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.
There are websites that any government wants to block. The truth about the Internet is that it's extremely hard to block anything - extremely hard. You'll never get perfect blocking.
The thing about the Internet is that you can write something... for a very narrow audience and make a living at it.
It's hard to pay attention these days because of multiple affects of the information technology nowadays. You tend to develop a faster, speedier mind, but I don't think it's necessarily broader or smarter.
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.
Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads.
Technology to wipe out truth is now available. Not everybody can afford it but it's available. When the cost comes down, look out!
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