"The Owl Has Flown"

In Sven Birkerts' essay, "The Owl Has Flown," he claims that reading and writing has evidently changed over the generations. Many decades ago, people only had a handful of books that were at their disposal to read, and so they would re-read these books over and over, getting a deeper knowledge and understanding of these books, than perhaps we do today, as we have many books to read and don't go into nearly as much depth. From this, Birkerts mentioned resonance and how in order to obtain wisdom and a deeper understanding, resonance, or "deep time" is needed, which our generation is lacking compared to the past. He claims, "We are destroying deep time. Not by design, perhaps, but inadvertently. Where the electronic impulse rules, and where the psyche is conditioned to work with data, the experience of deep time is impossible." Our generation is so focused on getting as much information possible, much from the media and computers/technology, that depth is no longer applied to our reading. We no longer spend time in silence just to think and ponder. Society today is moving so much in the fast lane that "deep time," is slowly diminishing as we know it. According to Birkerts, pretty much the only places that this "deep time" can be found today are in churches and therapists offices. Personally, i cherish my deep time and don't really like to be involved in the hustle bustle of society. Of course, i enjoy spending time on facebook and watching some TV, but i must admit that i re-read things probably more often than when i read them only once. I find that when i read something only once, it's more easily forgotten than when i actually take the time to read it a second time. When i re-read, i catch information that i missed the first time and it makes more of an impact upon my person. It's like a reminder in a way. Although Birkerts' theories and ideas seem fairly agreeable, an article that i read by Clive Thompson would have said otherwise. Thompson believes that today's society is actually improving it's reading abilities by reading more breadth of literature. He insists that technology is bringing reading and literature to new levels and may even come to the same equivalent as the Renaissance! I don't really know which is better though because if you only read the same books over and over, you never inherit as much information, but you get the depth of the book, as where when you read multiple pieces of literature, you get the breadth.