Steven Birkerts the Owl Has Flown

In Sven Birkerts "The Owl has flown" the title is a metaphor for the decline in insightful, deep wisdom and evocative thinking due to the advancement in technology and the subsequent changes it has brought in to peoples' life style. He stresses on the importance of reading and how it liberates the human mind increasing its interest in reading. According to Birkerts, readers are "awed and intimidated by the availability of texts, faced with the all but impossible task of discriminating among them, the reader tends to move across surfaces, skimming, hastening from one site to the next without allowing the words to resonate inwardly". In addition a marked decrease in reading is observed as people are intimidated by the volume of written information available. We are surrounded by a huge variety of things that we can read, unlike the case of the middle ages where, as Robert Darnton points out: "They had only a few books- the bible, an almanac, a devotional work or two- and they them over and over again, usually aloud in groups, so that a narrow range of traditional literature became deeply impressed on their consciousness."

Birkerts goes on to discuss what he calls a "gradual displacement of the horizontal by the vertical" when it comes to the transition reading has taken over time. He says that over time, with more material on hand the shift of the people has shifted from analysing and understanding works by an in depth and repeated study, to a merely increasing the number of the works studied. In today's world with people being bombarded with all sorts of information, they tend to give little focus on reading between the lines and understanding the concept portrayed in the writing and merely skim through the works. They find lack of time as an excuse to do so whereas they dedicate hours in the therapists office looking for the same solutions that in-depth study could provide to them.

The result: acquiring little pieces of information that come without a stable context and understanding. Birkerts goes on further to point out the growing differences in depth of knowledge between the urban and the rural person and highlights the shift in the modes of information transfer.

Steven Birkerts calls wisdom "the knowing not of facts but of truths about human nature and the processes of life." According to Birkerts, wisdom is "comprehending the whole and the relation of parts". Wisdom is essentially an extensive understanding that reaches beyond the surface of the text. Birkerts discusses the idea of resonance pointing it to be the ability to absorb a fact, configuring it with other facts and contemplating on those facts measuring its connectedness. He points out the importance of resonance and time in achieving wisdom. The relation of deep time and resonance with wisdom is pointed out by stating "no deep time, no resonance; no resonance, no wisdom. He recognizes

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