The Owl has Flown Resonse by Ian Barbour

Ian Barbour
English 100 A
Anna Wolf
January 24st 2010

The Owl Has Flown Reading Response

In Birkert's article “The Owl has Flown” Birkert argues that the fundamentals of reading has changed over the ages. He wants his readers to believe that reading has had a “gradual displacement of the vertical by the horizontal.” In other words he wants his audience to understand that he believes that in the past reading worked in the manner that they would read the same texts over and over which would achieve a deep understanding of the text, this being vertical reading. However he believes this is unlike modern day horizontal reading where we have a huge scope of things to read, but we generally will just read something once or even just glimpse a reading for a second, resulting in a much more shallow understanding of what we are reading. This quote is important to his article because it puts his ideas together to state them in a way that is understandable yet is adding a lot to his argument. It was on the second page since he had just got done stating all of his arguments and the quote wrapped up his argument in a metaphorical expression making it easy for his audience to get his true meaning. Birkerts’s article and thoughts on this new revolution of reading and writing is not necessarily contradicting the more positive articles on the same issue. The article by Clive Thompson for example argues that the new writing is good for the world and does not touch on whether or not there is a lack of depth in our reading compared to our ancestors, just that writing on a shallow level does in fact make you better at writing on a more deep level. However Birkert does not argue the new style of writing is bad for the world or that it will make us worse at writing essays, he is simply stating it's different and perhaps will make us perceive writing in a more shallow manor , but in his view it has it's positives and negatives. However Clive thompson's article might answer some of the questions Birkert was asking about in his article, for example The Owl has Flown has a lot of questions for example he wasn't sure how this shallowness would end up effecting the people and perhaps if he were to read Clive Thompsons article he would have a much more positive outlook on this new “horizontal reading.” Overall I think The Owl has Flown was a good article and it was interesting to read an article with this attitude on the subject after reading the other more positive outlooks.