I think you're just down on him because he was supportive of Bush, and subsequently overly dismissive of his other comments. I personally still found his remarks relevant. I certainly didn't follow from the article that he couldn't tell the difference btwn pinball and video games, just that he was as dismissive as one as of the other ... besides, ask any woman, video games *are* 'male ego crap.' I love 'em, but I still have enough sense to realize that. And for whatever it's worth, I think he's totally right, Clinton was a shithead, and not just because of his sexual proclivities.

Cory finds it sad that this seminal science fiction writer couldn’t tell the difference between a pinball machine and “an immersive massively multiplayer videogame.” It's not that he couldn't tell the difference. That misses Ray’s point. Ray follows up with something like “you go on and play those video games. I’ll write another novel in the meantime.” He was saying that playing video games is ultimately a time-suck just like pinball, and really no more edifying. To a man who places such a premium on teaching a new generation to read and write, this is really the only view to take.

That doesn't excuse his ignorance of the power of the internet to foster his goals, though.

JohnR, I'm a Canadian. I don't really keep track of who supported whom in your funny little two-party "elections." I had never heard that about Bradbury.

I'm disappointed that Bradbury -- who's stock in trade has always been reflecting back the pop culture zeitgeist of his day with a marvellous funhouse mirror -- professes, boasts and displays a profound ignorance and disregard for today's transformative technologies.

Look, I've written three books in the past twelve months, as well as innumerable articles, blurbs, reviews, short-stories and so on. It's ridiculous to assert that using the Internet and writing science fiction are mutually exclusive activities.

To me, Bradbury doesn't come across as an iconoclast in the interview, he sounds like a crank with hardening of the attitudes.

The idea that this genius, this god-among-writers (this is NOT hyperbole, I think he's one of the greatest writers of the last century) can't distinguish between a pinball machine and the global culture of immersive multiplayer gamers is profoundly sad.

I'm not saying he should use the Internet all the time or anything, but to discount it as "marketing hype by computer vendors" is jaw-dropping cluelessness of the first water.

Well, Cory, Bradbury's presidential pref was mentioned in the article, and this blog does have general liberal tendancies (in my no-doubt skewed worldview) so I just jumped to what seemed to me to be an obvious conclusion. Sorry about goading you into criticizing my twice-removed 'representative democracy.'

In Bradbury's defense, he *is* 81 years old, and given your own assessment of his body of work (genius, god-among-writers), I should think he's worthy of a little--oh, what's the word?--respect. So the total significance of the internet may be lost on him ... that doesn't detract an iota from the legacy of work he's left us. That is something the Salon article was at pains to remind us of, but you seemed to have missed in your comments, in my opinion.

Do you think the internet will be relevant fifty years from now? We take TV for granted, and, as one of the premiere forms of media, it is already about 15 or 20 years into parodying itself, both consciously and unconsciously. I'm trying to say, we take it less seriously than we once did, and therefore it loses significance. Eventually, I think it might be absorbed somehow as an aspect of the internet.

I think the same thing will most likely happen to the internet itself: it will broaden, reshape itself, become routine. Ultimately the internet will likely be supplanted by some newer, even more immersive form of media, tho still used by millions for a few decades thereafter.

In short, perhaps Bradbury is just taking a really broad view of the significance of the 'net, a big multimedia flash-in-the-pan.

In any event, I did enjoy reading the Salon article, so I do appreciate your posting it for us.

Just because he's a god doesn't mean you can't make an observation on his opinions.

In a funny piece of serendipity, I just read a new short story of his in _Asimov's_. He uses the term 'roadster' to describe a car. I haven't seen that word since Nancy Drew became sharecropped.

He -is- a god-of-a-writer (major in the formation of most of us as writers), but he's also demonstrating in interviews and his work, that he is a bit out of touch. But I don't think it's age that does it.

Damon Knight is just as old as Bradbury and he's up to the second in current pop culture/the net/etc. He doesn't necessarily like it all, but he understands it.

I don't mean to split hairs with you Pat, but 'roadster' is quite a popular term nowadays for two seater convertibles.
The Toyota MR2, Honda S2000, Porsche Boxster, BMW Z series, Audi TT, and others that I can't think of are all called roadsters. However, Bradbury probably was not aware of this when he used the word.

my two cents

JohnR, thanks for the reply. You're right, I do have a left-wing bias. I was, after all, raised by Trotskists in a nice, well-organized social democracy.

I have boundless respect for Bradbury's body of work, and if anything, that respect fuels my horror at his cavalier attitude towards modern tech. The car, the TV, the phone -- they've all become invisible through ubiquity, which only makes their effect more profound. I think that the Internet will still be relevant in a century, though probably as invisible as the aforementioned technologies. It's for that reason that I'm shocked to hear Bradbury dismiss its significance.

Being 81 is an explanation but not an excuse. In addition to Damon Knight (thanks, Pat!) there are other notable people who's touch with the modern world has not slipped with age, from Elmore Leonard to my grandmother's boyfriend, Rusty, who, at 79 just bought his third PC and is doggedly performing interesting tricks with the Palm he inherited from me.

I'm glad you dug the link.