From Bradbury...

In 1953, Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451. It has been categorized, so to speak, as a book about banning books. And it is. But it is also an interesting preview into the digital revolution that is ongoing around us. It is making me think more about what it is that traditional forms of writing have that digital media (arguably) doesn't have. Or needs to have.

An excerpt:

"It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the 'parlor families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not the books at all you are looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what the books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us" (82-83).

"The same infinite detail and awareness"... I might be already too converted to be able to look at this objectively, but is Bradbury through Faber (the one who is speaking in the quote above) sorting media into his own spectrum of what makes up "good" media? Just because someone doesn't take the time to recognize the infinite detail in a new media piece does that mean that it doesn't have any? Although it is true that when we read, WE get to create the world we see in our heads, while much of new media creates it for us. Better for the sender, because the receiver gets a closer approximation of the intended message, but worse for the receiver, because they don't have to exercise any creative license in their absorption of the sender's work.

Clearer messages, but less interplay of imagination. Is this part of the problem? This, for someone who is enthusiastically pro-new media, seems like a real drawback to me. Imagination, like any creative muscle, has to be exercised in order to be accessed, or it atrophies. It's a real amalgamation of thoughts, this whole new media idea, just because of some of the ideas that Bradbury explores in his novel.

If you haven't read it recently (10 years or so), give it another read. Interesting stuff.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. 1953. Ballantine Books, NY.