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Haptics and Habitats of Reading

Today I want to share with you my exploration of the role of haptics in book reading. Haptics, or the study of touch as a means of communication, has also lead me to consider habitats of reading behaviors.

(1) HAPTIC LEGACY inherent in book reading

Pre-human legacy relevant to the haptics of the book includes both primate dexterity and projectile skills of hominids. As an attribute of primate dexterity the hands prompted the mind, even conveying properties of inertial and tactile investigations into neurological development of the hominid brain. Hominid learning was based on tactile investigation of the environment.

Frank Wilson in his recent book titled The Hand, notes that we overlook the role of dexterity in human evolution.(1) "There is growing evidence that H. sapiens acquired in its new hand not simply the mechanical capacity for refined manipulation and tool using skills but, as time passed and events unfolded, an impetus to the redesign, or reallocation, of the brains circuitry. The new way of mapping the world was an extension of ancient neural representations that satisfy the brain's need for gravitational and inertial control of locomotion. ...a new physics would eventually have to come into this brain, a new way of registering and representing the behavior of objects moving and changing under the control of the hand. It is precisely such a representational system - a syntax of cause and effect, of stories and of experiments, each having a beginning, a middle, and an end - that one finds at the deepest levels of the organization of human language."

grasp a concept

Primate dexterity adapted us to convey concepts in physical objects. The word “comprehend” blends grasping and understanding (2) and the manipulatory actions of paper book reading exemplify such an ergonomic of understanding.

Acts of manipulated navigation in book reading involve the vertical page, moving in position with a previous and next page and in recto/verso relationship and these pages handled in a mobile, bound structure which provides the mechanism for delivering and timing concepts. Fingers tend to start the lift of a leaf during the page read and tend to concluding motions at the page turn. Paper grain, paper thickness and other tactile features such as book weight are continually mapped against an emergent meaning. An embedded learning path of hands prompting the mind is at work as we read a book. The meaning is delivered and exemplified by a manipulated physical object.

We are supposed to believe that digital information will deliver conceptual works directly, that is via an electronic transmission not that different from neural transmission. Actually the traditional physical media may be more apt for such conceptual transmission. We are physical bodies and we negotiate our consciousness in those terms.(3) “What ends up being mapped in the sensory regions of the brain and what emerges in the mind, in the form of an idea, corresponds to some structure of the body, in a particular state and set of circumstances.”(4) Reading a physical book is just such a particular state and set of circumstances.

toss out an idea

Even more alluring as a “just so” story, the early hominid trait of projectile throwing may have predestined homo sapiens to convey concepts via physical objects, such as the book. Evolutionary psychology indicates that as adaptations are provoked, the developing conceptual skills then diverge from the initial neurological need.(5) Just such neurological cross-functioning is at work when we use language or invent books for cultural transmission. So, is calculation, accurate throwing and successful stunning still at work as we publish?

Projectile predation, or throwing rocks at other animals, quickly presented survivability advantages at the same time that it opened an immense ecological niche. The long practiced throwing of stones via single arm launching also promoted asymmetrical development of the brain as evidenced by our species unique right and left handedness.(6) While lateralization is associated with many subsequent specialized behaviors propagated from lateral centers for language and vision, this strange trait of brain asymmetry emerged with the strange trait of single arm projectile predation or rock throwing. Lateral skills of one arm throwing later enabled subsequent lateral skills such as hand writing.

(2) BOOK INTERFACE of hand held reading devises

All hand held reading devises, those based on electronic display and those based on reflected light, provide eye readable content and manipulated navigation. Is it possible that the contest between the paper book and the screen book, is not in terms of image resolution, but in comparative haptics of their features of manipulated navigation?

Print-on-demand technologies engages attributes of digital creation, production and distribution without crossing the threshold to on-line reading and without haptic compromise. This small step projecting print production via digital print-on-demand technologies opens prospects for the traditional paper book as the real “e” book.(7) Disconcerted e-book promoters complain that people “just don’t like to read from a screen”. Actually, people love to read from a screen as the popularity of the Web indicates. I suggest that resistance to the e-book is not related to screen resolution, but to impaired haptic features.

In contrast to the manual punctuation of the page and the physical clock of content of the codex, the on-line page is manipulated with impaired haptic feedback. The “previous/next” click, the cursor slider and scroll tabs utilize grip and finger motion directed to the mouse and keyboard, but not to the substrate of the text. At least two other layers of interruption intervene. There is the electrified, rather than manual, instigation and an indirect interfacing via the navigational software.

(3) READING MODES consisting of parents and composites

Various ways of reading, or reading modes, have a history and future. Different reading modes emerged at different times in history, but once emerged, they are not abandoned. In stead, they accumulate and compile progressively into reading habitats.

So what are the reading modes? There seem to be three parent reading modes which can be called the verbal/visual mode, the writing mode and the print mode.(8) The verbal/visual accommodates the reading like interpretation we do while listening to a person speaking. There is also reading done as we listen to music which is reason to include aural communication in the first mode.

The writing mode accommodates the transaction of messages between writer and a recipient, which can be one or more persons. We read letters from someone else, and then read our own reply before we send it back. The writing mode of reading is exemplified by email.

The print mode obviously refers to printed matter, but, because of print technology’s ability to produce copies, its essence is the reading of relations between conceptual works themselves as represented by library organization.

These three parent reading modes have emerged over time and have progressively converged and combined in various ways. Each reading mode is filled with wide gradations of expression and content and an infinity of interlayerings are possible. Sometimes we find ourselves reading in various modes at the same time or at a single website. This would suggest a composite, screen based reading habitat enabled by the advent of digital technologies and digital communications in which the parent modes are merged so effectively that text, texting, viewing, listening, ranting (or silent shouting) between someone and anyone are all intermingled. Digital transmission also has enabled many more delivery scenarios between and from the parent reading modes. Each reading mode can now be discretely delivered to each of the others.

The model for compiling reading modes into fluid behavior is not in media studies, but in developmental psychology and evolutionary neurology. Recent theory in these fields begins with development of independent conceptual domains (with specific locations in the brain) which are only subsequently connected to provide integrated conceptualization.(9)

Perhaps, a recent compounding of these permutations of delivery, from each mode to the others, is mistaken for an increased rate of change styled as a digital communication revolution. As likely, the current rate of change across the whole history of reading modes, is slowing.(10) Presently we are only filling in all the inevitable compilations between established parent modes. A cell phone with voice mail, thumb texting and a digital camera does not necessarily indicate either a revolution or an accelerated rate of change in the history of messages.

It is fair to understand the 19th century reading environment as supported by the skilled integration of meaning from each of the parent modes, verbal, written and print, without the aid of a technology that could integrate and compile these modes.(11) The technologies needed to merge and deliver all the reading modes to a single screen based interface are only recently achieved.

But if parent reading modes have been progressively converging over a long history is this a real paradigm shift? Perhaps the underlying shift of digital connectivity is the transaction of information and knowledge via a non-haptic interface. Such a development would signal the advent of a truly different reading habitat.

(4) reading FORMATS associated with the book reading

How do books relate to the reading modes? Well, a strange thing is that the book predates multi-mode reading. The earliest books were scroll format. The scroll format is associated with recitation or reading confined to the verbal or spoken mode. During late Antiquity the writing mode of reading intensified with an increasing exchange of letters. These letters, written on papyrus and folded into a rectangular format and tied closed, provided an immediate prototype for the codex.

So the scroll to codex transition can be associated with the advent of a second reading mode based on writing. This is as plausible a scenario as the standard explanations based on religious injunction and reading efficiency, that taken together, remain inconclusive.(12) The pre-Christian sectarians realized their dependence on the writing and copying of letters. As a result, “Christianity was the high-tech religion of late Antiquity, using the written word resourcefully to create and shape itself.”(13) But, while sectarians were early adopters of the codex, the classical cultures were, subsequently, no less comprehensive in their adoption of the format. Everyone adopted the codex as the writing mode was compiled into reading behaviors.

Then, for a thousand years prior to the advent of printing, books were used in the writing mode of reading and in an initial habitat of the first two reading modes. This was the manuscript era of books. Careers such as that of Augustine of Hippo, illustrate the interaction and compiling of reading behaviors across both the verbal/visual reading mode and the writing mode of reading.(14)

With the advent of printing the book format began to provide even greater functionality for the reader. The printed copies were arranged in various ways with other copies producing a readership of the juxtapositions themselves. Implications of the relations of conceptual works defined new disciplines, while the arrangement of books in libraries provided a searchable database. Reading across two or more topics engendered unique perspective and the two activities of organization for learning and organization for information retrieval in libraries converged. (15)

With the advent of the print reading mode the book performed in all three parent modes and was poised to operate in a fully composite reading habitat. But is the book poised to operate in association with a non-haptic, or automatic, reading mode?

(5) haptic vs. NON-HAPTIC reading MODE

Ultimately, the haptics of the physical book may be invalidated, but only after reading itself is automated. Katherine Hayles summarizes the situation; “Although these visions differ in degree and kind of interfaces they imagine, they concur that the posthuman implies not only a coupling with intelligent machines but a coupling so intense and multifaceted that it is no longer possible to distinguish meaningfully between the biological organism and the information circuits in which the organism is enmeshed.” (16)

A zone of bots, spiders and crawlers is quickly evolving. Such an impression accords with a concept that evolution is now proceeding in the domain of technology while our static species provides the medium for this different vitality.(17) A familiar example of non-haptic, reading would be a Google search. Here, after another kind of readership, the result just pops-up. You can easily feel the presence of new synthetic ideas in any mining of referers or in any wandering after the germinated links.

