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Booke & eBook (part three)

(5) Reading Results - consequences of the fourth mode

If the concept of a screen based composite reading mode is valid, or even somewhat persuasive, a following question would be what are its consequences. One way to approach consequences is to look back to a context before the advent of a composite reading mode. The absence, in the past, of technologies that compile reading behaviors will give us a feeling for the different circumstances today.

Consequences of the absence of a composite reading mode

Let’s first look at reading behaviors outside of literary reading. Here the daily work of the railroad train crew, at mid-20th century, illustrates an ordinary profession which was called on for reading in oral, written and print modes without the aid of information integrating technologies that now compile reading activities.

This seemingly prehistorical reading environment is within living memory. A railroad worker’s instructional pamphlet of 1930 describes telephone train dispatching. At the time, this method was gradually replacing telegraphic dispatching with voice instruction. An affectation of telegraphic dispatching that carried over to telephonic dispatching was the requirement to both speak and then spell out the station name to which the train order is transmitted.

On receipt and successful repeating of a train order from central dispatching, the local station operator then transcribed the train order into written text on a standard form. Inscriptions on this form produced various copies including one for both engineer and conductor. On delivery of these written orders to the train crew, the conductor was required to listen to the engineer read the order out loud. The train crew was then authorized to move to the next point for subsequent orders.

The printed Rule Book was also governing train movements. This compendium established, for example, the status of various classes and directions of trains and the meaning of track side signal lights and their positions. Train crews were governed by both the written and printed instructions and were responsible to reconcile special conditions of the written orders with previously memorized contents of the Rule Book.

Due to vagaries of interpretation and operating conditions, in other words, due to the individual readings, the only readable data point fully shared by all operating railroaders was time. To achieve this link each railroader carried a highly accurate pocket watch which was routinely inspected and compared to an official chronometer. Train crews also compared their watches at the start of each trip. Yet this one stable, shared point of reference, in one sense, only increased the scope of the information that needed to be conceptually interfaced. No technology integrated the various streams of information.

An integration device for readable train operation commonly used by railroaders only further illustrates their circumstance of technological disconnections. This was the “time table board”.

“Time table boards are especially prepared boards on which are ruled vertical and horizontal lines. The vertical lines denote intervals of time and the horizontal lines represent the stations on the divisions, the latter being spaced proportionately to the distance between stations. Train schedules are graphically shown on this diagram of station and time lines by inserting pins at the intersection of the lines indicating time and place, and stretching threads or strings, representing the schedules, over these pins.”

The result was a spidery web that visualized the movement of all trains through time and space with the oppositions of travel direction creating the pattern of intersections of diagonal string tracks. This was a “data base” on which broad operational schemes for the movement of trains were developed. The time table board was only one of the disparate and disconnected devices operating in all the layers of communication and interpretation needed to operate the railroad. It is fair to understand this environment as supported by reading skills that included the skilled integration of meaning from each of the parent modes, verbal/visual, written and print, but without the aid of a technology base that could integrate these modes.

If the engine cab of a churning locomotive is the wrong place to observe reading behaviors as they are usually considered, we can move on to consider the consequences of a composite reading mode by observing its historical absence in the activities of reading literature. This documentation is already achieved.

So many of the studies in the sociology and history of reading have already portrayed the diverse past circumstances of reading groups, reading aloud from print, reading manuscript, or just reading audibly as compared with silently. Each circumstance of the parent mode reading was certainly augmented by the technologies specific to that mode; the auditorium as a technology of oration, the alphabet as a technology of writing or the library catalog as a technology of print. But, until the era of electronic transmission, few, if any, technologies of reading specifically compiled parent reading modes into composite integrations.

With the advent of electronic transmission, by contrast, many of the subsequent reading technologies have also enabled the integration of two or more of the three parent reading modes. These were not just dubbing integrations such as telegraphic ticker tape or broadcasting, but technology applications that integrate or threshold between reading modes. Examples would be Mayor LaGuardia reading the funnies on the radio, TV captioning, NARA archiving of e-mail, hypertext literature or, currently, the integrations realized by web site mastering or voice activated texting.

