Stevens Memorial Library (North Andover)

Changing the subject, art and attention in the Internet age, Sven Birkerts

eng

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

Changing the subject

898419567

Sven Birkerts

art and attention in the Internet age

"In 1994, Sven Birkerts published The Gutenberg elegies, his celebrated rallying cry to resist the oncoming digital advances, especially those that might affect the way we read literature and experience art. Over the next two decades of rampant change, Birkerts has reluctantly allowed a degree of everyday digital technology into his life... In Changing the subject, he examines the changes that he has observed in himself and others-- the distraction induced by reading on the screen; the loss of personal agency through reliance on GPS and one-stop information resources; an increasing acceptance of "hive" behaviors. 'An unprecedented shift is underway, " he argues, and "this transformation is dramatically accelerated and more psychologically formative than any previous technological innovation.' He finds solace in engagement with art, particularly literature, and contemplates the countering energies available to us through acts of sustained attention, even as he worries that our increasingly mediated existences are a threat to creativity."--Page 4 of cover

On or about -- The lint of the material -- Serendipity -- The room and the elephant -- You are what you click -- The hive life -- "I'll take Hell in a handbasket for five hundred, Alex" -- "It's not because I'm a cranky Luddite, I swear" -- André Kertész on reading -- Notebook : reading in a digital age -- Bolaño summer : a reading journal -- It wants to find you -- The Salieri syndrome : envy and attachment -- Idleness -- Emerson's "The poet" : a circling -- The still point -- Attending the dragonfly