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Book Title

Changing the Subject

Subtitle
Art and Attention in the Internet Age
Author 1
Sven Birkerts
Body
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 email 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.

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List Price
$16.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-721-4
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Pages
Pages
272
Trim Size
Trim Size
5.5 x 8.25
Keynote
Trenchant, expansive essays on the cultural consequences of ongoing, all-permeating technological innovation

About the Author

Sven  Birkerts
Credit: Mara Birkerts
Sven Birkerts is the author of Changing the Subject and nine previous books, including The Other Walk,The Gutenberg Elegies, The Art of Time in Memoir, and My Sky Blue Trades. He is the director of the Bennington Writing Seminars, and he edits the journal AGNI, which is based at Boston University. He lives in Arlington, Massachusetts
 
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Praise

  • Changing the Subject exemplifies what makes Birkerts an extraordinary presence in American letters.”—Houston Chronicle

  • “Essential.”Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
  • “To Birkerts, art is an act of attention, framing a piece of the world through the imagination, imbuing it with meaning.”—Boston Review
  • “Birkert’s essays are important. . . . His is a much-needed voice in a conversation usually dominated by tech apologists.”The Rumpus
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