A review by danchibnall
The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age by Sven Birkerts

3.0

The first 1/3 of this book is beautiful. The author takes his time explaining how books have changed his life and how books impact us on a daily basis. He talks about his idea of "deep time" which is time that we don't know is passing because we are so enmeshed with our books. After the first 1/3 of the book, though, he kind of goes downhill. The next 2/3 of the book are a pretentious and pedantic verbal abuse of electronic technology and high-minded literary criticism. It's interesting and informative, but for the most part I feel like he is giving up on the idea of electronic technology helping us learn and change. Of course I see technology as being a type of demon too, in that it can absorb us into itself and we become part of some horrible cyclic machine that never lets us outside. However, I believe it's important to have a balance of "deep time" and "electronic time" in one's life. Too much of one leaves us blind to the other side of life.