Birkerts Warning

 In The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts, his entire argument is based on the effects of technology and coming into this new age or millennium of technology and the consequences of this. Birkerts argues that technology will come to affect the humanistic relationship with literature. On a personal level I have felt these effects on numerous occasions. I found it very difficult reading this literature and connecting with it. Is it that I am now becoming disengaged with literature due to the fact that I am engaged with technology on what I would consider an extreme level?  I am always facebooking friends, text messaging, emailing, skyping (online video chatting) as well as incorporating other forms of technology into my daily life. Birkets’s literature was hard to follow at times and when I actually became engaged with the argument I would often ask myself: Am I feeling these side-effects of technology at such an early stage? Is the consequences Birkerts warned society about taking effect on me? For instance, in “The Shadow Life of Reading” Birkerts states that “The Words on the page don’t change, but we do, and our “reading”-the experience we had over the duration of our encounter with the book- has the plasticity of any memory” (p.96). I am afraid that my reading experience has transformed into something that I may not particularly favor. Birkets’s literature was not in fact difficult literature it was just harder for me as a reader to become involved with it.  Also, In “The Shadow Life of Reading” he goes on to state “For reading is a conversion, a turning of codes into contents” (p.97). Is it that my mental conversion tools have been weakened by the lustrous glow of the monitor on my Mac book pro? Whatever the cause may be I admit to missing the amount of time I use to spend reading and the amount of time I use to spend being creative.

The warnings throughout The Gutenberg Elegies scare me due to the fact that technology is already playing its role into my daily life. I could not even imagine myself performing at a sufficient or necessary rate without it. I have placed all emphasis pertaining to both my academic and social life on the shoulders of technological advancements. During the course of our class my English professor challenged our class to go a day without technology including cellular devices, laptop/computer, etc. This had to be one of the most difficult situations I have ever faced in my life, without technology I felt worthless, I felt so disconnected from the world to the point where I anxiously waited until midnight to be reunited with “my life”. The only thing I can do is expect that the outcome of this heavy reliance on technology and being brought in the digital age will bare heavy consequences on not only me individually but also the society that I live in.

Ultimately I believe that literature is not dead but it is in fact being neglected and dying. The relationship society once had with literature has been neglected to move with the rate of technology.  Society once moved at a slow pace and now humans are trying to move at the rapid pace of technology and somewhere down the line we will have to face these consequences. I believe that this book serves as a warning to these consequences daring society to “Refuse-it” Coda (p.229).