Technology

As I have perused through interviews of Ray Bradbury online, I have learned a lot about his character and how he views the world. What captures my interest the most about Bradbury's views is how he feels about technology. To give some backdrop, Bradbury grew up during the 1920's and therefore was not suckling on technology at an early age like most people born at the end of the 20th century. He grew up surrounded by books and was not faced with the distractions of a computer. He describes his lifestyle during his youth in an article from the New York Times: "I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years" (nytimes.com). The era in which Bradbury grew up in allowed him to develop views on technology different from those of people of later generations. As an adolescent without the privilege of a computer, Bradbury spun out his stories from the keys of a typewriter. He lived through the invention of the computer and the cultural shift to its widespread use, but he chose to resist this shift and did not immerse himself in the progressing culture. Even today, as a man of 91 years old, Bradbury refuses to use a computer to type out his stories. He continues to use a typewriter. His earlier years as a man disconnected from technology shaped him into a grown man who would never become dependent upon it. His views on technology are very prevalent throughout his stories, notably in The Veldt and Fahrenheit 451, but also more subtly in many of his other works. Bradbury is very against technology and always has been. He sees the internet as a distraction and as unnecessary. I wish that I had the power that Bradbury posesses to enable myself to stay off of the computer because I spend countless hours of my life wasting away, staring at the computer screen, and I cannot escape it. I am highly appreciative of Bradbury's views.