The average TV commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred and twenty half-second clips in it, or one-third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking.
Interpretation
The quote illustrates how modern advertisements use rapid imagery to overwhelm viewers, replacing deep thought with sensory stimulation.
Ray Bradbury critiques the nature of television advertising, highlighting how commercials, filled with numerous quick cuts, distract viewers and diminish their capacity for critical thinking. He suggests that rather than prompting thoughtful engagement, these sensory bombardments serve as a shortcut that undermines meaningful reflection.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of media on society.
I've written about 2,000 short stories; I've only published 300 and I feel I'm still learning. Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. Ray Bradbury, 1967 interview (Doing the Math - that means for every story he sold, he wrote six "un-publishable" ones. Keep typing!)
I never went to college, so I went to the library.
There must be something in books, something we canβt imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You donβt stay for nothing.
I think the sun is a flower, That blooms for just one hour.
The first thing a writer should be is - excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. Without such vigor, he might as well be out picking peaches or digging ditches; God knows it'd be better for his health.
You can't try to do things; you simply must do them.
Think about technological float: it took centuries for the wheel to gain universal acceptance. Now any microchip device can be in use around the world in weeks.
I think it is inevitable that people program poorly. Training will not substantially help matters. We have to learn to live with it.
A good programming language is a conceptual universe for thinking about programming.
We used to have lots of questions to which there were no answers. Now, with the computer, there are lots of answers to which we haven't thought up questions.
The advance of technology is based on making it fit in so that you don't really even notice it, so it's part of everyday life.
We need to re-create boundaries. When you carry a digital gadget that creates a virtual link to the office, you need to create a virtual boundary that didn't exist before.
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