“The choice presented in The Gutenberg Elegies, between embrace and skepticism, hardly seems like a choice anymore: the new generation is born swaddled in the digital world’s many arms.”
– Mairead Small Staid
How wonderfully written, and scarily true.
Staid discusses the evolution of reading through the lens of Birkerts’ The Gutenberg Elegies, and the almost apocalyptic future of literature he prophesied over two decades ago.
Her eloquently drawn parallels to today are a must-read, particularly in light of how fast technology only continues to grow and advance in our time.
Please see the link below to the rest of her piece:
“What I do when I look at Twitter is less akin to reading a book than to the encounter I have with a recipe’s instructions or the fine print of a receipt: I’m taking in information, not enlightenment.” Mairead Small Staid explores the work of Sven Birkerts and reading in our digital age.
Matilda Dancing 