In the article, "The Owl Has Flown", Sven Birkerts explains that we lost our sense of depth and comprehending because of all the access that we have to written materials. Birkerts qoute, "Newspapers, magazines, brochures,, advertisements and labels surrounds us everywhere-surrounds us, indeed, to the point of having turned our waking environment into a palimpsest of texts to be read, glanced, at or ignored. . . We are experiencing in our time a loss of depth - a loss that is, of the very paradigm of depth."
I agree on some of the points that Birkerts gave; although, I disagree on some details too. When he pointed out that people right now skim through their readings and doesn't comprehend, I actually agree on that. By skimming the books instead of actually reading it properly, it gives the readers the facts about the book but doesn't give them depth of it. He tells how people in the earliest days read books and finds the depth it because books were rare and expensive. And this may be one reason why people before reread books more compared today, the access to written materials weren't enough and were expensive. In that statement, I believe that just because we don't reread books doesn't mean that we loss our depth and sense of wisdom. The books during the early days before all these technologies came were supposed to be interpreted so that the readers can understand it. Authors during the earliest days are known to be one of the wise people and reading their books needs wisdom and comprehension. One factor that I also believe why people before reads books with depth and rereads them over and over, is that people before don't really have more responsibilities that we have now. Birkerts also states that wisdom is the not only knowing the real facts but the truths about life and human nature. He believes that today wisdom is getting manipulated because of all these technologies and datas that we have. We don't think like the way people before because we don't try to understand and comprehend the material.
Today, our access to written materials is so much that sometimes we don't even try use them. Although Birkerts accusations about how our reading differs than the earliest days are in some ways true. We take our time in reading them but we don't necessarily read them over and over because books today are in no need of interpretation. Not all books are like that but most books are. Harry Potter and other books are written with some depth on it but it doesn't necessarily take a very wise person to understand it. Books today are written in a way that it is easier for us to understand the text and get the real meaning of it. I also believe that people today have more responsibilities than people have back in the day it is not practical for us to reread books over and over or memorize every text on it unless it is a school related material. Birkerts have proven his point when he said that the people in the early days are more knowledgeable and wise because of the way we read, but it is not true when he said we loss our sense of depth just because we skim or doesn't take more time to read a certain book or text. We didn't lose it, we just haven't found it yet.
