I screen, you screen, we all screen
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com
by DANNY BLOOM in.........Taiwan
Alex Beam, writing in the June 19 issue of the Boston Globe, in a very
interesting column titled as above by a savvy copyeditor (is that
copyeditor or copy editor?) began his piece by asking:
"Do we read differently on the computer screen from how we read on the
printed page?
He then quoted Jakob Nielsen, a Web usability researcher, who reported
that humans generally read 25 percent more slowly on a plastic
pixelated screen, also known as a PPS.
Beam said he reads more quickly on the screen and edits out about 40
percent of what appears before his eyes. And then he warned readers
online and on paper in the printed edition of the Globe: "
"If you haven’t told me what you want by line four of your e-mail,
trust me, I didn’t get the message."
Beam then tells us about Dr. Anne Mangen of Norway, who has asserted
in an academic paper that screen reading and page reading are
radically different. (emphasis added by Danny Bloom on screen)
"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,’’Dr Mangen wrote in her paper
published in London last year.
And she concluded: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the
intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a
shallower, less focused way.’’
When Mr Beam asked Dr Mangen if she thought there might be a future
convergence of Kindle reading and Gutenberg reading, she told him:
“Reading digital text will always differ from reading text that is not
digital (i.e., that has a physical, tangible materiality), no matter
how reader-friendly and ‘paper-like’ the digital reading device (e.g.,
Kindle etc.). The fact that we do not have a direct physical, tangible
access to the totality of the text when reading on Kindle affects the
reading experience. When reading a book we can always see, and feel
with our fingers and hands, our progress through the book as the pile
of pages on the left side grows and the pile of pages on the right
side gets smaller. At the same time, we can be absolutely certain that
the technology [the book] will always work - there are no problems
with downloading, missing text due to technical or infrastructure
problems, etc.’’
Dr Mangen also said that the e-reader experience introduces “a degree
of unpredictability and instability’’ that influences reading, even if
we are not aware of it.
Beam then quotes William Powers on Cape Cod, who wrote a romantic
defense of the ancient medium called Mr Paper. Powers' 75 page essay,
“Hamlet’s BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal,’’ -- set to be come a book
in the middle of 2010 from HarperCollins -- was widely quoted in the
blogosphere, with this one passage often noted:
“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.’’
Powers concluded: “It becomes a still point, an anchor for the
consciousness. It’s a trick the digital medium hasn’t mastered - not
yet.’’
So the final question, now that you have scrolled down to the bottom
of this seemingly endless bottomless page -- another of the drawbacks
to reading on screens, it might be noted -- is this: are you screening
this on a screen (see the UrbanDictionary definition of screening to
understand this question better) or are you reading it on paper?
There is only one answer. Dish!
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