Keynote
Trenchant, expansive essays on the cultural consequences of ongoing, all-permeating technological innovation
Book Title
Changing the Subject
Subtitle
Art and Attention in the Internet Age
Cover Image
- “Sven Birkerts has remained a prolific and significant voice in literary and cultural criticism.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
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.
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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About the Author
Credit: Mara Birkerts
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
