reading response 3

In Sven Birkerts essay, “The Owl has Flown”, he talks about how people have lost there depth, wisdom, and resonance for reading. It is because in today’s modern society there is so much technology that removes the fact of even reading. Most people in today’s society just skim through a reading and barely understand what they are reading and this is why so many people don’t have the depth of what they read. Today, so many students use spark notes to find out what happens in the book vs. really reading the book themselves. In the old times they use to value reading because there wasn’t much to read and news took time to get to them. While today it is a the touch of a finger tip for people to read a book online or even find out what is going on in the world.

“It has now become the birthright of anyone who owns a television set. The modern viewer is a cosmopolitan at one remove, at least potentially. He has a window on the whole world, is positioned, no matter how poor or well-to-do, to receive virtually the same infinite stream of data as every other viewer. There is almost nothing in common between the villager conning his book of scriptures by lantern-light and the contemporary apartment dweller riffling the pages of a newspaper while attending to live televised reports Bosina.” (Pg. 31 Second Paragraph) I think that Sven Birkerts is trying to say is that in today’s society it is so common that every human owns a television set no matter how poor or well of they are. They get to receive they information from all around the world, and it doesn’t matter who you are. That it doesn’t even compare to the way that people use to do it in the olden times.

This passage is found on page 31 the second paragraph down. I believe it fits in with the essay because he talks over and over how today’s technology is ruining our way of understanding things in depth. So he mentions that every human is born with a television set, poor or wealthy. The tie between a villager reading with a lamp and a person watching TV in his apartment. This fits in with the whole essay because he says that people have lost there depth, wisdom, and resonance for reading. Well watching television is a way for skimming through commercials and only get half of what is happening or even watching a news report might only give you what the people want to hear. Birkets says that wisdom is gained through digging deeper in the facts and not just reading them at surface levels. I believe he is trying to get the claim across that people need to get past just looking and skimming through text, but look in depth into the facts. In getting past the facts and going depth with the reading is the true way to gain deeper wisdom about the text you are reading. Also, Birkerts wants people to recognize the shift from the vertical way to the new horozitonal way of reading in society. This response actually reminds me of Clive Thompson’s article, “The New Literacy”, how John Sutherland tries to say that technology is not good for young writers today. While at the same time technology is helping spread the news faster to society and maybe to some it helps people write. However Birkets says that technology is making society lose there wisdom.