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.’’
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.
Media critic William Powers wrote a defense of physical bound literature in his essay, “Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal,’’ Mr. Paper – he not dead, Powers wrote: “There are cognitive, cultural, and social dimensions to the human-paper dynamic that come into play every time any kind of paper, from a tiny Post-It note to a groaning Sunday newspaper, is used to convey, retrieve, or store information.’’
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.’’
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.
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.
The Fortune Article ” the Future of Reading” poses some relevant questions?
Question 1: Will anyone be willing to pay for content delivered to a tablet when they can get information for free on the web?
Question 2: But aren’t tablets just a better way to browse the web?
Question 3: Reading? Reading is dead.
Question 4: How will tablet-based ads work better than the web?
Question 5: Can traditional publishing companies reorganize and move fast enough to embrace and serve new platforms?
these questions all poise the options as if the book and the screen are binary. Print media is looked as a being obsolete due to the advancement of screen based tablets. Granted the pervasive nature of digitized content will have a large impact on printed materials. This effect has already stated to take its toll when it comes to newspaper media. How ever like Red heads in America, their kind is not going to dissappear. Book and printed material might start to diminish but then is begs the question just as the question poised above, what is a book when it can exist on a screen?
This question requires going back to the nuanced history of printed material in bound and sequenced form and taking note of its ability to become ubiquitous and why? The screen and the book will never be the same thing as one is fundamentally material based ie pages and ink while the other is silicon driven ie the screen. Each of these forms is a media delivery device and technology. (Although many might not consider books a technology when compared to a computer) Each media format has its own place, use factors, acceptance, penetration into society, and distribution. Each is equally unique to its time and space and each is locked in a continuum that links the two in weave of consumerism, knowledge, and social contextuality. The screen experience would not be capable without the book, and the book would not be producible in contemporary terms with out a computer.
I have asked my self through out this process, why do we consider physical books and digital book and being so different. Why when you buy a physical book do you not receive the digital part also? It seems to me that if you could link the physical with the digital it would allow each of there forms strenghts and affordances to work together rather then in opposition. The simplicity of sequential pages bound together has a unique experience that can only be mimicked by the screen and the social and networking capabilities of a screen require the dynamics of that different system. What are the implications of making print and screen work together, well hopefully it will lead to more productive use of materials and a platform for a larger connection of information directed at specific context.
In the New York Times article Kevin Kelly lays out the arguement that culture is under going a paradigm shift.
“Now invention is again overthrowing the dominant media. A new distribution-and-display technology is nudging the book aside and catapulting images, and especially moving images, to the center of the culture. We are becoming people of the screen. The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality.” Kevin Kelly
The ubiquity of screens is a force that is undisputable. The iphone alone sold 21.17 million in 2009 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone). Now the access to screens and networked technology has unearthed a vast and unwealdy beast that has left entrenched media gasping for air. With many companies opting for abandoning ship rather then shifting or recognizing a location for improvement or cohabidance.
Capitalism thrives on competition and what better competition then between paradigms right? Kevin Kelly coments that in the age of computation we have entered that age of screen fluency, this in fact may be true but the line of thinking that book knowledge and screen knowledge or mutually exclusive undermines the ability of screen literacy to convey meaning. Oral culture may have been commodified by the literature and literature may be commodified by the motion picture and motion pictures may be commodified by screen and software but they are all connected. The separation from media type to media type is not fundimentally different. The two paradigms share the ability to convey knowledge through metaphor, storytelling and emotion. The difference is the speed and experience of that media.
Books are slow, pragmatic, (sometimes) linear and require exisiting visual experience to impact the narrative and comprehension, while screens are fast, hyper-linked, variable and use visual experience to impact. Books are quiet and blind, while screens are hyper and loud.
