Reading Response Birkerts

In his essay Birkerts suggests that writing over time has taken on many different forms all of which have had a significant impact on the written word. Over the different generations some form of writing comes into play that wasn’t as popular as before. Also to go along with the writing he also talks about reading and how that was very popular way back when. The written word and how we interpret it have changed over the centuries and this has had an impact on society. Birkerts also talks about how before the seventh century silent reading was almost unheard of, Saint Ambrose even read without moving his lips which is unbelievable to me because I have tried to and it doesn’t work out to good for me. Mennochio who was a sixteenth century miller has had some very interesting things to do with writing. Carlo Ginzburg who studied Mennochio anatomizes his intellectual universe by triangulating between Mennochio’s few books and the depositions taken at his trial for heresy. One thing that Birkerts seems to hint at is that writing has entered into a form today that isn’t good as well as reading, and that we need to realize some things, that we need to be a little more well read because of the fact that it helps us in our education. Other then these things this essay really doesn’t mean to much to me that is about all I took from it. I noticed though that the assumptions of our culture and technology seem to be evident in this piece they are the same assumptions that everyone else is making, only they are worded a little fancier.