

Yea i feel like Im betraying him. Lets analyze this. What would Brabury do?

This is not actually Ray's website, although it's all about him. He does not have a computer. This is a site for and by his fans.

[This message has been edited by lmskipper (edited 10-21-2003).]

does he have a fear of technology?


the internet is an evolution in communication, and no matter what i'm told about the negative aspects of technology, i can never let it outweigh the almost unimaginable benefits i know it brings.
http://www.frinkism.com/article.asp

The website is by his publisher, not him. He doesn't read it.

I don't think he is afraid of technology per se, I think there is concern that it is creating a kind of social structure that reduces our truly human interaction. I have a similar concern, although I've gotten more comfortable with chats and bulletin boards. There is an impersonality that is developed when our interaction with other humans is exclusively through machines. There is something tactile that is a necessary part of human interaction that is not met via electronic communications.

I notice in chat rooms, for example, that communication is often very abbreviated. Longer ideas and "real" interactions about ideas are not there. How are you? Fine. What's up? Nothing. Homework okay? Yes. Most chat's have limitations of the length of individual posts -- limiting the kind of real exchanges required to truly get to know others. The interaction is ethereal. Unless you copy your chats and paste them into an email or a Word document, they vanish the minute you sign off. When you see someone, you have touch, sound, smell, etc., whereas on a computer, that personal development is structurally impossible.

Are we fully human when we are isolated behind monitors and keyboards? Are relationships fully developed when there is not tacticity involved?

I agree there are advantages to these technologies. We have a forum here where anyone in the world can share ideas and help each other. This is good. But it does not create a psychological wholeness that comes from direct, tactile human interaction.

I don't mean to speak for him, but this is my guess.

Well, i think, Bradbury is just too old to accept such things as computer & internet.

But as for entire question, remember, that he spoke not only about negative in progress, but also about positives (I sing the body electric, powerhouse). The question is not in bad technologies but in bad using of them...

I think we can simply pay no attention to that fact... we're together, and that is fine. Internet helps us to study Ray, and that is fine too... What's more?

This is not just a fan site, it is THE official Ray Bradbury website, maintained by his publisher, and here I prepare to rat a bit on Ray myself. I've sent him printouts of some of the best posts from the more interesting discussions here--no comment. When I've tried to talk to him about the website, his attitude is not one of being against such a site but resistance to acknowledging that there IS such a site. When Mr. Dark told him he was "Mr. Dark on the message board," no acknowledgement or reaction. What the CAUSE of that resistance, is source for speculation. It could be his longtime natural suspicion of technology. Someone who knows him told me he has a "rant" on chat rooms. I don't know what it is, but I could guess, and it's obviously not complimentary. It could be an older person's resistance to change, or a busy person's lack of interest in things in which they don't participate. Perhaps some brave soul will venture to ask him, or some VERY brave soul, if ever in the vicinity of both Ray and a computer, will venture to log onto the site and record his reaction to it?

From Ray Bradbury site: http://www.spaceagecity.com/bradbury/books.htm

Topics of interest~
COMPUTERS & THE INTERNET:

Bill Gates and his partners are flimflamming America. (1995)

I don't understand this whole thing about computers and the superhighway. Who wants to be in touch with all of those people? (Brown Daily Herald, March 24, 1995.)


Who do you want to talk to? All those morons who are living across the world somewhere? You don't even want to talk to them at home. (On the topic of Internet chat rooms)


Video games are a waste of time for men with nothing else to do. Real brains don't do that. On occasion? Sure. As relaxation? Great. But not full time -- And a lot of people are doing that. And while they're doing that, I'll go ahead and write another novel. (Salon.com, August 29, 2001)

There is no more forward thinking person than Ray Bradbury, whom I have named The First Martian, in honor of his works that brought most of us to think of Mars as a place to be, rather than just a fact to know about. Other authors wrote of the technolgy necessary to get us to Mars and other off-planet destinations. Ray wrote about the problems we will encouter as humans when we get there. Technology without humanity is just better tools. The job of living can always be accomplished in the old manner, but better tools make the daily job of being human, of communicating with each other, easier. When we have the chips embedded in our heads that will allow each to instantly translate the other's language, communication will be easier, the barriers will become lower, enabling us to better understand each other. That is what technology can do. It cannot make the stranger become a friend. Only the humanity of each of us can reach across and make the connection that results in understanding that we are all on the same little planet in an immense universe and we must learn to tolerate each other. Unchecked technology will result in disaster. Our humanity must be proffered and secured and technolgy can make that easier, but new technology remains only a tool set. I believe that is the power of Ray's stories, that they addressed the human problems, not the "New Technology". I know that is why I love him and his stories. I can cry after reading a Ray Bradbury story. I can marvel at the immagination of other authors who can "See" into the future and predict new technology, but I cannot shed tears for the technolgy. How the technology is to be used to better Mankind in a hopeful new world can do that for me. I think Ray is just happy with his familiar tool set and sees no reason to upgrade if they work for his purposes, which they obviously do.

