The prediction, in brief:

I don’t think that Flaubert, for example, could have written the way he did on a screen. In the move to on-line communication, the aspiration to the kind of style that seeks a sort of permanence, symbolized by immobile words on a page, vanishes. Okay, no big deal, except that I also believe that language is our evolutionary wonder. It is our marvel. If we’re going to engage the universe, comprehend it and penetrate it, it will be through ever more refined language. The screen is a linguistic leveling device.

Predictor: Birkerts, Sven

Prediction, in context:

In a 1995 HarperÕs Magazine article, four experts on the impact of modern computing and telecommunications technology debate the effects of such technology on modern society. The article includes comments by Sven Birkerts, the author of “The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age,” published by Faber and Faber, an excerpt from which appeared in the May 1994 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Birkerts says:”I would write very differently if I were typing on a terminal and my readers were out there already asking me questions. Writing a book is an act of self-limitation and, in a way, self-sublimation into language and expression and style. Style is very much a product of the print medium. I don’t think that Flaubert, for example, could have written the way he did on a screen. In the move to on-line communication, the aspiration to the kind of style that seeks a sort of permanence, symbolized by immobile words on a page, vanishes. Okay, no big deal, except that I also believe that language is our evolutionary wonder. It is our marvel. If we’re going to engage the universe, comprehend it and penetrate it, it will be through ever more refined language. The screen is a linguistic leveling device.Ó

Date of prediction: January 1, 1995

Topic of prediction: Communication

Subtopic: General

Name of publication: Harper's Magazine

Title, headline, chapter name: What Are We Doing On-line? A Debate on the Social Consequences of Online Communications

Quote Type: Direct quote

Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 35 - 46

This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne