In 10 years, I’ll probably be walking around in a pelt, with a beard, barefoot and screaming, and they’ll lock me away and that will be the end of it … There’s a fine line between understanding ourselves as coded and fiddling with the code. When we begin messing around with it too much we eventually exceed some threshold and wind up in an environment where we understand nothing. Having demythified all our myths and demystified all our mysteries, we’re going to find the spiritual residue of ourselves in grave condition.
Predictor: Birkerts, Sven
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Harvey Blume interviews Sven Birkerts, author of “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age.” Birkerts fears new technology is bringing us convenience in exchange for the loss of our souls. Following is a portion of the interview: ”Wired: If you were around in 1900, would you have been one of those people, like Mark Twain, who opposed the phone?” ”Birkerts: Probably. That may be my disposition. Today I’m being driven to a greater sense of dissent just because there’s a greater sense of acquiescence everywhere I look. That angers me, drives me to make stronger, more strident assertions to the contrary. In 10 years, I’ll probably be walking around in a pelt, with a beard, barefoot and screaming, and they’ll lock me away and that will be the end of it.” ”Wired: Why do you think that working with a computer is so much worse than working with a typewriter?” ”Birkerts: Software represents the tool-making, calculating, analytical side of ourselves. And yet when you sit down to write at the screen – I’m talking about certain kinds of writing – you’re trying to break through to the other side.” ”Wired: Don’t you think it’s fascinating that at the very moment we are learning to write code – code that is comparatively simple – we are also beginning to understand ourselves as DNA-coded beings?” ”Birkerts: There’s a fine line between understanding ourselves as coded and fiddling with the code. When we begin messing around with it too much we eventually exceed some threshold and wind up in an environment where we understand nothing. Having demythified all our myths and demystified all our mysteries, we’re going to find the spiritual residue of ourselves in grave condition.”
Biography:Sven Birkerts was the author of “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age.” Birkerts feared new technology was bringing us convenience in exchange for the loss of our souls. (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Relationships
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Digital Refusnik: Sven Birkerts Believes that Technology is Leeching the Spiritual Out of Human Experience
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.05/refusnik_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney