Summary Of Into The Electronic Millennium By Sven Birkerts

Picture the world without a printing press. The schoolrooms would only have a touch of books on their shelves, you couldn't interpret the computer, actually, there would be no computer and countless other inventions without the printing press. With books, people drew in facts and knowledge in order to create and think, which eventually led to the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and many other historical events. Unhampered by distance or national borderlines scientists, scholars, archeologists could share with one another their findings, which were published in books, for the future generations, to come. Mark Twain once wrote "What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg. Everything can be traced to this source, but we are bound to bring him homage...for the bad that his colossal invention has brought about is overshadowed a thousand times by the good with which mankind has been

On the question of of Internet changing the way we read and think, Carr claims that through the continuous usage of the internet, not only him but his friends and acquintences whom are literary majors have also been gradually experiencing a loss in

At one time our world was strictly an oral culture. We recited stories, kept records stored in our memories. When writing was invented did we suddenly stop speaking to one another or remembering facts? Of course not. At any given moment we can recall, from memory, names, dates, and places that we have committed to memory. When the printing press was invented, did we stop writing by hand? Again, no. So, why would we stop reading a book just because we have access to the World Wide Web? All previous information technologies of language, rhetoric, writing and printing are technological in themselves (Landow 218). These technologies—writing, speaking,

“Societies have always been shaped by media for communication, it is impossible to understand social and cultural change without knowledge of the workings of media even the alphabet is a technology that is absorbed by young children to learn to speak through communication. The digital age is changing the way we use our brains. Rather than store important facts, today we are more likely to store information about how to find those facts where a particular file is located on the computer, how to find an important webpage again.

However, as Innis and Macluhan both highlighted, it is its social implications, such as the emergence of monopolies of knowledge, centralised authorities and uneven distribution of power rather than the aural or written nature that should be the focus of studying oral and written media (Innis, 1990). Because written media requires the capability of reading which is relatively demanding compared with oral media since it takes years to develop, a hierarchy of knowledge is very likely to be created and with it, centralization of power (ibid.). This group of elites tend to dominate social institutions and this dominance tends to further strengthen their status, such as during the Roman Empire when reading was a privileged ability (Hadrill, 1988). Apart from this, in modern times, mechanization resulting from technologies should also take responsibility for monopolies of knowledge as well as the disappearance of innovative ideas by causing “complexity and confusion” (Innis, 1990). This has been, as Innis pointed out, a major problem in Western civilisations today (ibid.). Responsively, many believe that the prevalent use of the Internet allows for free thinking as well as a meaningful way for individuals to gain knowledge. On the one hand, it is a fact that abundant information can be equally accessed and shared on the Internet. The costs of distributing information using the

The controversy between print and electronic books has been going on since electronic print became easily accessible. People struggle everyday between this decision, some think in a way they are betraying themselves by choosing electronic because they have used print for so long. Everyone is allowed to have their opinion on which they prefer and should not be judged for choosing one over another. The older generations didn 't even have the option of choosing an electronic version of a book, so it can seem foreign to them at times. Why would they ever pick something that is so new and only accessible on an electronic device? What if the electronic device suddenly stopped working and you were out of a book? There are both positives and negatives to both sides of this controversy that will determine which side people will pick when deciding what they are going to read.

Growing up in the twenty first century has led me to be almost completely reliant on technology; I use my phone to direct me to and from various destinations, to communicate, and to just pass the time. From computer games to television, I have always been immersed in various types of technology. Even as a child, whenever I went to socialize with my friends, we would mostly just center ourselves around some sort of technology and rarely find ourselves in the outdoors. Due to this constant concentration on technology, I found myself never reading books until my mother dragged me to the public library.

