Science Fiction writer Ray Bradbury has died aged 91
Few books (and a subsequent film) influenced my desire for knowledge in the way that Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 did. The black and white film adaptation still holds much in my memory almost 30 years later. As a youngster I’d sat up late and seen original The War of the Worlds on TV and a few months later watched the ‘madness’ of Fahrenheit 451. The book drew an even darker picture of a world in which thought control took place by denial of knowledge – a well worn path taken by religions and ruling elite alike through the millennia. To a great extent, Ray’s Martian Chronicles helped prime my brain in alignment for my future career – as a futurist! It certainly gave me an appreciation of books, reading and a thirst for knowledge.
Ray’s book ‘Fahrenheit 451’ is perhaps one of the most prescient works looking at the rise of knowledge management and knowledge curation as practised by the political elite. This ‘message management’ theme extended on Orwell’s 1984 ‘Big Brother’ by adding a more sinister layer. Where Big Brother watched your every move and provided messages for consumption, the ‘FireBrigade’ in Bradbury’s ‘451 actively sought to remove the existence of alternative knowledge sources.
In that way, Bradbury identified the wide spread practise of media manipulation not only by corporate entities, but also by Governments of all kinds who attempt to re-write history or deny it existed. Even today the mid 1960’s film adaptation stacks up as chillingly bleak yet representatively familiar of today’s times.
It is not surprising that Hollywood has not sought to remake the film for a modern audience. given tht Hollywood itself would be a likely central target of any update.
Thank you Ray; Vale Ray
Environmental Scanning (ES) is the process of paying attention to the world in which you operate in order to identify and gain a sense of potential signals of change in how your world is developing. When discussing the idea of ‘change’ we need to be clear – a potential signal of change is likely to…
Read More >When it comes to water management, there’s something of potential value that Victoria could learn from Western Australia’s weather given discussions about new dams If you have almost 60 days straight of above 30 degree days with pretty much no rain, how do you fill the dam? Well you don’t but you’ve put all of…
Read More >The natural disasters we’ve seen recently around the world have shown us much about the communities in which they’ve occurred. The images emerging from Japan, New Zealand and Australia as they’ve faced earthquakes, tsumanis, floods and fires stands on stark contrast to the mainstream media stories that suggests people of the world are not willing…
Read More >Hi everyone – a quick note to let you know that our phones lines have been down for a while now and we are working on getting them fixed. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. In the meantime, try using either our 1800 number where you can leave a message only…
Read More >ABC journalist Adam Stephen interviews Marcus Barber on the subject of GM foods and whether they might be more widely embraced as part of the global food requirements The interview (about 3& 1/2 mins) is available in MP3 format here and a link to the shorter web article is here. Some key points –…
Read More >South East Business Networks, the City of Greater Dandenong’s longest running business development program, is an exceptional avenue for learning about issues to do with Manufacturing. This week they provided one ‘out of the box’ with an excellent presentation by Professor Goran Roos, a worldclass expert on Manufacturing and currently South Australia’s Thinker in Residence.…
Read More >Today some friends are burying their father who died last week after his health took a sudden downturn. One of them, Penny got the urgent call to get to hospital. Penny is a conservative driver at the best of times and on this occasion was aiming to get through traffic as best as she could…
Read More >Cyclone Yasi heads towards Queenslands North East coast this morning with significant concerns for residents. There is potentially an added danger based on the way cylones work. Typically a cyclone needs two things – heat and water, which is why they can dissipate quickly once they head inland. However Yasi hits following a couple of…
Read More >As promised, the wash-up to my experience with the toll-road operator Eastlink and what I regard as a pretty poor approach to Customer Service. However as I am treating this is the International Year of Solutions, I’m not complaining without making suggestions for improvement, which I have done You can download the document here…
Read More >The floods are under way throughout the majority of Queensland and now into northern New South Wales and all we can do is hang on and wait to see the impact. Unfortunately it looks like the numbers of people who have lost their lives as a result is set to rise significantly beyond the 12…
Read More >