[This message has been edited by patrask (edited 10-22-2003).]

Thanks for the quotes, which were about what I expected. I guess opinions or attitudes depend a lot on where you're coming from. Those who said the telephone was just a fad or a luxury most people would never want or need were proven wrong. Nowadays even cell phones are saving lives. I would be sorry to think of Ray being so narrow-minded as to be unaware of or opposed to everything about the internet. There is an acknowledgement, though, that what can prove of great benefit in the right hands can be a great nuisance, or worse, in the wrong ones. The telephone certainly does open up the possibility of many more distractions and interruptions by idiots, and now, so does the internet. Another important word: as a child Ray moved from a city larger than some people's counties, near a very large city (Chicago) to a huge metropolis (Los Angeles) where he had every opportunity to connect with scores of creative, talented, intelligent people, as well as the requisite ubiquitous idiots and numbskulls. I maintain that people in that position CAN'T understand the plight of those living in remote regions, such as rural America, where, until the internet was invented, the ONLY intelligent conversation came from books, which, when you'd read them, there was no one to discuss them with! Explaining the difference is rather like in "All Summer in a Day," trying to explain the sun to kids who were born and raised in nothing but rain. Bradbury DOES demonstrate good understanding of the concept of isolation, which makes him a fine choice for readers in such conditions, and he does have a good point in that a lot of people taking the time to go online have the time BECAUSE they happen to be idiots who aren't good at a lot of other things, but I just question whether SOME people take things such as intelligent contact so for granted that they don't understand other people's need to seek it out, even in the admittedly unlikely environment of the internet.

patrask: Loved your comments.

I agree with Dandelion that the internet opens up intellectual communities to persons who are geographically isolated. For me, this bulletin board has allowed me to have discussions about Ray with people from around the world -- persons, for the most part, who are intelligent and well-read. The internet has been good for me in a lot of ways.

Nevertheless, I see Ray's position. He is a writer, and needs to be writing. When he says he'd rather write books, I think he indirectly indicates that one of his "problems" with the internet is that it tends to be rather ethereal. Books last, internet sites come and go. There's a permanance to books that is not really matched by the internet.

While he is right to ackowledge that there is a lot of waste on the internet (I've read that anywhere from 20 - 40 percent of the internet is porn), but there is a lot of good stuff out there/here, also.

Henry Thoreau, in commenting ("Walden") on the new telegraph connection between England and America, said something to the effect that the new technology of communication doesn't really accomplish much if all we do with it is gossip.

I do think Ray tends to focus on the bad side of the internet. I think some of this is just that he is getting older. Not that he is inflexible, or unwilling to learn; but that he may have a sense that his productive time is finite, and he wants to produce while he can -- rather than spending time learning a new technology that may, or may not, benefit him.

GallahgerRoolz & Bradbury_Buff,
Don't sweat it, don't feel torn, don't feel like you're betraying Mr. Bradbury. Just don't betray yourself. No one, not even Mr. Bradbury, expects you to be just like Ray Bradbury or to follow him like a disciple. Be yourself and follow your own interests and what you approve of. You being you and participating here doesn't offend Ray Bradbury or any of us here - so enjoy.

Dandy: Your final comment (above) offers a whole new interpretation of the classic quote, "No man is an island!" -J. Donne

And this from RB-
in Current Biography: "I have often been misquoted as disliking "science." I would like to be quoted as saying I think science is a glove, so much depends upon what kind of hand is put into it. The hand of man himself can be good or bad. I have nothing against the "glove," only the hand. A story like "The World the Children Made" is a protest not at science, but at the way we use science."



[This message has been edited by fjpalumbo (edited 10-23-2003).]

When I spoke to Ray, he more or less defined genius as using your own talent to pursue your own vision by the best means apparent to you. He didn't place one talent or ability above another, which is REALLY impressive considering his own vast achievements.