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Birkets p. 222 “We are cut of from love, from the spiritual.
Ww sacrifice the potential life of the solitary self by enlisting ourselves in the collective…They are not only extensions of the senses, they extensions that put us in touch with the extended sense of others” Birkets 224
McLuhuan – “Wheel is the extension of the foot”
Yes, it is an extension. But it is not the foot. And if when we lose our feet, we lose our humanity.

“Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes”

People do not want originality or humanity of original or live copies anymore,

Movies have replaced film

The MP3 has replaced the performance
Popular song has replaced the symphony
The computer has replaced the book.

the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind –  Carr

I remember once, I went to see a pianist give a recital. She was performing works from some of my favorite composers of the early 20th century: Satie, Debussy, Ravel. These works, mind you, I had listened to countless times on my ipod, computer, car speakers, just about everywhere I could. With the technology available today, it’s amazing how you can take a piece of music like that, and bring it with you everywhere. I had always known, of course, that a recording could in no way replace the magic of a live performance. I never exactly understood why, but the live performance held a certain humanity to it. It breathed life into you in ways that a recording could not.

I remember sitting there in the recital hall, and the pianist came out. She wore an elegant black gown, and walked with a distant air of comfort, that reminded us that she had done this a seemingly thousand times before. As applause died she sat down behind the piano, her hands treading lightly above the keys. There was a moment of silence, anticipation, and then just like that, the music started.

I watched her head bounce back and forth with each chord, moving from one to the next as if she were playing a game of harmonic hopscotch. It was like she was speaking to us, as elegantly as any Shakespearean sonnet, through the music. She owned the piece – it was her language. It was then that I realized the importance of all of this – the fact that she was playing the music, and the music was not playing her.

While music might hold an emotional quality no matter where you listen to it, I feel as though it is most at home in the recital hall, where it can be birthed by proper fingers in distinctive ways that make it come alive. But today, I find that people forget that. People do not recognize the importance of experience, as Birketts’ repeatedly states in series of essays, “The Gutenberg Elegies”. He quotes an essayist by the name of Walter Benjamin, that argues that while copies might hold as much beauty as the original, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” (Birketts 225). A priceless vase might be beautiful – it might be flawless, but I find it to be useless unless it houses a flower. Recordings of music, artistic prints, electronic books, they are all vessels for the art the try to represent. But that’s just it; they are mere representations. It holds the art, but it holds no experience, or as Birketts calls it, an aura. “The aura is the uniqueness, the presence, the natural emanation of the thing”(Birketts 225), and by making virtual representations, we lose that. I compare to it to the difference between watching a meteor shower online, and seeing one in real life. Watching one online is amusing and even amazing, certainly. But when you’re standing there, underneath the night sky on the outskirts of an ageless forest, by yourself or even with friends, everything is itself. Everything is as it should be. Everything serves a function, and there is nothing virtual. There is a spirit to be observed, and that spirt, that aura, serves as part of the experience.

But are these virtual representations not only extensions of ourselves? McLuhan argues this in his “The Medium is the Massage”. He states, alongside a collection of cinematic pictures, that “the wheel is an extension of the foot.(McLuhan 28-30). By this , he says (rather poetically) that technology is merely an extension of ourselves, and therefore they are not separate things, and are in fact part of us. They bring us closer together with the works of art and nature that span the world. But this is actually not the case. By creating these alternative, virtual mediums, were are not bridging the world, but creating a new one entirely. It creates art that cannot be experienced through our own sense, but through a window that extends into this newer world, and therefore that organic quality is lost. Therefore, we are not bridging the world at all – we are in fact extending it. We are pushing ourselves away from these original works of it, these live performers, by creating these distractions housed in the virtual realm. This realm, these reprints and representations are not extensions of ourselves at all. They are separate entities, housed in a world that is not our own.

To demonstrate this, I’d like to talk about “The Museum”. This is a great example of Hyper-text, but certainly not the only one I can think of. What “The Museum” does is simply give us a non-linear story – it gives us a map, and tells us “go have fun!”. As I found myself clicking from page to page, and from link to link, I found myself in a cartoonish conundrum. I couldn’t tell if I was going in circles or if I was discovering new text, until I passed a broken tree, or similar page, I had passed numerous times before. It was a confusing experience, and upon first encounter I couldn’t decide if it was just my unfamiliarity with the concept, or the fact that it does not work as well as a linear story. One could argue for either. Carr certainly argues with the former conclusion, stating that instead of having an in-born ability to read,  ”We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand”. People are so accustomed to the linear story arc that it’s simply the easiest form of a story to understand. But is that the only reason why? It might simply be because it’s the most effective way of telling a story, for a few simple reasons. Stories  are simply a series of events happening one after the other, very similar to life itself. I picture people reading stories as fish swimming along a current. The swim in one direction, not looking backward. They have no desire, or ability, to move from this continuum. However, they may have littler fish swimming beside them, or attached to them, going along for the ride. This is how the story relates to a person: a simple deviation from life itself. By allowing for the ability to go forward, backward, upward, and downward, it detaches readers from this deviation. The linear story holds a place, like Birkets says in his chapter, Hypertext. “(Linear story) occupies a position in space – on a page, in a book – and is verifiably there” (Birkets 155). By removing that linear quality, and allowing for back buttons, sideways movements and numerous ways to the end, you remove the humanistic qualities of the story, and make it less relatable to it’s readers. Hypertext, then, is not a story – it is a collection of them thrown into conjunction with each other, creating a new thing entirely.

