Kiwi, Birkert

Svens style of writing and insight was very interesting… He discussed Birkert’s lecture was extremely interesting. He began the lecture by reading out loud an expert from his book about Kertesz on Reading. To Birkert, Kertesz captures people in the most private of freefall. He explains to us that the image is informative, however it allows for us a vast screen of interpretation. When Birkert went on talking about this the first theorists that came to mind right away was Macherey and how he talks about how we interpret a gap within the text and how the gap is the most important part of the text because it is where the meaning is created. Machereys ideas can connect to Birkerts photos and how explains the interpretations of them. Within Birkerts photos, we cannot see what the individuals are reading; this is a perfect example of how we are able to look at these images with an open-ended interpretation. Birkert went on talking about how a text is mute until the time we read it; and how we are the ones that give the meaning to the text once we have viewed it. Birkert then went on to discuss the childhood experience of reading; separate from the norm and the impact of technology on reading. He discussed how there id no longer a need to go to a library or a store to get a book. We now have access to the Internet which allows us to download books to our technological devices. He went on talking about how people are moving away from reading a printed page to looking at a digital screen. His example was reading a kindle vs reading a book. Birkert said that, “a printed book has a lasting impression, it is an entity dense with association”. He says that what we are reading might be the same but the interpretation and signification is no longer the same. I really liked how Birkert put it by saying, Kindles are not new, they are just a new way of looking at the old.” When he said this I thought of Lyotard and Bricolage and how he says that everything is just old things put together with new, how everything is the same. A kindle is just a machine that is producing the same information as a book. The digital book within this device is no different then the old which is the paperback itself. He said that in reality the books themselves are the ones that have more meaning within it.

At the end of his lecture an English teacher had brought up the idea of quaintness in sitting down and reading a book and the pleasures of what you get out of it. She went in depth on the interpersonal part of and said that, When you think of a book you think of the author and the mindset that he or she is in and that is why she thought having the book itself was more important because she thought that with a digital device you did not get the same feeling. Birkert agreed with her and again thought that she made a very good point.

I thought that Birkerts lecture was very interesting and I really enjoyed it. I really liked how I was able to follow him throughout his discussion and understand what he was talking about as well as connect different theorists to his ideas. I felt that it was much worth my time going to this lecture and I do not regret having to miss and hour and 15 min of basketball practice for this :0)