Desmond in the movie Sunset Boulevard, explaining why silent movies were so wonderful and so much better than talking movies. Being immersed in the topic of reading as I was when watching the film, I could not help connecting this line to reading as I did with almost anything I saw or read or heard about. With so-called ‘talkies’, we did not only add spoken dialogue to film, we added foley sounds as well. Fake sounds that are a better representation of the sound than the actual sound itself. We make the story come more vividly to life by adding the sound of chopped cabbage when a head is chopped off or by clapping together two coconut shells for a horse galloping away. Even though the cabbage in itself has no relation to the storyline, this additional layer of sound enriches our viewing experience.
With regard to our reading experience, we’re about to leave the stage of sentiment we are in now. A stage in which most of the commercial software and hardware still try to replicate the ‘real’ reading experience by imitating a book and having us turn the page, make bookmarks, and read chronologically. No wonder that we are still comparing the two, as Norma did with silent movies and talkies. Imagine what she would have said about YouTube. A platform in which the metadata has taken over and completely changed our viewing experience, and yet we still go out to watch movies in the cinema.
Alessandro Ludovico states in his text: ‘Digital and print, while being two different worlds, are not mutually exclusive.’ Both will remain in existence and evolve, but should not be compared with each other, just as you shouldn’t compare Cinema with YouTube either. Both chronological and non-linear reading is possible in digital and print. The argument that digital would make reading a more mobile activity is ridiculous; you can take your book anywhere and it will never shut down on you. Subdividing reading into digital and analogue seems a bit redundant, but is perhaps necessary to define two different starting- points from which we can proceed further.
Looking at the future of reading also means looking back to see what we want to take along for the ride. We will continue to read; we just add new layers to alter the reading experience for better or for worse. And in decades time perhaps we will be saying: 'We didn’t need an interface, we had print.' Or we have managed to find our cabbage and are able to redefine what reading can entail.
Minke Kampman is an editor, teacher, and new media researcher.
26. How Will We Read? – Lynn Kaplanian-Buller
As text appears everywhere – even beamed on the wall while we exercise or onto the ceiling as we lie in bed – we read faster and faster. In the fifties a technique for speed reading postulated that the brain can comprehend much faster than the eye can see. So training the eye to read a whole page rather than by word or sentence, hugely increases the speed of comprehensive reading. We will all soon speedread, our eyes teased ever- faster forward by texts paired with images.
But besides reading faster and faster, a clearer division between warm and cold reading will emerge. Cold reading is for gathering information involving head-thinking and fast eye movement. Gaming might even pump up the heart rate, but cold reading doesn’t open the heart. For cold reading, hard cased electronic devices are fine delivery systems.
Warm reading happens when we open our hearts. As the author’s words move us emotionally, we give off an emotional charge which gets absorbed into the paper page. It’s a private kind of reading, often done in bed, and we seem to sense that organic materials like paper can absorb and keep the reading experience safe for another day.
Books can act as 'transitional objects' – objects which are able to attract, hold, and release emotions that might otherwise overwhelm the person. Just as a teddy bear helps a child to survive the absence of its mother, we often treasure a book as a means to survive an otherwise hostile situation. One can 'retreat' into a book and share with it our own feelings as we work them out, one step removed from real life.
We treasure leather-bound, vellum, and antique books because the materials seem to have absorbed the thoughts and emotions as well as the fingerprints of those who read that copy before us. Paper-bound books can do this as well: children’s books saved for the next generation, journals written by hand. The authenticity of being able to run your hand over the page touched by the author or previous owner is a warm experience which we will increasingly crave as we are engulfed with cold texts.
The ability to print a personalized original manuscript or facsimile of an eclectic title will produce gifts overflowing with intention. 'I know you like trains and that your family live in Australia , so, for your birthday, I made a copy of Locomotives of Australia 1854-2007 on the Espresso Book Machine.' 'Mom, I had grandma’s poems and diary made into a book for you. If you’d like to add your poems and diary, we can print new copies for all the family members.'
To receive such a gift feels very different from receiving a link to a 'really good download', doesn’t it? Small printing devices will let us fabricate and personalize digital texts on organic paper, creating unlimited warm reading experiences for us and to share. A haven to hold.