Consequences of the advent and evolution of the composite reading mode

The advent of composite reading modes is a good thing. It will open many avenues of reading behavior and reading skill. The new composite reading modes will also accentuate and liberate behaviors of the parent reading modes, enabling each of them to be delivered across their own boundaries or thresholds.

Other benefits of technological assisted reading behaviors include, somewhat ironically, (1) a slowing or consolidation of change in reading behaviors and (2) an easing of the skills required for reading, albeit without any easing of the efforts needed for comprehension.

Adaptation to change in reading behaviors

The so called increasing rate of change as applied to reading behavior is not. Despite the advent of a new reading mode, the composite, 4th reading mode is, after all, a composite of established modes. Anyway, the rate, if not the character, of change needs no particular accentuation. Book historians concur that reading behavior has an even more momentous past and the current developments are actually inevitable realizations of an accumulated complexity in the behaviors of readers.17

In other words, the rate of change in reading behaviors is not accelerating. Most of the technological shifts that resulted in current behavior change, such as instantaneous communication, photography, mass advertising, digital text and industrial production of print, actually occurred a century or more ago. These paradigm shifts cannot really be relocated into the present. Does change in reading behavior accelerate from the 19th to the 20th century and is it accelerating from the 20th century to the 21st? Perhaps we are actually now in a slow period as we adjust to accumulated change.

A longer perspective also indicates that change in reading behaviors has slowed and, at the same time, that the magnitude of changes has diminished. Each transition from oral/aural communication to writing, from writing to print, and from print to a composite, screen based, reading mode has been less and less momentous and more and more accommodated. This important gradation is also observed by book historians. As increasingly different reading behaviors coexist, coevolve and accumulate, change slows down.

Starting from this position, that reading behavior change has a more momentous past and a slowing evolution, it is possible to question a current “revolution” in reading. More likely, an inevitability of slow transition is at work bringing readers to a complexity of increasing interactions of an increased number of reading modes. Another obvious momentum is advancing technological support that enables not only a composite, screen based reading mode, but also an eased realization of all the various delivery scenarios between parent reading modes. The classic, trans-mode delivery scenario of reading aloud to others is now crisscrossed with options including writing aloud to a list serve, speaking and listening to intraoffice writing, publishing on-line in response to a virtual symposium, printing web to paper for later reading or meta-reading of mining referers and scanning automated search queries.

But what about the “computer” revolution? Its always possible that programed pattern is as fundamental as time or space and that we are just now bringing this precept to every category of thought from science to spirituality.18 But programed pattern has long been a factor in reading behavior. The alphabet is a program.

The question here is; what has the computer done for reading? The computer revolution has enabled the technical integration of three parent reading modes into a single screen based interface. It has also provided the reader with branching rather than linear progressions. But it has certainly been innocuous in changing reading habits. The persistent preference for a portrait format for a book page and a landscape, or field of view, for screen viewing, is a clue to the entrenched haptics of reading.

Efficiencies & Ease of Reading

Readers are not stubborn. E-book industry types may think otherwise as they continue to assert that readers “just don’t like to read from a screen”. Actually readers really do like to read from the screen as is evident by their enthusiasm for the Web. But, regardless of mode, readers are also very efficiency minded and they generally want reading acts to produce comprehension.

When efficiency of comprehension is considered, some determinants of primeval origin come into play. These include the primate legacy of hands prompting the mind as well as refinements of the codex format that promote comprehension in book reading. Likewise the screen based reading mode has also developed its own refinements to assist comprehension. These refinements were pioneered with film and television viewing, but have been adapted to web site reading.

With screen based reading, a composite of the three parent modes (verbal/visual, writing, print) is offered. Because of this complexity, the screen must present a world wide view, that is, a mobile and drifting collage of content from the three modes which is frequently displayed simultaneously. The point is that readers will invest time in refined displays that assure efficient comprehension. As a result we find traffic seeking on-line presentations are now providing an arresting reading experience by refining and establishing navigational maneuvers.

