Birkerts' essay serves as a vivid counterpoint to Kevin Kelly's essay by criticizing as alienating the kind of enmeshment in nets that Kelly finds so satisfying. While we can send messages across a computer net in a few seconds, or even milliseconds, we don't have meaningful conversations or meaningful life experiences in seconds or milliseconds.
Computer networks can be seductive places to work, play and communicate.
But Birkerts views them as further removing people from their natural worlds, much as life in the largest paved and built up cities have removed us from the rhythms and textures of the natural world. Where Kelly sees computer networks as deepening people's humanity, Birkerts sees them as fundamentally alienating. His brief vignette indicates that each group experiences different kinds of work worlds. The technical professionals are likely to have significant freedom in maneuvering through computer networks and communicating with their co-workers. Last, upper managers sit outside of these computer networks, and constrain their workers within them.