Reading Response 3

Having Knowledge to Gain Wisdom
The essay “The Owl Has Flown,” by Sven Birkerts, he explains his theory of how wisdom, depth, and resonance all work together to form an understanding of a concept. He gives examples throughout the essay to compare and relate to. Such as; in the early centuries, books were scarce and were reread many times to get the full understanding of the book. Books were even memorized to get the full depth and resonance of them, having wisdom was very important and significant. It was important to dig deeper into the depth of the material and past the facts to have a full understanding of what was being read. Not just to graze over it and accept it. This way of thinking can also be applied to authentic works of art, or a ballet performance; it stops the horizontal plane and starts the lateral plane of the depth into it. This requires hard work, and with today’s technology, we have become lazy and rely on other books or computers to do the work for us.
A passage Birkerts uses: “In our culture, access is not a problem, but proliferation is. And the reading act is necessarily different than it was in its early day. The reader tends to move across surfaces, skimming, hastening from one site to the next without allowing the words to resonate inwardly. The inscription is light but it covers vast territories: quantity is elevated over quality. The result is that we know countless more “bits” of information both important and trivial, than our ancestors. We know them without a stable sense of context, for where the field is that vast all schemes must be seen as provisional.” How I understand this: Birkerts is saying; that with all the increased amount of technology and books available, we should be analyzing them more deeply and asking questions as to why and how they came upon this information, and if indeed it is true information. Then give it time to be absorbed and to sink in before going ahead to the next topic. By rushing thru information you are getting small bits of information and not the whole picture. It is temporary information that we will not be stored to remember later.
I consider this passage a key part of the essay, because it is explaining the use of modern technology and how to make better use of it. By taking time to evaluate the information you are putting into play the use of; depth, wisdom, and resonance to gain more knowledge. It is making a claim about today’s technology with all the advancements we should be wiser than we are. This relates to me: as I find myself skimming over the information and taking it is, and I don’t slow down long enough to really consider what they are saying is actually of truth and where their resources came from.
After reading Birkert’s essay, it makes me question Andrea Lunsford’s study of how student’s writing has improved with modern technology advancement. Are these students skimming over the information for their assignments? Are they digging into the information to get depth, wisdom, and resonance for what they are writing about? Lunsford could argue that they are, since there are so many sources to retrieve their information from, and it is more easily assessable for their use.