Paper Value
A Norwegian researcher, Anne Mangen, wrote an interesting paper in the Journal of Research in Reading, asserting that screen reading and page reading are radically different. “The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone,’’ Mangen writes.
Her conclusion: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a shallower, less focused way.’’
http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2009/06/19/paper_vs_computer_screen/
The materiality of paper takes on a extended meaning due to its experience. The knowledge that is contained with in a book is not singularly wrapped up in the words on the page. From psychology class in college at Colorado State University, I remember my teacher telling us that our brains formulate knowledge and recall through repeating similar experiences under which that knowledge was learned. For example if you are juiced up on coffee while you study for a test you should be juiced up on coffee during the test because the brain associates the experience of the learning along with the recall of that information. Similarly you might be able to recall a story in a book more vividly when the same circumstances are repeated. The engagement of content influences our learning and subsequent recall. Therefore the reading of a book is learned through the experience of the pages. Knowledge that is engaged in the physicality of pages is then linked with that experience. Pages then become essential to formulation of knowledge within a book.
Paper will never die, Powers concluded: “It becomes a still point, an anchor for the consciousness. It’s a trick the digital medium hasn’t mastered – not yet.’’
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3562724/Hamlets-Blackberry-Why-Paper-Is-Eternal
The digital medium has been attempting to replace the piece of paper and it has been around the corner in terms of technology since technology began. Now what if the digital medium and the physical medium where equal? When paper and computer work together seamlessly then paper takes on an added functionality with the computer.
The digital textbook?
With students doing so much of their reading assignments through the screen instead of on book or paper formats, it’s important for educators to determine how the shift is altering their habits and learning. The research is just beginning, but it’s getting deeper, an article in the Journal of Research in Reading (2008, pp. 404-419) by Anne Mangen, “Hypertext fiction reading: haptics and immersion.” Mangen notes the growing sub-field of screen reading studies, but finds that the “intangibility and volatility of the digital text” remain under-examined. She focuses first, then, on the material nature of digital and non-digital reading experiences. “Unlike print texts,” she writes, “digital texts are ontologically intangible and detached from the physical and mechanical dimension of their material support, namely, their computer or e-book (or other devices, such as the PDA, the iPod or the mobile phone” (405).
This is important, she argues, because “materiality matters.” The reading experience includes manual activities and haptic perceptions (what the skin and muscles and joints register), and so as activities and perceptions of that kind are changed from one kind of reading experience to another because of the object, the reading experience, too, will change.
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Screen-ReadingPrint-Re/8551/
So if materiality matters in the delivery of content especially reading material, then it would be arguable that to remove the materiality of paper from the reading experience would fundamentally alter that exchange. Screen engagement has become a reality in modern times but the advantages of the screen have forced its usability right next to the book forcing them to go head to head. I have chosen to regard these experience as different and explore a way to bridge the difference between experiences. As use of screen based devices increases, the need for physical interaction with objects like books will become essential in the recombination of content delivery. I believe users should not have to exchange one experience for the other in order to engage in the content the way they would like. Many things in this world have multiple experiences and with the linking physical and digital is opens up a strategy and platform for making printed content and digital content work together.
John Locke said, “reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.” Thinking can be greatly enhanced through digital means of networking so making paper and computer work together will greatly enhance the opportunity to make reading our again.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Evolution
February 8th, 2010 § 64 comments § permalink
Computation seems to be in a second stage of evolution. As we move into a world where computation power is compact and millions of people are carrying super computers in there pockets, the computer has started to remove us from behind a desk. The potential of mobile computing has started to engage the user and the physical world in exciting possibilities. If the purpose of computation at our fingertips is to allow us connection to the information cloud, then what is the form that that connection should take? Mark Weiser famously quoted in his essay : The Computer For the 21st Century
“the most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.”
The interesting part is technologies start to change everyday life. Cell phones are no longer just phones but their ability to be that mode of communication has allowed the access of other interventions and introductions of computers into the hand and away from behind a desk.