The habit of seeking reading efficiency, either via an efficiency of a book page, or on an efficiency of a screen view, is an unchanging given. While the two reading modes, page based and screen based, are different, the reader wants a native efficiency in each. This underlying habit is constant.

It is also possible to view the demands of the skills of reading as diminishing. Certainly the act of reading is easier today than it was in late Antiquity. Researchers will also agree that correlations of disparate resources formatted in different reading modes have been eased both through technologies that enable a single screen based access to multiple and separated sources and also through the useful application of automated discovery and preview of resources.

The composite modes have also synergized the use of visual literacies and most resources are now fully illustrated, if not animated. Greater reliance on visual literacy means greater mobilization of an inherently well acquired skill that is not fully utilized in strict writing and print reading modes. A picture is worth many words and a picture captioned by words is worth many pictures.

However, the composite, 4th reading mode has not eased reading across time. We can only read what survives transformations of delivery. Not only does the 4th mode convey effervescent transmissions of the verbal/visual mode, but the whole screen based presentation depends on platforms and interfaces churning through technological successions. In this circumstance the preservation function must be extended to the composite, 4th reading mode. This will be an adventure for the preservation function.

(6) Reading Persistence - preservation of reading modes

What is preservation and why is it relevant? Preservation maintains the systems of delivery and eases reading across time. We can only read what survives the transformations of delivery. What does a reading mode approach suggest for the preservation agenda? Let's identify the some of the most obvious influences.

The three parent modes should be reflected in distinctions of preservation practice and that is apparent. The print and writing modes reflect the long established distinctions of archival and library preservation. The distinct practice of preservation of magnetic media of audio and video recording media reflects the partitioning of the verbal/visual reading mode. (see diagram)

Notes on diagram:

Note - Library services will follow readership and preservation services will follow that lead to assure continuity of the source materials and their desired surrogates. Trends include a shift toward a technologically supported, composite reading mode. Because a variety of reading modes are in play and because any mode can now technically be delivered to any other, source materials will warrant better identification and data tagging as copy masters. In addition, better security and constraint of their physical use is warranted. Problematic is conservation treatment that could complicate imaging, content mining or interpretation of artifactual evidence.

Note - out-sourced services include dubbing and conversion of analog magnetic media, alkalization of paper, microfilm recovery and reformatting. Another variety of services including digital archiving, pest control, collection security and risk management, and disaster response may be allocated to other university departments.

Note - realignment of the supposed mutual pair of "preservation and access". Access services are diversifying into distinctly different reading modes associated with distinctly different research methods and publications. The current preservation and conservation of source original collections is increasingly distanced from access services which are based on surrogate delivery rather than direct physical use of collections. At the same time, preservation services in support of new access modes are problematic since maintenance of digital resources has proven antithetical to their preservation; these resources just don't stand still! Another layer of discontinuity is presented by the maintenance of delivery technologies.

Note - the preservation and storage functions are positioned closer as the more apparent association. Not only does the storage function threshold all types of collections and media between live usage and fixed archival identity, but it also suggests other development paths for preservation services. Specifically, the physical preservation facility can be merged with the physical facility of purpose built collection storage. Such a merge leverages the services of preservation as an independent environmental monitor, a collection contingency response and processing facility, a medium neutral manager of integrated university collections and a mediator of capture and recapture handling for problematic and fragile source materials.

Note - The source original items of any medium have achieved a mastering status for their surrogate access. Such change of status for originals is already established with microfilming and with the use of photocopiers in libraries. The trend is now accelerated with the advent of digital imaging and digital posting.

Note - The shift to a mastering role is not necessarily an improvement in status for originals. The source original can also be identified as a disposable accessory of access services. Live, digital library services further dissolve the identity of source collections conveying a general transience of content and an irrelevance of its provenance. Culture context can also play a complicating role whenever preference for "clean" copy or a premise of one time reformatting and disposal is assumed. Such shift of status engenders preservation challenges. Conservators and preservation administrators must counter a dispensable status attached to source originals if they are to counter a disregard of their profession. (refer: Baker/Darton)

Note - Much of the churning over the role of preservation is due to a single reading mode fallacy (SRMF). This fallacy considers all modes of reading as equivalent, where, for example, on-line surrogates can simply replace print without any change of meaning. More likely traditional parent reading modes are now composite to an on-line reading mode, but the parent modes and the new on-line reading mode remain partitioned. Different reading modes provide complementary, but different meanings from the same content.

