It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that technological advancements and societal pressures, rather than government mandates, drove significant changes in society.
Ray Bradbury highlights how the evolution of technology and the influence of social dynamics can lead to transformative changes without the need for government intervention. He appreciates the natural progression of societal shifts driven by innovation and collective action, suggesting a sense of optimism and gratitude for such organic developments.
In practice
In a discussion about how technology has shaped modern life, you could reference this quote to illustrate that change often comes from grassroots movements rather than top-down mandates.
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 can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t 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.
The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.
People are so bad at driving cars that computers don't have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you're like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.
A design is intuitive when people just know what to do and they don’t have to go through any training to get there When a design is not intuitive, our attention moves away from what we’re trying to accomplish to how we can get the interface to accomplish what we want.
If we want users to like our software we should design it to behave like a likeable person: respectful, generous and helpful.
The key questions will be: Are you good at working with intelligent machines or not? Are your skills a complement to the skills of the computer, or is the computer doing better without you? Worst of all, are you competing against the computer?
Amateurs hack systems, professionals hack people.
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