A computer can’t be a piece of paper but that doesn’t mean a computer can’t incorporate paper. If books and print material could be used in the same fashion with their simplicity of interaction ie the turning of pages but have the advantage of a social counterpart, then computing would have the ability to become indistinguishable in everyday use by making the use of the book fit with the use of the computer.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Old Life (Fiction Writing Exercise)
February 8th, 2010 § 3 comments § permalink
It has been 5 years now, since the fire that took everything from me and I wonder if a day will pass in which I don’t long for the past. Some days are better than others but days like today where the rain spits on my concrete block of a home leave me wanting my old life back. But “those days are gone” like the last thing the FBI officer said to me after I was informed I am being put into Protective Housing. (HA! They really meant Isolated Housing) FBI Special Investigator Milo Kilowski made it very clear to me that the fire was a decisive message and that the firebomb that destroyed my former life had been linked to 3000 others all at the same time. Who would do such a thing? Its been 5 years and they still haven’t figured it out, and frankly I gave up trying to understand too. So I have been sequestered in this freedom jail ever since because I happened to be the only one of the 3000 who wasn’t burned to a crisp. Lucky? On days like today I think not.
My wall talks to me about my schedule for the day and the smell of the automated coffee dispenser singes my nose hairs but the rain has clouded my ambitions even how meager they might have been. When I was smuggled here five years ago the over polished, glossy brochure Officer Kilowski handed me about this place made it sound impressive.
“A place where technology and living are linked.”
Milo was a very candid stocky man who rarely minced his words. When I gave him a puzzled look upon the examination of the brochure he said
“What did you expect us to put you in a Mansion?”
which was followed up with,
“You will be safe here, I give you my word.”
Protective Housing works on the premise of eminent danger. You accept blindly because there is the illusion that at any moment you could be killed and a person in that circumstance rarely denies the help being offered. But 5 years in I don’t feel so scared and I mostly just agonize over the ridiculous shit box that government has provided. I really just want my stuff back my wife, my dog, my books, my records, my paintings, my drawings, my paintbrushes, my tools, my house. I don’t even know if any thing survived the fire. Upon asking Kilowski just says,
“All items have been logged as evidence and evidence will be
returned to the rightful owner upon completion of the
investigation.”
He sounds like such a robot. I’m surprised he doesn’t list the rule ID number along with his canned answer. At first I pressed for answers but now I just go day to day attempting to forget my memories.
They say memories fade with time, but some memories you never want to forget. My wife had such beautiful handwriting the kind that has those cute little curly cues at the end of some words and she made tiny little circles over her i’s and j’s. It was such a reflection of her patience and style. She use to leave me such beautiful hand written notes for groceries or tasks around the house. On valentines day she would write on the mirror with red lipstick. I loved reading her books because I could get into her head from the margin. The Incident took all that from me except for the last book we read together. As a technology blogger, in my former life, I was always being inundated with waves of technology most of it crap but I usually only was given one to review. However this young rep at Hybrid Plus Pens gave me two pens and said,
“Try it with your wife. it will save all your notes to the cloud for
sharing just get a book that has the hybrid logo”
The drizzle is like salt on a paper cut today. I request the wall to bring up the Hybrid Plus Portal, stats automatically flash about my frequency to the site and ads are directed to my temperament flash in the corners. Lately mostly antidepressants show up and have been for the past 5 years when I think about it. The wall now glows with the last remnants of my wife’s writing. Her questions and sarcasm about my insistence she use the pen. She even hassled me in her notes poking fun at my techy job and rubbing in that this book was her choice. I sit at the edge of my bed and move through the pages like I have hundreds of time before. I close my eyes and flop back on the bed hoping that is this might all be a horrible twisted dream. The door speaks up and announces to my concrete block,
“FBI Special Investigator – is approaching.”
I open my eyes right as he knocks on the door.
I open the door and Kilowski is standing holding a small tattered cardboard box with a tag that says evidence in bright yellow and black tape.
“Evidence? “ I say,
“Does this mean the investigation is over?”
Kilowski gets a slight smile out of the corner of his over stoic face and hands me the box. He turns around and upon exit says,
“Go back to your old life and find someone who you can use that
pen with!”
I just stand in the doorway overlooking the other concrete blocks and get rained on as the premise of my “old life” rings in my ears.
Old_life.pdf
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
ubiquitous ecologies
January 19th, 2010 § 15 comments § permalink
http://pervasiveia.com/book/manifesto
1. Information architectures become ecosystems
When different media and different contexts are tightly intertwined, no artifact can stand as a single isolated entity. Every single artifact becomes an element in a larger ecosystem. All these artifacts have multiple links or relationships with each other and have to be designed as part of one single seamless user experience process.
2. Users become intermediaries
Users are now contributing participants in these ecosystems and actively produce new content or remediate existing content by ways of mashups, commentary, or critique. The traditional distinction between authors and readers, or producers and consumers, becomes thin to the point of being useless and void of meaning.