So the future of the physical book is linked with the fate of bionic reading. The “desert of search engines and free-text searching”(18) may not yet be considered a reading habitat and its output may not yet be considered an act of reading. But it is. Rich permutations of reading behaviors are emerging as thresholds between parent modes are dissolved and delivery technologies enable every possible cross-mode conversion. The permutations are only increased by the promise of joint haptic and non-haptic reading behaviors. These continuing compilations into reading habitats seem to integrate automatically in front of the reader in an authentic emergence.(19 ) But, ultimately, automatic reading may require new haptic accessories, not just visual interactivities, to assure a grasp of what is read.(20) One of these inevitable haptic accessories is the physical book.

References

(1) chapter 2, The Hand, Pantheon Books, 1998, by Frank Wilson (2) Tactile motor expressions suggest a deep haptic dependence at work in projecting abstractions. Numerous expressions such as "grasp a concept", "get a grip on yourself", "cast a doubt", "handle a situation", "point out an error", "toss out an idea" or even, "tickle your fancy" are examples. The word "comprehend" blends grasping and understanding. David Katz’s standard work on touch perceptions, The World of Touch, interprets this embedded usage as an indicator of the primacy of touch compared to all other senses in perceptual psychology. He goes on to show this embedded usage in various languages including German, Greek, Latin, French and English. A familiar response indicates the primacy of touch over other modes of communication. During episodes of dexterity concentration, as when threading a needle, conversation is silenced and frequently the tongue is held between the teeth. This response arrests the distraction of the speech, which evolved later as a communication mode. (3) The Feeling of What Happens, Harcourt Inc., 1999 by Antonio Damasio (4) Looking for Spinoza, Harcourt Inc., 2003 by Antonio Damasio (5) The Prehistory of the Mind, by Steven Mithen, Thames & Hudson, 1996. A connection between ballistic skills and subsequent language capabilities is described in A Brain for All Seasons, University of Chicago Press, 2002, by William Calvin. (6) The Throwing Madonna, chapter 4, “Did Throwing Stones Lead to Bigger Brains”, by William Calvin, McGraw-Hill, 1991. (7) Book Business, W.W. Norton & Company, 2001, by Jason Epstein. This is an excellent analysis of the print-on-demand technologies and the traditional book business. Obsolescence attributed to traditional books in context with e-book delivery is silly. An object conveying a concept may seem to be a paradox, but it is not an obsolescent delivery method. Gnostic gospels found sealed in a jar after sixteen centuries were immediately readable. In terms of reliable transmission across time and culture it is fair to ask which technology, the papyrus book or the electronic text is more advanced? (8) Orality & Literacy, The Technologizing of the Word, first published in 1982, by Walter Ong (9) Excellent descriptions of this theoretical approach are in Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind, Thames & Hudson, 1996, and Howard Gardiner, Intelligence Reframed, Basic Books, 1999. (10) The Enduring Library, American Library Association, 2003, by Michael Gorman (11) For additional narratives of 19th century legacy factors in reading skills and reading technologies see; New Media, 1740-1915, editors, Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey B. Pingree, MIT Press, 2003, Scripts, Grooves and Writing Machines, Lisa Gitelman, Stanford University Press, 1999, The Railway Journey, The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century, Wolfgang Schivelbusch, University of California Press, 1986. (12) The Birth of the Codex, Oxford University Press, 1983, by Colin Roberts and T.C Skeat, also “Scroll to Codex”, lecture, Roger Bagnell (13) p. 25, Avatars of the Word, Harvard University Press, 1998, by James O’Donnell (14) Augustine the Reader, Brian Stock and Harvard University Press, 1996 and Saint Augustine, Garry Wills, Pheonix, 1999. (15) “How Can Classification Structures Be Used to Improve Science Education?”, Buchel & Coleman, Library Resources & Technical Services, 47/1, 2003 (16) How We Became Posthuman, University of Chicago Press, 1999, by Katherine Hayles (17) Darwin Among the Machines, Perseus Books, 1997, by George Dyson (18) The Enduring Library, Michael Gorman, American Library Association, 2003. (19) On emergences in general see; The Emergence of Everything, How the World Became Complex, Oxford University Press, 2002, by Harold Morowitz (20) On haptic accessories see; The Myth of the Paperless Office, MIT Press 2002, by Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H.R. Harper.

08.09.03/glf

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