Trenchant, expansive essays on the cultural consequences of ongoing,
all-permeating technological innovation
In 1994, Sven Birkerts published The Gutenberg Elegies, his celebrated
rallying cry to resist the oncoming digital advances, especially those
that might affect the way we read literature and experience art--the
very cultural activities that make us human.
After two decades of rampant change, Birkerts has allowed a degree of
everyday digital technology into his life. He refuses to use a
smartphone, but communicates via e-mail and spends some time reading
online. In Changing the Subject, he examines the changes that he
observes in himself and others--the distraction when reading on the
screen; the loss of personal agency through reliance on GPS and one-stop
information resources; an increasing acceptance of "hive" behaviors. "An
unprecedented shift is underway," he argues, and "this transformation is
dramatically accelerated and more psychologically formative than any
previous technological innovation." He finds solace in engagement with
art, particularly literature, and he brilliantly describes the
countering energy available to us through acts of sustained attention,
even as he worries that our increasingly mediated existences are not
conducive to creativity.
It is impossible to read Changing the Subject without coming away with
a renewed sense of what is lost by our wholesale acceptance of digital
innovation and what is regained when we immerse ourselves in a good
book.