All build new relationships and meanings by means of mashups, aggregators, and social networking tools, and all agents contribute content through the crowdsourcing leveraged by the Web via wikis, blogs, and other participatory tools, and mobile devices.
3. Static becomes dynamic
On one hand, these architectures aggregate and mashup content which physically may reside elsewhere and which might heave been released for completely different purposes. On the other hand, the active role played by intermediaries makes them perpetually unfinished, perpetually changing, and perpetually open to further refinement and manipulation.
4. Dynamic becomes hybrid
These new architectures embrace different domains (physical, digital, and hybrid), different types of entities (data, physical items, and people), and different media. As much as the boundaries separating producers and consumers grow thin, so do those between different media and genres. All experiences are crossmedia bridgeexperiences across a breadth of different environments.
5. Horizontal prevails over vertical
In these new architectures correlation between elements becomes the predominant characteristic, at the expenses of traditional topdown hierarchies. In open and everchanging architectures hierarchical models are difficult to maintain and support, as intermediaries push towards spontaneity, ephemeral or temporary structures of meaning, and constant change.
6. Product design becomes experience design
When every single artifact, be it content, product, or service, is a part of a larger ecosystem, focus shifts from how to design single items to how to design experiences spanning processes. Everyday shopping does not concern itself with the retail shop only, but configures an experience process which might start on traditional media with a television commercial or newspaper advertisement, might continue on the Web with a research for comments or for locating the nearest convenience store, might proceed to the shop to finalize a purchase, and finally returns to the Web for assistance, updates, customization, and networking with other people or devices.
7. Experiences become cross-media experiences
Experiences bridge multiple connected media and environments into ubiquitous ecologies. One single unitarian process where all parts contribute to the final, seamless user experience.
I am usually not a manifesto person, I have at least been critical of the prominence of the communist manifesto, the constructivist manifesto, the futurist manifest, the situationist manifesto, etc, etc but the 7 premises established in the Pervasive Information Architecture Book seem to rub against the ideas of creating hybrid experiences that extend and engage the existing ecology’s of book and screen culture. I am hoping that my prototypes will start to hint at the extent of some of these premises within the creation of products and services in the face of ubiquitous computation.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Mag + : Screen Experience
December 17th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink
There is a fundamental difference between the experience of a print media and screen based media. As screen based technologies become more and more pervasive, it is refreshing to see some design companies ie Bonnier considering the particular affordances of the media devices that they attempting to prototype. The affordances of the screen are those at which print material can not possess but there is always a trade off. Bonnier is making a valid argument that if magazine content is going to delivered on a screen, then that screen should deliver a unique experience relatively independent of its magazine predecessor. That is not to say that the screen is devoid of design elements and layout principals that have garnished the vast history of magazine publishing, but rather that those design elements and layout principles be modified to fit the device. Form follows function and the function of a screen is not that of a book or magazine. To exchange the values of a book experience complete with printed ink, paper and sequential pages with that of a screen and expect the user to just accept the convenience and portability of that screen ignores that unique opportunity to make something new. Screen experience design is in its beginning stages and has struggled to separate it self from is print based counterpart. The technology of printing and books has not adapted to the technologies of desktop computing. There has been an extreme leap from the printed page to the screen and in this leap many interactions and experiments with combined media have been left out. Personal Computing expectations and device production has left print design in its coat tails, but the expectation of experience is still lagging behind with the print world. Bonnier is a least attempting to realize and research the unique affordance of a screen based magazine and not just transport a magazine onto the screen.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Values : a line in the media sand
December 10th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink
Living Magazine Cover & Spread – Outside Magazine from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.
A line needs to be drawn in the sand for the values of static media. The expectation and belief that that dynamic content is the wave of the future needs to be reconsidered. Motion pictures are great incredible informative and interesting and have changed the way we see and respond to the world, but do we want every bit of content the we engage with to be moving or worse reactive. Media content has variety and in my opinion more value should be placed on the ability of somethings to be still and other things to move.
The expectation that readers of Outside will want to want motion images assumes that the current model of photography is incomplete to the user and what is the answer, a screen. A world of screens is not one that I hope will exist.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Between the Page and the Reader
December 1st, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink
“What writing is all about is what happens on the page between the reader and the page…What I want is a collaboration, really, with the reader on the page where the reader is also making an effort, is putting something of himself into it in the way of understanding, in the way of helping to construct the fiction that I am giving him.” -William Gaddis
Similarly I believe the design and technological advances might increase a reader’s access and process in the collaboration with fiction. When the interaction of a reader is considered in not just the generation of fiction but also in the access of delivery, an alternative arises for a new form of meaning making. The design of the artifact that is the book can be given an alternative meaning besides just delivering the words and ideas on the page.