Technology influences everything we do and even books have not been left untouched. Today you can pick up one device that contains all your books. Some of the cons of carrying your books around are that they are too heavy to carry around, they use a natural resource during production, they are hard to see in bad lighting and for older people there’s some strain on the eyes, and printed books are more expensive than electronic versions. (Richardson 2017) Let's face it, mostly everyone has a phone or a tablet of some sort, so why not use them productively. Books are so much cheaper digitally, some are even free. Some people will argue that the digital versions will put a glare on the screen and put a strain on your eyes, but some

In my life, I have gone from reading “learn to read” books, to picture books, to children’s novels, to young adult novels, to scholarly reading and research, to adult novels, and finally to the wild wild west of the internet. When I was in those first few stages nobody was reading everything on the internet, but before I knew it, the internet and social media along with it had exploded faster than I could have ever imagined. By the time I

“The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur” (A.N Whitehead). Marshall Mcluhan, the author of The Medium is the Massage, would agree to this and add that electronic technology is “reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life” (McLuhan, 8). He would argue that society has always been shaped by the medium of the media affecting everything from government to family, leaving no part of us untouched. Using the alphabet for example, is a technology which is absorbed at a very early age in a completely unaware manner. “Words and the meaning of words predispose the child to think and act automatically in certain ways” (McLuhan, 8). McLuhan would add that electronic technology does this in the exact same way, as it encourages unification, involvement, and commitment. As we grow to learn more about each other, “[w]e have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other” (McLuhan, 24). If we don’t conform McLuhan believes we will eventually enter into an “Age of Anxiety”, where we “... do today’s job with yesterday’s tools - with yesterday’s concepts” (McLuhan, 9). This causes us to live in a rear view mirror society, and McLuhan says one must use tools of the present to make sense of the present. George Orwell author of 1984 would have a lot to say about this particular topic for instance, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the

Similarly to the society described by Fahrenheit 451, nowadays we see technology, mostly led by consumerism, entertaining in the same way as seashells in Fahrenheit 45. Home cinema systems may be seen as similar to the parlour walls and electronic literature is replacing the traditional paperback. There is no more need to feel the scent of an old book, whereas everything has been digitalized and hard copy books and literature are replaced with electronic

As the twenty-first century, or the “Knowledge Age” (Gilbert 28), continues to unfold, there is a shift of ideology in the people of this era. Instead of allowing the schools to educate the future generations with knowledge that they will need outside of school, it is rather the school teaching the students “how to work out…solutions for themselves” (Gilbert 30), as the new generations have access to a plethora of methods to obtain the information outside of the classroom. This concept can be credited to the development of technology and computers for such easy access. Computers have only been around for the past seventy years, life before then, people would find the information they needed in a book or in written documents. The mass production of printed paper continues to compete with computers. Mass production of printed paper gave the blueprint for computers but most importantly gave much of society access to knowledge. An invention that came about in around 1440 AD, still impacts life like it did from day one, hence why it should be considered the greatest or most important event in history. The invention of the pressing press has changed the way people maintain records, encourage scholarly research, interpret the Bible for themselves, and the ability spread new ideas quicker just name to name to few benefits that occurred upon the creation of the press that can still be seen today.

The development of the printing press (in Europe in the mid-Fifteenth Century) allowed for the first time the widespread and low cost dissemination of written material. Reading was no longer the sole preserve of educated elite; the ramifications of that

The present society of our world now thrives on mankind’s advancement in technology. According to Munkittrick (2011) People still believe mankind to be experiencing the information age. While in fact mankind is now starting to experience it’s fifth and arguably most intense revolution in technology. Which brings us into the Hybrid age in which technology may no longer be viewed as what will be the next great invention. But instead as a rare technological view that will further be a part of mankind’s lives in culture, communication, art and most importantly our society. Computers rule over our present society and redefines the many ways in which people function in their everyday lives. Communication, information and even religious beliefs

What would we do without technology? In the day and age we live in, everywhere you look, technology surrounds us and is a pivotal part of our everyday lives. Growing up in a time of such technological advances, reading and writing using technology, was a changing and constant present part of my learning. From cell phones to personal laptops, new programs and ever changing technology have slowly invaded our lives and with it, came different ways to be exposed to reading and writing.