I think it's pretty grossly incorrect to saying she was ignoring the world around her if she was swapping out one sense (hearing) with what she wanted to hear. People can do that, and sometimes choose to. I almost never walk anywhere without headphones in, because I'd rather have the soundtrack of my choice rather than whatever sounds the world happens to throw at me.
This is a fundamentally human concept, the control of one's environment. We alone among animals have the ability to exert this control and to suggest that it is somehow wrong to do so is absurd. Should we live in the wilderness and forage for food to be more aware of the world around ourselves? Why is "awareness of the world" a thing we choose to value?
Really, this is Ray Bradbury foisting his luddism and his value structure on people that have moved on from books, moved on from the slow life he idolized in Farenheit-451, and moved on from him. That woman was interacting with a human, in one of the many ways humans have invented for interacting with each other, from radio to television to film to Facebook to Twitter to Yo. Each of those are means of human interactions, and none of them are worth any less than any other.
And I think people who wear headphones in public are being somewhat rude. Guess that makes me a luddite.
And yes, some modes of human interaction are surely worth less than others. Tweeting 140 characters can't compare with sitting down with someone having a true heart to heart conversation. The former is replacing the latter.
I don't feel this form of communication-posting here-is even in the same relm as having the same discussion with someone face to face. That's not to say nobody should post on hacker news, just that it should have a healthy balance.
Either way it matters not if I share my opinion with Ray Bradbury or not. I was pointing out the author missed a lot of the themes in the book and probably didn't even read it - just heard it was a novel about book burning.
This is a fundamentally human concept, the control of one's environment. We alone among animals have the ability to exert this control and to suggest that it is somehow wrong to do so is absurd. Should we live in the wilderness and forage for food to be more aware of the world around ourselves? Why is "awareness of the world" a thing we choose to value?
Really, this is Ray Bradbury foisting his luddism and his value structure on people that have moved on from books, moved on from the slow life he idolized in Farenheit-451, and moved on from him. That woman was interacting with a human, in one of the many ways humans have invented for interacting with each other, from radio to television to film to Facebook to Twitter to Yo. Each of those are means of human interactions, and none of them are worth any less than any other.