A Literary Legend Fights for a Ventura County Library | Hacker News Reader

A Literary Legend Fights for a Ventura County Library

nytimes.com

17 pointsalexjmann9 comments

I grew up in Ventura, maybe a mile from this library and I went there pretty often as a kid. It has been in danger of shutting down and has had fewer open hours for probably over a decade now - it's really pretty sad.

I agree that libraries are incredibly important, but it's disheartening that Mr. Bradbury dislikes colleges, universities and the internet so much, which have likely done so much more to educate people on the whole recently than the traditional local library system. In fact, the largest use of our local library here in the SF Bay area that I see now is the computer room. Free access to the internet for people who can't afford a computer or don't have a quiet place to use one is really enabling. That is in general far more useful to people than the book selections, which have been overshadowed by Borders and Barnes and Nobles, where you can often find a larger and more up to date selection and can sit and read them as well.

Mr. Bradbury says:

“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.’

That's really sad. Why fight for a few hundred people to have access to books like yours for free, but turn down the chance for millions to be able to read it? How many more people can have access to "Fahrenheit 451" with a local shared $200 computer and a free version on the internet as opposed to paying for printing out a copy and shipping them to public libraries? Multiply that by every important book in the world and the costs of the first scenario hardly change and the costs of the second rise almost linearly.

I hope my old library survives, but I really hope that his views do not.

Bradbury has had a distrust of the purely-virtual forever. Check out, for example, his 1951 short story "The Veldt" from "The Illustrated Man" collection. (You can find the story text online or easily read in a library or bookstore -- it's only 19 paperback pages.)

Also from 1951, check out the story "The Pedestrian".

Because written text is still so important in our online communications -- TV hasn't become the final media -- the future isn't quite as he'd feared. But there's still wisdom in his warnings.

In particular, watch out for anyone who says, "Now that we have the Kindle, we can use all these old books as kindling!"

It is a shame when a library closes. I find they (at least in their traditional incarnation) are a place where I can really concentrate, something that's so difficult almost anywhere else.

Some of my fondest memories from university were of studying in the library. And also looking at random books in there, unrelated to my course.

The literary legend is Ray Bradbury, who seems to have become an appealing old eccentric.

The "appealing" part is something new. I saw him speak about 15-20 years ago, and he really skeeved me out-- his view of technology was so naively optimistic as to be frightening.

I can't argue with the library thing, though. More power to him.

It's interesting when you look at his thoughts towards the television in Fahrenheit 451, which was the new media, or the future of news, at the time. Strikingly similar to his current distaste for the "noise" on the internet. His loyalty to literature has not changed.

Do you mean naively pessimistic instead of optimistic?

The interview indicates that he has a negative view towards the use of technology to replace traditional media.

That was my impression as well.

That's interesting. Can you give more details? It's kind of ironic given what he says in this interview.

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