See it, Scan it, Pixel It

Notice the rhythm in how you read the title. To capture a shift that Birkerts and Applen are wrestling with – the movement from tangible, printed books and words, to the glowing pixels of digital screens. In “Old Media, New Media, and Knowledge,” Applen quotes Sven Birkerts to show the nostalgia for print culture and his fear that digital text lacks the same presence as ink on paper. Birkerts argues, which Applen finds “compelling,” that the digitization of words reduces their emotional and intellectual impact; that’s when words become pixels, they somehow lose their soul.

`As we all have different perspectives in this life, maybe the shift isn’t a loss but evolution.

Letter vs Text

Probably, a while ago… why? We’ve gotten used to texting our lives away, firing off quick messages or short ” I love you and miss you.” Yet writing a letter holds sacredness. It slows down, it’s patience, and proof that someone took their thoughts to form. That doesn’t take away from sending words through a phone screen.

Which goes with Birkerts, how digital text dismisses things like ebooks. I feel this as I bought a $400 Kindle and returned it a week later. I was waiting for the words to feel alive, yet they never did. It’s something about turning the pages, highlighting, and writing when you find a part that hits. The smell of old paper, and how the pages crease depending on how you hold it. Our reading now is all motion, scrolling, scanning, skipping.

I think it truly takes an open mind to understand the beauty in everyone’s rhythm. Society is currently fast-paced, electric, and connected. If we started looking at digital as a reflection of ourselves. Maybe that’s what Birkerts feared, not pixel itself but what it was revealing, and how we are changing, and the meaning itself is evolving. Which falls into hypermediacy, and how digital is shaping what we think, communicate, and experience media.