ergonomic of comprehension
"This superiority is understandable. The more involved we are in an activity, the better our memory works. When we enter completely into the gestures of writing our memory automatically records the characters; no prompting is needed. But if our activity slackens, our body forces are demobilized, memory tends to do its work less well. Chinese teachers have always known that in the beginning of writing was gesture. So it is that Chinese children tranditionally begin learning characters by tracing them rythmically in the air with broad gestures of arm and hand." Jean Francois Billeter, "The Chinese Art of Writing"
from
A Book of the Book ("In a moment when irresponsibly inflammatory ravings about the demise of print rage through the cultural landscape, this collection offers serious reflection upon the real profundity of the book as a symbolic force within the poetic and spiritual imagination that remains the wellspring of human culture.") Johanna Drucker
news of the weird
Adventure in the
rain forest of some past postings.
false ambivalence
As the university librarians sat in a large circle, electric surges of ambivalence toward "e-books" ran between them. While they acknowledged the continuing ineptness of the reading devices they also longed for the advancing power of inside-the-book searching.
In the FotB perspective the stifling restrain for the advance of hand-held reading device is exactly the simulation of the print book. Simulation of the print book is a fundamental error of the conversation. More promising is the purely live, connected, streaming, queried content of authentic screen based reading.
Another restraint is the assumption that screen resolution and legibility are inadequate. This is an illusory restraint as the cell phone confirms. But, by far, the most mis-conceived aspect of the conversation is an assumption of a contest between screen and print over equivalent functionality. Screen reading has its own, native functionalities as Wiki composition, miraculous search capacity and place based learning illustrate. Print retains exclusive attributes for methodic presentation, haptic efficiency and persistent access.
At the same time the interplays between screen and print functionalities are evermore evolved. Here the screen serves as the bibliographic utility for discovery of print while print serves in a mastering and back-up role for screen based transmission of culture. Digital technologies have brought on a Renaissance of print while new screen reading skill and connectivity have engendered a different Renaissance culture.
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