CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
May 1997, Vol. 39, No. 5
CONNECTICUT LIBRARIES
May 1997, Vol. 39, No. 5
I Come to Praise, Not to Bury
The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading In an Electronic Age,
by Sven Birkerts
A Review by Vince Juliano
"NOTHING IS CARVED IN STONE," reads the caption chiseled into the grey slab of cold, solid-looking rock sitting in front of the exhibitor's table at the Hartford Flower Show. It is a clever ad by an outfit that engraves rocks for use as garden decorations.
First I chuckle, then reflect. In The Gutenberg Elegies (Boston: Faber & Faber, 1994), Sven Birkerts declares that, "The word cut into stone carries the implicit weight of the carver's intention; ... its imperishability," (p. 155). The same word "incised in marble, scratched into mud, inscribed onto papyrus, printed onto a page, or flickered forth on a screen" carries a different meaning in each medium.
I am re-reading The Gutenberg Elegies because Richard J. Cox cited it in his article, "Taking Sides on the Future of the Book," (American Libraries, February, 1997). Birkerts had forced me to consider whether or not meaning changed with medium. You probably thought that Marshall McLuhan had settled this in the Sixties, alerting us that "the medium is the message."
McLuhan's concept proves itself best in small ways. For example, right after we master desktop publishing, we run out to find the right paper for our creations: neons for book sales, classy bordered sheets for certificates, textured greys or earth tones for official documents. I once received a fuchsia-colored diploma for attending a continuing education program. It looked so ridiculous that I didn't dare show my boss. You can say "nothing is carved in stone" to a sales rep while opening a negotiation, or scribble it next to a draft of a document. You can't chisel it into a rock, place it on your desk, and not expect people to "read" something into it.
Likewise, Birkerts contends that you cannot change from a society based on hard copy to one based on electronic media without fundamentally changing how people interpret what is communicated. Our history, our culture, our ideas on who and what we are have been "encoded" in print (p. 20). For generations, we have transmitted that understanding to our successors. They have refined it and passed it along to their heirs. When our descendants no longer read, they lose more than just the enjoyment of their literary heritage. They lose their history, their culture, and their identity.
Certainly, this can all be digitized and made available on the Net. The words would be the same, but is the message? Birkerts shouts no. Digital information is ephemeral both in form and in meaning. As the characters flicker on and off the screen, the substance also flickers. The reader expects the data to change quickly over time. This is fine when you want the weather forecast or today's Dow-Jones averages. But Birkerts feels that it does not work for items that are meant to be carved in stone, preserved on parchment, or encased in buckram. Will we feel the same about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when the only versions are electronic? I know I will not be happy the day that the only "originals" of these documents are stored on the Web server of either Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrinch!
When books were rare, the reader was highly focused, and consumed each treasure with intensity. As books became increasingly accessible, the reader spent less time on each volume because so many others competed for his attention. Our world of "electronic postmodernity," has exploded with so much data that we have lost our attention span and given up any premise of understanding. When we read, we tend to skim, covering large amounts of information as quickly as possible, but not focusing very strongly on any of it or placing much of it within any meaningful context. We read "extensively," but not "intensively," (p.72). When books were few, wisdom seemed almost within the grasp of the scholar. Today, we are embarrassed by words like "wisdom." Instead, we employ computers to "manage information."
Birkerts fears that electronic media are turning us into shallow creatures who have given up the struggle to find the answers to the questions that humankind has asked since the beginning of time: who are we? what is our purpose? Our ability to ask these kinds of questions differentiates us from any other living thing on earth, p. 31. For Birkerts, literature is the "repository of our collective speculation" on the answers to those questions. You cannot simply skim a computer-generated, hypertext abstract of the contents of this repository. You must experience it deeply and intensively through reading.
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