As technologies progresses and rumors of tablet computers continue to circulate through out the Internet and hardware prediction sites, companies like Coursesmart (http://www.coursesmart.com/) a digital textbook company has attempted to prototype and show the potential of these new systems and their impact on education. The textbook industry and subsequent educational materials have been dominated by print industries and through this process have created an ecology of textbooks for student and an experience that prepares the students for the upcoming semester of learning and education. The purchasing and exchange of books at colleges and universities is a tradition that is unique in its own right. The system of textbook sales and resales is one that encourages reuse and resale depending on the print industry who sees the opportunity to reprint new additions as a way to bolster profits. Personally I loved buying used textbooks and would peruse the pages to see how studious the prior student had been. I always felt privileged to have the extra marginalia knowledge that was left behind by particular students. This marginalia is sometimes damaging to the text book but other times helped me work though difficult challenging questions about the material. Take the physics textbook from the tablet demo, at Colorado State University where I went to undergrad, all students were required to fulfill a science credit even for majors of Fine Art to which I completed in 2004. As a student I am not strong in mathematics this lead me to know that physics was going to be a challenging course. I remember being the first student to the used physics 101 books and made sure that I got the best used textbook with the most useful notes in the marginalia. The existing use of the text book allowed me to access a alternative knowledge space that was extremely helpful when studying. The Coursesmart prototype shows the ability to leave notes and highlight but neglects the notion that notes and marginalia are not always a singular action. At the time of being made they are for the user engaged in the content but once left they have an impact on future users as a extension of the knowledge within the textbook. Now if the CourseSmart system could be networked with other classmates and the notes and commentary could be shared over a social network then that might make the use of the tablet system more engaging. Studying is a unique interaction because it requires the ability to move both from singular action usually memorization to the more complication comprehension which can and sometimes require a social aspect. How do you know you understand something? Ask someone else who is trying to understand the same thing if you both come to the same outcomes than comprehension has occurred barring the person you ask has come to the correct conclusion. Answers have a much different dimension depending on the subject but take simple math you either conclude that 5 x 5 is 25 or you don’t but you can test it over and over and then define that it is indeed true. There is the saying the you really understand something when you can teach it (help someone else comprehend it).
Comprehension of knowledge in a textbook is understood through testing within pedagogy. However the route to the comprehension is individual like a snowflake. In my education, testing ie choose A, B, C, D was never a great metric for comprehension of the material, but when I was asked in written form what do I understand about the subject I used much more information to which was gather through not just memorizing answers but synthesising both lectures, studying and conversations with fellow students. When I was asked to explain the process or show my comprehension that is where I was more successful as long as I comprehended the content. Now comprehension is a complicated notion of education and the scientific method would suggest (and can be seen in current educational trends) that memorization is the precursor to comprehension. If you can memorize facts then you can eventually follow the right procedure and develop comprehension, hopefully. For me I always considered the experience of memorization a fleeting education because the process never stuck, I have a hard enough time remembering peoples names, but can for some reason recall obscure facts about the conversation we shared. I believe this is due to the fact that my individual process of comprehension deals with an experience and I will remember more when engaged in remembering the experience rather that a specific element with that whole. I have had a number of experiences where I can recall the how, where, when, and what happened, but can remember the name.
Education is really about comprehension and tools that engage the understanding of content should be more versed and in my opinion should be realized through making tools and services that engage the experience of comprehension not just a singular element of the educational access with apparently starts with the textbook and memorization.
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.
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.
Apple is selling record numbers of downloadable games for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This is attracting publishers because the lack of physical media is better economically for both consumers and video game creators (November 12)
Microsoft is set to open up the XBox 360 to user-generated games on November 19, all of which will only be available via download – there will be no DVDs (October 30)
The bullet list is a few examples of technologies and media delivery platforms that currently or will in the future deminish print media’s market share or potentially eliminate it all together. Print Media platformes of books, magazines, posters, etc etc are talked about in term of being Tangible Media.
The description of tangible is defined as capable of being perceived especially by the sense of touch.
The materiality of paper and ink in all is variety from newsprint to gompy has earned print media the use of that terminology with in its description. Media delivery devices like the kindle, the iphone etc are tangible. To suggest that they are not assumes that the ability to touch a screen ie a pixel is not equal with that of prior physical object (artifacts) like books for instance.
