Birkets' Argument In The Gutenberg Elegies Birkets argues against communication methods that mediate our relationship to the written word. Birkets asks the question: "What is the place of reading, and of the reading sensibility, in our culture as it has become?" (15). He thinks the place is shrinking, because of the saturation of electronic media into every aspect and moment of our lives. Birkerts is out to defend the act of reading, defend the printed book, and defend the literary culture that books and reading created. Birkerts is positive that as a society we will experience many losses created by electronic post modernity. His concerns: a fragmented sense of time and place a reduced attention span a shattered faith in institutions a divorce from the past an estrangement from geographic place and community an absence of any strong vision of a collective future. According to Birkets reading, the book, and literary culture are endangered species, not only by electronic mass media, but, more importantly, by the digitization and electronic manipulation of the written word and by its electronic transmission.