Sven Birkerts is a writer and critic who clearly states his opposition to electronic publishing by repeatedly assigning the only "system" (his term) capable of reproducing and disseminating knowledge to be the world of paperbound books, the libraries that contain them, and the solitary individuals that write them. In Birkerts’ estimation, real knowledge, learning, discipline, and appreciation of reading are severely limited—if not prevented-- in a strictly electronic medium. This is from his reply to his critic Wen Stephenson in Exchange: The Gutenburg Elegies:

     " …the sense of presence that literature seeks to create is primarily – not exclusively -- focused on the private and social circumstance of the individual, and…this sense is fundamentally at odds with the electronic system that would store and present it. […] the world that brings us the Web is already at a significant remove from the worlds conjured to exist in a book."

     Birkerts repeatedly presents us with the idea that "words on the screen" come to us in a fundamentally different way than "words on the page."

    [Words on the screen] "keep us actively aware of the quasi-public  transparency out of which they emerge." "..they are arriving…from a   place…that carries complex collective associations. To read from a screen—even if one is simple scrolling Walden—is to occupy a cognitive environment that is very different from that which you occupy  when reading a book."

     And:

     "Subjective individualism is on the wane, [ …and…] given the larger dynamics of a circuit-driven mass society, the tendency is more likely to intensify than to abate."

     The fact that Birkerts argues so strongly against this--indeed fears this-- puts him at stark odds with many others who would celebrate the implications for equality (both of opportunity and perhaps material conditions) that would seem inherent in the leveling of hierarchies. Birkerts has no problem with authority and hierarchy. He assumes we cannot live—or at least learn-- without some form of (presumably) canonical and patriarchal control pushing us along at every step of the way.

     I would tend to agree with Birkerts, certainly at the level that we need some sense of history to guide us into the future. However, the way in which the computer will completely erase this sense is unclear. And for some reason, the idea that the words on the computer may arise from some kind of intertextuality does not seem to invoke in me the same kind of dread that it does in Birkerts, either. The same thing, after all, has been said about words on paper. Choosing to accept this notion is simply choosing to acknowledge the social etiology of communication. Of course communication has a social etiology—and (I would hope)—a social teleology as well. Birkerts seems afraid of this. The fear he has may be his imagination conjuring up images of "everyone being equal" or "everyone having a say." This sounds an awful lot like simple participatory democracy to me, and I would imagine that, personally, Birkerts is quite satisfied with the way in which certain elitist hierarchies have favored his success. He bravely—or perhaps unwittingly--makes no attempt to hide even his ideas most strictly and clearly informed by materialist/capitalist ideological concerns. In "The Fate of the Book," Birkerts goes so far as to reveal his concern that by entertaining the idea of reading from a computer screen rather than paper "…we are severing the ancient connection between things and their value." What about people, and their (social?) value? It doesn’t concern Birkerts, because he reminds us all that we are not his equals.

     The following is a representative sample of critic Wen Stephenson’s opposing view in The Message is the Medium: A Reply to Sven Birkerts and the Gutenburg Elegies::

"The Web is not television. It is neither the movies nor the recording industry. It is something entirely different, entirely new. While it does bring together image and sound, primarily it conveys the written word. Furthermore, not only is the medium based on language but also on the ability -- the imperative -- of individuals to make choices, to seek out and select the kinds of content they want to engage and interact with intellectually. And it is because of these and other essential attributes that the Web has the potential to reawaken an appreciation for language itself, both as a written and a spoken medium, and for literary works. Publishers and educators are beginning to realize that the Web and other new media can be powerful weapons in the struggle for literature and literacy."

     It is in Birkerts reply, published seperately in Exchange: The Gutenburg Elegies, that he reveals his deepest elitist sympathies. Birkerts writes:

     "This is not to say that the skilled and serious reader (and I believe Mr. Stephenson is such) cannot peel away the husks or otherwise read compensatorily in order to get at the pure word (rather, its chimera). But to manage this requires discipline and a high degree of awareness, and the ordinary reader generally lacks both."

     Thank you, Mr. Birkerts.

    Birkerts may be absolutely right. Maybe we are all illiterate compared to he and Wen. But, how could he think that the Internet will make us more illiterate if it can be put to use in the ways Stephenson suggests? Which, by the way, it most certainly could be. The fact that Birkerts doesn’t even acknowledge this possibility is strange, and reveals a somewhat calcified intellect.

John Unsworth Speaks Truth.

     A brilliant critique of Birkerts--as well as the assumptions made by those given institutional power in general--can be found in John Unsworth’s Electronic Scholarship; or, Scholarly Publishing and the Public.

     In particular, Unsworth is concerned with the implications for academia in what Birkerts has to say. Unsworth feels that in implying that those within the academy should refuse and abandon electronic texts, Birkerts represents an elitism which can be very damaging to the academy in the future. Unsworth asserts that many in the academy have defined themselves as "keepers of the flame, as guardians of values little honored in the marketplace." He writes, "In fact, we cherish our abnormality, our resistance to the pragmatic demands of the world, our uselessness."

     He notes that, for Birkerts and many others, "When the subject is scholarship, the fear that predominates is the fear of pollution—the fear of losing our priestly status in the anarchic welter of unfiltered, unrefined voices." Or that, "… we stand to lose our mysterious uniqueness—or, what comes to the same thing, that this uniqueness will not be honored--in the new technological landscape."

     In Unsworths’ estimation, Birkerts’ proposal would only succeed in marginalizing academia even further and "clear the field for the subjugation of these new technologies to the system of power and property relations that, up until now, has characterized contemporary mass media." In short, what Unsworth suggests is that networked scholarly publishing must be embraced, or the academy will be relegated to only the most obscure margins of the society. He writes:

     "…the defense of humanistic values over and against the electronification of culture serves the ironic purpose of ensuring that the demand for something more than canned video will not have to be met in the marketplace, but will be safely contained in the university, where mystical presence can be meted out in the traditional quantities of the handmade."

     Provided electronic publishing stays headed on its present course, there would seem to be no good reason not to trust Unsworth’s assertions.

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