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Error 451: The Government Has Censored This Content
TaoPhoenix:
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2012/06/IC-IG-Letter.pdf
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/80854
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/nsa-spied/
TaoPhoenix:
One point that I want to bring up... F451 wasn't about censorship, and Bradbury himself would get wroth when confronted with the fact that people thought it was about the same.
-wraith808 (June 23, 2012, 04:02 PM)
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It's been a while, though I might have it in my library - so what was it about? What else were the Firemen doing burning books if it wasn't censorship?
wraith808:
http://www.laweekly.com/2007-05-31/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted/
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.
His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day’s L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.
“Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.” He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship. He’s now bucking the widespread conventional wisdom with a video clip on his Web site (http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html), titled “Bradbury on censorship/television.”
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rgdot:
I confess I had no idea, if indeed that's how he felt. Because to me that changes a lot, makes him look a lot like one of those who automatically assumes something new is bad. For example Kindle -and the like - have made book reading more accessible, hipper and one can argue easier. Another example, if you just complain about TV being filled with Jersey Shore type material instead of doing your part in making sure the ratings for better stuff doesn't increase you have achieved little.
wraith808:
If indeed? That was from an interview with the man himself, with direct quotes at times. And, he had a point, truthfully. And he did his part- he wasn't a Luddite. He just had valid concerns that I think have materialized. We live in a world obsessed with instant gratification at no cost in critical thinking or focus of purpose and thought. Technology has undeniable benefits. But with that benefit comes drawbacks and a deeper long term cost that I don't think is adequately addressed or readily apparent.
HE SAYS THE CULPRIT in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.
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Bread and circuses.
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