As I type, I’m watching a pianist do a rendition of  Satie’s “Je te Veux” on Youtube. I don’t know this woman. I don’t know where she is, or what time of day it is. This is merely a copy of a moment, and is therefore not one. I can listen to the music, but no nostalgia is being created – I can only look back and remember the things of which this piece reminds me. Replications, recordings, mass production reprints, they serve as definite cogs for this function. Can they serve others, too? These recorded moments may very well serve to educate generations of the future. Perhaps someday, greater technologies will destroy my musings. However, until that happens I contend that life moves on, and can not be replicated. Only duplicated.

(closing paragraph, talk about youtube?)

Murray’s article finally brings a point to the conversation that I’ve been waiting for. She does not simply defends computers, but introduces to the conversation the idea that they do have some superior qualities to books.

“The Invention of Hugo Cabret” is a very interesting novel for several reasons. Firstly, it’s use of not only text but images to create a cross pollination of novel and cinema gives the reader a perspective that I’ve never seen, but is reminiscent of the silent films that categorized the era in which the story takes place. But what I found particularly interesting throughout the novel is the use of machinery, and how it unites all of the characters together. Hugo is an expert with machinery, particularly clocks. Papa Georges owns a toy shop, and looks after tiny machines such as wind-up toys. Hugo’s father is attributed to the automaton man. Even Isabelle holds a key to the machine. Each of the important characters throughout the book has some kind of experience with these machines.But what is significant about them?

Many times when I’m reading novels, I find a particular passage that displays the overall point of the stories. It’s a special passage in which maybe the characters have a revelation or state something philosophical that makes the reader think about his or her own life. This books has this. It starts on page 374. “Hugo thought about his father’s description of the automaton. “Did you ever notice that all machines are made for some reason?…They are built to make you laugh, like the mouse here, or to tell the time, like clocks, or to fill you with wonder, like the automaton. Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do.” (Selznick 374).

Hugo compares people to machine parts, saying that the entire world is a machine, and everyone must has a certain objective they must complete. What is particularly interesting is the use of magic in this novel as well. Georges is a magician who turned to cinema in order to create magic with this technology, developing and mastering the substitution technique. Hugo also finds that he is talented with magic as well, noting that because his fingers were so nimble with his clocks, he found it easy to complete magic tricks. This could be a metaphor, saying that a person’s objective in life, what they are passionate about or what they are destined to do, could appear to be magical to the individual, or their work could appear magical from an outsiders perspective. At the end of the day, a magician and a shoe-maker might have the same types of skills. They both may require a quickness of hands, an adept knowledge of machines. But it’s the use of these skills, the magic behind each of them that makes them different, and I think this is what they’re trying to highlight in this novel. Machinery throughout is not only found in the train station, telling time, but also in the cameras, making dreams come alive.

In this section of the book, the creature finishes his account by asking Victor of favor. He desire a companion. Victor mulls this over as he travels with Clerval throughout England, and ultimately chickens out. The Creature gets angry at Victor and vows that he will continue to Cause Victor misery, specifically “I will be with you on your wedding night”. (146). Victor leaves his lab and travels in a boat to Ireland, where he finds out that the Monster has killed Clerval and he becomes ill for two months. His father then comes to visit him and he goes back home to marry Elizabeth. 

Whilst reading through the rest of the account of the creature, and Victor’s reaction to the favor of which he asks, I couldn’t get the same idea out of my head. Victor’s story is a lot like the book fo Genesis in the bible, except God does everything right. Victor’s story is like a type of Genesis in which God does everything wrong. 

Imagine a Genesis that happens like this – God creates Adam. God gets scared of what hes done and then leaves. Adam walks around in the world for a little while, not knowing what he’s doing or where hes going, getting burnt by fire and frostbite and everything else. Adam is ignorant. He is a completely innocent being. 

One day, Adam sees the Tree of Knowledge, and not knowing any better, he takes a bite out of the apple. Satan (or the snake or whoever you prefer) doesn’t even need to tell him to eat, Adam does it all on his on because he doesn’t know any better. Adam is no longer ignorant. He knows what life could be like, without discomfort and loneliness and misfortune. He also knows that he does not lead a life like that. In fact, it is the exact opposite. He also learns that he could become more powerful than God, and therefore could make him meet demands for a better life. What does Adam do now?

