Areisha's Reading Response to Birkerts

For my in-class essay I chose to focus on one of the main ideas in Clive Thompson's article "The New Literacy." The idea was that technology is ruining how young people today write. It appears to be a topic that is heatedly debated these days. Is texting and IMing really affecting how students compose academic literature? Thompson, without saying so directly, is aligning himself with those who say no, technology is not ruining how young people write and is actually giving them the chance to write more. He argues that previous generations never really had the opportunity to construct more than a paragraph once they were out of school.
According to Sven Birkerts, "Fewer and fewer people, it seems, have the leisure or inclination to undertake [true reading]....Unless we are practiced, we do not just crack the covers and slip into an alternate world....We do not get swept up as readily as we might be by the big-screen excitements of film...."(Pg 34 of 'The Owl Has Flown') Birkerts point is that it's not just serious writing that is in danger of becoming obsolete, it's also serious reading. People these days are so concerned with getting information quickly and in summarized form that few actually stop to sit down and enjoy the pleasure of reading a five hundred word book from front to back. Instead they go to movie theatres to get their entertainment in quick form then rush off to the next thing.
　
After reading Birkerts quote I realized I never really stopped to consider how technology might be affecting how people read. As a book lover it always surprises me when I hear others say they don't read much. It saddens me to know that people no longer have the time to indulge in fantasy or adventure in paper-back form. It just makes me realize how lucky I am that I have resources such as the school and library to take advantage of.