A lot of random little things I read these days are prompted by my son grabbing a book off the bookshelf, handing it to me and saying “Dada read that one.” Thus I find myself reading Sven Birkerts this evening. What an absolute treasure of a mind to have sitting on your shelf just waiting to be revisited. When it comes to all the tech critique stuff, in terms of personal discovery timelines, Birkerts is my O.G. I’m pretty sure he even preceded whatever the first word I read from Wendell Berry was. (Keeping in mind that I only started reading books at all, and barely, and very slowly, about 15 years ago.) And he deserves a more prominent place in this anti-machine business.
The devil no longer moves about on cloven hooves, reeking of brimstone. He is an affable, efficient fellow. He claims to want to help us all along to a brighter, easier future, and his sales pitch is very smooth. I was, as the old song goes, almost persuaded. I saw what it could be like, our toil and misery replaced by a vivid, pleasant dream. Fingers tap keys, oceans of fact and sensation get downloaded, are dissolved through the nervous system. Bottomless wells of data are accessed and manipulated, everything flowing at circuit speed. Gone the rock in the field, the broken hoe, the grueling distances. “History,” said Stephen Dedalus, “is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.” This may be the awakening, but it feels curiously like the fantasies that circulate through our sleep. From deep in the heart I hear the voice that says, “Refuse it.”
That was published in 1994.