Misery is a concept that consistently juggles the two main characters in this novel around, and keep them grinding against each other. The creature’s misery stems from the absence of companion, in a world that endlessly rejects him. “‘Shall each man…find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn.’” (146).  Victor’s stems from an endless guilt, in that people close to him have died by his hands, although he did not desire it so. “‘Alas! my father…how little do you know of me. Human beings, their feelings and passions, would indeed be degraded if such a wretch as I felt pride…William, Justine, Henry – they all died by my hands.’” (160). But both miseries stem from knowledge, and therefore an absence of ignorance. 

There is a line from a Keats poem that is one of my favorite lines of all time. 

I can still remember the moments when I learned to read for the first time. I was about 6, reading a small book that incorporated small words like “the” and “as” and “run” with pictures of farmers and sheep, to indicate the larger words. It was early summer and I had just completed my first year of public school: Kindergarden. I had seen advertisements on television about learning centers who specialized in helping kids learn how to read, and so, like any other Kindergardener, I judged it. I wanted to be just like all of the regular boys who I saw on television and dislike reading, dislike school, and dislike sports. I wanted to adapt the anti-intellectualism that Graff talks about in his article. However, when I finished the last page of the book, I wasn’t feeling how I was expecting to feel. It really wasn’t so bad.

And so I read more. And I become quite good at it. And then, a couple years later, I started writing things. Reading and writing became almost like second nature to me. I never exactly loved it, when I was younger. But it was always like a little bird that hung on my shoulder, observing my world and peering into my imagination, and whispering words to me that I would write down. That’s all it really was. Reading and writing was just my life on paper. It was life itself on paper. 

I learned very early on that reading and writing was everywhere, and the two became almost second nature to me. I loved to perform both of them so much- I got good grades in school because of it, and I felt like it was worth something. But to me, I wasn’t really even doing that much. I was just using a special set of “muscles” in my brain to put things from that outside world onto a piece of paper. And in the end, isn’t that what reading and writing really is? Reading is nothing more than interpretation. It’s synthesis of the senses. And so, couldn’t it be argued that simply perceiving is to be reading? Would it be wrong to say that to react is to be writing? 

Birket’s arguement is that reading and writing is going to change for the worse. He argues that individuals in the future generation will not only misunderstand great writers from the past, but that they will have absolutely no patience to read them, let alone think about them. They will have no place in society. What does this compromise? Birket’s argument is that people will lose individual thought and this could threaten the idea of argument all together. If reading books becomes more socialized than it has been in the past due to technology and therefore a change in human character, individual thought will slowly diminish and so argument will be compromised. He tells us about this in his book while talking about his daughter in the first chapter.

“…and then I despair. I conjure up a whole generation of children enslaved by a single carefully scripted, lushly animated narrative…I wonder what tale or rhyme or private fantasy will be able to compete with a high-powered rendition from Hollywood’s top talents”(The Gutenberg Elegies 30). 

He argues that we live a society dominated by “easy” stories, or stories that are most appealing to audiences, and that any other story of scholastic or artistic importance will fail to rise to this behemoth. His proof is that his daughter likes Disney movies and wants to fit in. Were I Birket’s age, I might have my doubts as well. But having grown up in a similar environment to his daughter I can comfortably say that this is not the case. The movies I saw when I was a child, many of them Disney movies in fact, only fueled my thirst for adventure and dramatic plot lines. Did I look for them in novels or anything that was regarded with academic esteem? No, but I did find what I was looking for in television and even videogames. And yes, even through these mediums did I find intrinsic plot lines, and these were not social experiences. Many of the best moments of my childhood were spent on my sofa watching a season finale of a cartoon or beating the final boss of a Zelda game. A bit geeky, yes. But the fact remains that through these experiences I gained exactly what Birkett’s is talking about in his book. 

“Literature holds meaning not as a content that can be abstracted and summarized, but as experience. It is participatory arena. Through the process of reading we slip out of our customary time orientation, marked by distractedness and surficiality, into the realm of duration…only in this state are we prepared to…question our origins and our destinations, and to conceive of ourselves as souls”(Birketts 32).

Reading a book is indeed a very personal experience, through which you learn not only about the human condition, but about yourself as well. But this is not to say that this is the only way of getting the same experience. Watching a film or television, playing videogames, even drinking a good cup of coffee could all lead to the same effect. Reading is not limited to words, and neither is writing. Reading is simply the taking in of a phenomena, and writing is the reaction to it. It’s human nature to take phenomena and put in the context of our own lives. This is what reading in books has done for us in the past, and this is what reading films and and other mediums will do for us in the future. As long as the desire for us to be human, to express our humanity and attempt to understand it is there, then we’ve got nothing to worry about. 

Reading and writing will always be a reflection of the times. Although the stories delivered today might be a bit more fast paced than the ones written years ago, that’s simply because civilization is a bit more faced past that it was years ago. Does this mean that stories from long ago will be lost to more disney-esque story lines? No. If a story contains an importance to a society, then it will remain important for years to come. People will still want to read it because they will want to gain an understanding from it, and put it in context with their own lives. This is why Disney makes fairy tale movies. Fairy tales were stories written long ago in order to communicate a message or moral. In absolute essence, the stories themselves have not changed. Reading and writing has not changed. The only thing that has changed is the way it’s presented.