Note - As a result, preservation service viewed as providing the continuity of use of the various reading modes is itself partitioned or lobed. This is evident in the long standing partitioning of library and archives preservation (print and written reading modes) and in the long standing partitioning of sound recording preservation (verbal/visual reading mode). It is not remarkable that a new preservation service sector for the composite on-line reading mode, frequently styled the "digital library", will also be partitioned from other preservation sectors. In addition it would not be surprising if methodologies and principles are not shared.

A drastic shift confronting the preservation of the composite 4th mode, or any reading behavior, is the needed shift of focus from the preservation of physical media to a wider activity of preserving reading modes themselves. Here the preservation service must extend beyond medium alone and into the efficiencies of reading and an easing of reading across time. Opportunities of aligning preservation serivices with reading behaviors include the wider distribution of preservation responsibilities and a wider role for preservation.

Reading mode approach to preservation practice

The technologically supported composite mode of on-screen reading should impose even more distinctions in preservation practice. In this domain the process of maintenance of digital resources is almost antithetical to their preservation. These resources are live with layers of links and continuously revised data that cannot be usefully conveyed to an archival state. This feature is related to the layers of technology that intervene between content and the reader since the interface is a necessary precursor to the act of reading. In essence any preservation of content must first attend to the preservation of the interface and its delivery systems. Then, at the point of delivery, preservation is inverted from a long term process to a short term process concerned with permanence and authentication over very brief periods; preservation in terms of seconds

There is question if the preservation function can be conveyed directly to the this new reading mode. Generally, on-line readers consider digital resources as transient and subject to revision. Static, stored, persistent collections delivered digitally may also be subsumed in wider digital information known for its mutability and impermanence. "Archiving" of digital content just as easily assures managed de-acquisition or deletion as frequently as it assures migration of data forward. In this context the preservation function itself will need preservation. For example, digital records managers now perceive archives as a corporate liability and provide automated deletion of accumulating e-mail every sixty to ninety days.

Risk and Opportunity

Other quirks of preservation practice imposed by the composite reading mode are special effects on the established practices in the parent modes. The composite mode also enables selective delivery of any reading mode to any other. Analog audio tapes can be digitized and mounted at a website, print books can be imaged and delivered as digital facsimile, a website can be printed out. This thresholding between reading modes only produces more classes of resources that may need preservation.

In such a new context partitioned reading modes will transform each other so that comparisons cannot be made using their previous identities. Already a synthesis of print and on-line modes is apparent. In a simple example; hyper "text" is not native to cyberspace and "hard" copy is not native to print.

If new meaning is mined from the stored collections it will make them easier to preserve. Likewise if meaning of the stored collections is diminished and dissolved, they may be incrementally discarded. Storage must provide imaging serves. Otherwise the storage agenda is a euphemism for demeaning the status of source originals. In a context of access to all reading modes, drawing out new meaning from the stored collections is more crucial than mending stored collections. On a wild note, direct digital interface to the paper collections may be a method to accelerate the building of exclusively paper based, print and archival collections.

The influence of multiple reading modes on the preservation agenda will be, hopefully, to establish the continuing role of the source original in the context of digital delivery. Without such a continuing interrelation between sources and delivery products, the preservation function overall will be greatly diminished in significance. Preservation advocates must counter any demeaned status of originals if they wish to counter a demeaned status of their profession.

The tranistory and mutable character of composite mode resources is an intrinsic quality not a temporary affectation of these resources. Approaches other than archival fixing must be considered. These can include distributed preservation with responsibilities shifted to authors as well as users of on-line resources. A related approach is “cloud preservation” where widely distributed copies are occasionally polled to produce a consensus state of a given resource.

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