The reasoning behind referencing print material as “Tangible Media” and technologies like the Kindle as being something different is really located with in the process of experience. Tangible when describing a book is referencing the experience a user has engage with that media type for the time they were a child to current interactions. Paper has texture, color, smell, it can be flooded and imprinted or debossed the list goes on and on. Tangible becomes a catch all for the experience of turning pages in a seqential artifact and emcompasses the notions of age, use and variety. When tangible is used for the iPhone, Kindle or technologies, it is used more as a description of functionality of the interface. Because a screen is just pixels that can be anything, the experience of that tangible experience is fundimentally different then that of the experience with print media, and rightly so!
The issue is then the expectation that a book can be on a screen and contain the same experience? There is a compromise when “tangible media” is traded for “tangible pixel”, the experience of the can only be mimicked or hinted at through acknologment in either direction. The ability to have animated turning pages in a pdf is an example of a media type not sure how to accept its “pixel” nature because a pixel can never be a piece of paper.
As technologies become more and more pervasive, print media companies are starting to jump on the bandwagon that a screen is a “better” way to experience their content. With the techno world buzzing about the possibilities of tablet computers from Apple, Microsoft, and prototype Joojoo
, media providers rather then improving or increasing content awareness are opting for the screen. The demo of the Sports Illustrated magazine on a tablet is a interesting view into the possibilities of their future content. Complete with page turning sounds and multi-touch options the demo shows some potential in eliminating the magazine. I mean why would I buy print when I can get it on a screen? Soon enough we will never have old used magazines that can be rummaged through at our uncles “the sport nuts” house.
The introduction of the iPhone has truely had immense impact on the acceptance of interacting with the screen. I just see the thinking of “You know what is better than an iPhone, A bigger iPhone!” faulty. The iPhone functionality and pervasiveness is seen in the Joojoo demo utilizing similar learned interactions from the existing phone. Technology is iterative and for innovation to exist predecessors have to come before, I am having a hard time coping with the innovation of phones replacing the innovations that print has made since the invention of the printing press.
The experience of print material on a screen starts to include video options and some level of costume interactions which is what makes interaction with screen objects effective and engaging but is that functionality worth the tangible interaction with printed paper. Interactions with the tablet are all learned and idiosyncratic rather than the free form and intuitive interactions with the pages of a magazine. The ease of getting to page 22 in a magazine is much different than the action to do that same thing on a tablet. Especially a magazine like SI where a users is less inclined to read from front to back (unless we are talking about the swim suit issue of course) Regardless the SI interactive has some interesting potential but in my opinion will never become a replacement for the greatest bathroom reading since the Victoria Secret Catalog (unless it can become waterproof.) I just don’t see a tablet computer replacing the magazine rack in the bathroom no matter how interactive and engaging it is.
Now the conductive inks that I have made work, I have started to dive into breaking the perception of what a circuit should be and should look like. With the addition of user interaction, turning a light on becomes more interesting and engaging. The earlier experiments are mostly a process of seeing and thinking about paper differently, this is a experiment into giving paper an added interaction through the conductive ink and the simple switches. The form of the conductive lines are skewing the efficiency ideas associated with circuit board design, and the interaction allows the user to piece together the shapes of both the form and of the shape the lights make.
I finally have had some success with screen printing conductive ink or my own concoction. The image is a picture of a mixed media experiment with screen printed graphite based conductive ink and copper tape for power and light source. The form of the line printed in the conductive ink is the shape of a book spine based RFid. The RFid market is one of the largest outcomes of printed circuitry but the implications of “big brother” tools leaves the novice and consumer out of the loop. My experimentation into conductive inks has not been rooted in invention but rather in the exploration space and thinking that I have now started to give paper. The question of networked, self aware and linked paper artifacts could be a possibility through RFid or other circuitry based functionality. My ability to get a screen printed line to be reactive to electricity has helped my pursuit into thinking about paper in a new and unique ways. The ability to make paper an interface is now a distinct possibility.