Lynn Kaplanian Buller is the director of The American Book Center in Amsterdam.
27. Screening – Kevin Kelly
In the morning I begin my screening while still in bed. I check the screen near my pillow for the time, my wake-up alarm, and also to see what news scrolls by. I screen the tiny panel that shows messages from my friends. I wipe the messages away with my thumb. I walk to the bathroom. I screen my new art works on the wall – these are more cheerful and sunny than the ones yesterday. I get dressed and screen my outfit in the closet. It shows me that the red scarf would look better with my shirt. In the kitchen I screen the full news. I like the display horizontal in the table. I wave my arms to direct the stream of writing. I turn to the screens on my cabinets searching for my favourite cereal. A screen floating above the refrigerator indicates fresh milk inside. I reach inside and take out the milk. The screen on the side of the milk carton tries to get me to play a game, but I quiet it. I screen the bowl to be sure it is approved clean from the dishwasher. As I eat my cereal, I nod and the news stories advance. When I pay close attention, the news gets more detailed. As I screen further and deeper, the text has more links, denser illustrations. I begin screening a very long investigative piece on the local mayor, but I need to take my son to school. I dash to the car. In the car, my story continues where I left off in the kitchen. My car screens the story for me, reading it aloud as I drive. The buildings we pass along the highway are screens themselves. They usually show advertisements that are aimed only at me, since they recognize my car. I usually ignore them, except when they show an illustration or diagram from the story I am screening. I screen the traffic to see what route is least jammed this morning. Since the car learns from other drivers’ routes, it mostly chooses the best route, but it is not foolproof yet, so I like to screen where the traffic flows. At my son's school, I check the wall display in the hallway. I raise my palm and the screen recognizes me. It shows me my personal interface. I can screen my messages. I glance at the ones I want to screen in detail and it expands those. I wave some forward and others I swoosh to the archives. One is urgent. I pinch the air and I am screening a virtual conference. My partner in India is speaking to me. They are screening me in Bangalore . I finally make it to the office. When I touch my chair, my room knows me, and all the screens in the room and on the table are ready for me. The eyes of the screens watch me closely as I conduct my day. After 16 years of watching me work, they can anticipate a lot of what I do. The sequence of symbols on the screens makes no sense to anyone else, just as my colleague’s sequence baffles me. When we are working together we screen an entirely different environment. We gaze and grab different tools as we hop and dance around the room. I am a bit old fashioned and still like to hold smaller screens in my hands. My favourite one is the same leather-cased screen I had in college (the screen is new, just the case is old). It is the same screen I used to create the documentary I did about the migrants sleeping in the mall. My hands are used to it and it is used to my gestures. I can screen a realie in about an hour, speed screening the whole way. You should see the pads and streams go flying. When I get home, I try to slow down. I like to screen relaxing, affirming visions on the walls. Although my son likes to screen adventure games, we limit it to one hour before dinner. During dinner we screen mood colours to centre our meals. I will admit that we'll sometimes screen questions about school work, or food ingredients, or trivia, but we try to keep those screens small. After dinner I like nothing better than to lie in bed and screen my favourite story on the ceiling till I fall asleep.
Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick for Wired Magazine.
28. I Don’t Read on My Bike – Joost Kircz
I read the whole day long and tease my brain, a neurological fruit salad consisting of various pieces of tasting, touching, feeling, hearing, counting, naming, scaring, and translating. With the left half of my brain, I read a traffic sign and know that I may Not turn right. No text and yet understandable. I don’t read text on the bike, but I do listen to music. This immediately suggests that reading is not listening and that electronic texts are completely different to music files. An image is a cultural recognition in context: the mouth of my beloved, the icon of a recycle bin on my screen, the fear that is generated on the screen by a film trailer. A text stands for naming, understanding, transferring, and reusing. Sometimes an image enhances a text, the image illustrates an intention; sometimes, the image is primary such as a wound. Here the text explains what we see. Text needs space, because reading depends on the textual image. Typography and layout are conditions for understanding. Text structure depends on the supporting material. Stone is beautiful, paper is superb. New materials will prove they can be carriers. Long reading and educational texts require attention and repose. Text is for knowledge; image is for preserving that knowledge. Reading is thinking, is work.
Joost Kircz is part-time programme manager
