Reading Response "The Owl Has Flown"

Recently in class I wrote an essay about how not only is technology influencing the way students write today, but the people the students are writing to are influencing the way they write as well. Also that students are more willing to about writing about real world issues that will be considered by their audience rather than just academic essays that are only read in order to be graded.

In Sven Birkerts essay, “The Owl Has Flown” he speaks a lot about wisdom. Birkerts states on page 32 and 33, “…we no longer accept the possibility of assembling a complete picture…we direct our energies to managing information.” What Birkerts is trying to explain in this quote is that in order to be wise we can not just focus on the massive explosion of data that is being circulated everyday, but the whole picture in how that data is related to the aspects of our lives. And that people today are losing sight of the wisdom they have due to all the different ways to receive data, for example, technological changes.

This relates to my essay because when students write to their professors, they are most likely just focusing on their perfect punctuation and grammar, and not the whole meaning of what they are trying to express through their writing. The students are mainly focused on how they write instead of what they are writing because they worry about the grade they will be getting. Just the way that people forget to pay attention to the bigger picture of life instead of the information that is being spread every minute of every day.

Also how the changes in technology are influencing aspects of students lives. Birkerts also states on page 33, “The computer, our high-speed, accessing, storing, and sorting tool, appears as a godsend. It increasingly determines what kind of information we are willing to traffic in; if something cannot be written in code and transmitted, it cannot be important.” Birkerts is basically saying how technology is such an important part of the lives of the people today. People think they need computers or some sort of technology to be able to express something, which is not true.
Overall, I didn’t realize how the massive amounts of texts that surrounds us everyday and how they distract us from looking at the bigger picture of life. This changes the way I see things because now I can make a conscious change in trying to focus on the bigger picture of all the aspects of life, not just the small details.