I find the argument that we merely “skim” when reading to be somewhat true. When Birkerts says that we have text that surrounds us everywhere that we glance at and ignore, I think he is making a valid statement. Quite often we pass billboards or advertisements without stopping to think of the meaning it is trying to convey or the relevance to our own lives. This can be compared to the engagement a book has with it’s reader that technology or other forms of literature lack. What they lack is the ability for the reader to escape into a story that has more meaning to them than a random website of useless facts. The quote ” For how we receive information bears vitally on the ways we experience and interpret reality.” on page 72 I think says it best. When we are taking in so much information randomly from many different sources, it is going to have a different effect on our reality, than it would if it were coming from a book. A book is a single piece of literature with meaning. Our minds can expand when we have to sit and think about what we are reading and gradually understand the message a book is conveying as one reads. I also love the quote that says, “The explosion of data-along with general secularization and the collapse of what the theorists call the “master narratives” has all but destroyed the premise of understandability.” on page 75. I think it explains that with all of this information that bombards us on a daily basis, we are not taking in any of it, nor are we trying to find any meaning or understanding in it. We are “managing” the information rather than comprehending it.