The attempt to give the book interactive and responsive conditions allows an author and designer an interesting outcome that would be a collaboration from the start rather than the out come of an author writing words and a designer making those words explode on the page through typography, page layout and conceptualization of ideas. The hybrid of design outcomes being considered in the formulation of literature might produce engaging and experience based out comes that would push a readers knowledge and understanding. The possibilities of designed literature might lead to a 3rd outcome that is neither a book or an e-book screen replacement, but rather a combination of both. An outcome that might result in the best of what the traditional print artifact possesses in its tangibility and distribution through institutional data banks of libraries and commercial entities of book stores and the contemporary screen book technological conveniences of size, space, and access.
The attempt to give narrative sequential fiction and non fiction a set of new or previously unused tools might produce new forms of writing outcomes and productions that might engage tech savy clientel who are interested in no only reading but being engaged with physical artifacts. Book whose pages are self aware, switches that are embedded into content, and spaces that are effected by those interactions will engage readers in experiences the literature on the page for a different more media influenced atmosphere that will engage the reader / user in interesting exchanges that are controlled or left open by the narrative and author/designer team.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Marginalia – An Analysis
November 15th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink
In the process of looking at printing material and contemplating the possibility of the end of print where a screen replaces all print material, I was struck by something that to date has not really been handled by screen based technologies. The Margin! Margins in technology since are locations for buttons, actions, and tools associated with the particular application that is being used.
Since the margin has excuse my pun been marginalized by technologies, I decided to do a number of explorations in to the potential of the margin when given a computational aspect and affordance. In order for me to get a good grasp on the design nature of margins with in printed matter, I have taken 9 of my books ranging from design porn to technical textbooks, I have done an analysis of the margin and implied usage and created a piece of relevant print material describing each examples margin design and use as associated with grid, layout and space.
The idea revolves around the notion of marginalia and the use of margins with in written content in order to apply notes, reflections and sketches.
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Conductive Stuff
November 5th, 2009 § 0 comments § permalink
“It’s just stuff on a piece of paper, or canvas” – Tony Zepeda.
My Printmaking teacher Tony Zepeda likes to explain that ink, paint, chemicals, materials etc is all just stuff the interest is where that stuff makes meaning. The artist and designers role is to use the materiality, ink, image, typography, and meaning space.
Ink is just stuff, it can become a paint, or a printer ink, or a screenprinting ink, or a pen ink, or a drawing ink the final form outcome is less import than the fact that it possesses a new and unique quality that before in making and design inks have otherwise not and that is the ability to conduct and be linked and connected to its technological brethren.
The intent of using and experimenting with conductive materials and inks was not to create a new ink, rather it is giving me the space and advantage of working with stuff to might make new meaning where other wise there hasn’t been. I see the potential of thinking about paper and the ink that gives it meaning a larger breath of influence. Paper has been divided from its digital counterpart but what if we starting to mold them together?
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
Questions?
October 17th, 2009 § 25 comments § permalink
As I continue to do experiments with giving paper and artifacts computational affordances in a world of networked computation, a number of questions arise from the formal, and informal making pursuits.
1.) Can electronics and circuitry be as ephemeral as paper?
2.) What is the possibility of printed material when it is used as an interaction interface for content that extends the ideas contained with in the print material.
3.) Artifacts contain memories of events for attendees ie a t-shirt or poster from a music concert. What if a attendee of that concert instead of buying just a piece of print material purchased an artifact that embodied and contained the music from the experience.
4.) When computational affordances are added to paper, ie RFid, what does that paper artifact become? does the paper engage that user in a more meaningful experience?
5. ) When meaning is attached to an object the owner of that object makes mental connections to memories and experiences, what are ways computational affordance can assist in the memory retention.
6.) When ubi-comp illuminates the need for the possession of physical data storage, ie every piece of data is no longer on our physical persons, what does data representation look like when it is no longer a CD, DVD, thumbdrive, or portable drive? Data could be represented by paper artifacts again as the access to data is only a access point no the actual data.
7.) Can paper become the new screen through access points of computation?
8.) Will printed material have more of an experience when it is physically needed to interact with its screen counterpart?
9.) Can embedding RFid’s in paper engage the user to interface with the artifact differently?
10.) Can experiences be embodied in artifacts through technology?
check out thesis website : Marginalia: The Hybrid Textbook
