I love books and cannot imagine a life without feeling the pages of a book, the scent from its leaves and the focus that the words on the pages have. Personally, I do not use any tablet but I know that if I did, I would be able to carry all their books with me in one device while at the same time being able to access the Internet to shop seamlessly for more books and read reviews (Klein, 2008). This makes me wonder even more what the future hold not just for reading but also e-reading.
Tosca and Pedersen (2014) interviewed ten Danish tablet readers and tried to gauge their experience of reading on the tablet. They found that the readers had some expectations of this reading experience based on their experience of reading the physical book. If you have used a tablet, you would be aware that it is unable to showcase book collections to others and fails to give the reader access to touch and feel the pages. In a follow-up article, Tosca (2015) analyzed the transcripts of these interviews and presents a short story, set a couple hundred years in the future, when the aforementioned shortcomings have been removed. Using advanced projector technology to project words onto a codex and display books on a e-shelf, she speculates one possible future of e-reading. She also comments on the altered reading experience when updates to the content is controlled by a central organization.
I would highly recommend reading her original article. Though the following analysis mentions many of the innovation and ideas she mentions, it does not encompass everything. Also, it is quite an interesting article to read. 🙂
The Future of e-reading
Tosca(2015) imagines a future for e-reading in a technologically advanced world where people’s glasses have GPS and reading chairs have overhead projectors. The story follows a Reader, Ms Alma Bovary who has called upon the house of Mr Urbina to fix his reading equipment.
Reading Equipment
Mr Urbina owns an old-looking chair that has a projector fitted on top. To read the text, a blank codex has to be used as the surface on which the words are projected. A codex is another word for a manuscript. It is usually a book containing sheets made of paper or similar materials such as papyrus. In this future, it is available in many sizes (similar to how we have a variety of sizes of books) as illustrated by Alma when she chooses her favorite size of codex to test the reading chair.
A common concern that tablet readers have about their reading experience is not being able to turn the pages of the book physically. The codex is way to address this concern as it allows reader to experience the physically of the book while the text is online. However, a codex would also be subject to wear and tear, similar to a physical book. Other issues would be the distortion of the projection created by the presence of fingers on the pages on the codex. Would the reader have to sit in a certain way?
If the reader wishes to annotate the text, a dialogue box appears for user input and once that is complete, the words become projected onto the codex pages as if they were part of the text itself. As an avid reader myself, I often take notes along the margins of the books and highlight sections of importance. The fact that the annotations become part of the text conserves this functionality and possibly, even fits the text, aligning it with the space in the margins according to the size of the selected codex.
An important aspect of reading on the tablet is the ability to take it everywhere (Klein, 2008). The reading chair, of course, is immobile, and the projector is an integral part of it. Alma carries a codex with her, however, it is unclear how she read form it without a projector. Maybe those GPS glasses have some special book-settings too? 🙂
The e-shelf
When Alma first enters the Mr Urbina’s library, she notices a three-walled exquisite bookshelf that show the e-books he owns. The projections have characteristics similar to physical books, such that they are smudged along the edges, depicting age and wear and tear virtually. A red aura surrounds the book projections that have not been read. The e-shelf supposedly gives a true picture of what kinds of books are owned and been read. However, Alma is asked by Mr Urbina to ‘hack’ into this e-shelf and instead display books that “a respectable home” should have (Tosca, 2015, pp. 89).
As Knox (2012) very aptly puts
Sharing your shelf is sharing yourself – showcasing the building blocks that have crafted your knowledge, personality, and identity.
While we may be able to hide away the physical books we do not want to show to visitors, there does not seem to be such an option with the e-shelf, except when it is hacked.
The Library
In Alma’s time, the Electronic Library gathers information about passages that readers have marked and commented on, and every year, edits or modifies the most-read books, removing access to some passages while at the same time, changing others. The Recycling Laws do not allow any physical copies of text to exist and hence, once a book is updated by the Library, it’s older versions are no longer accessible. Tosca mentions that these ideas come from Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
These ‘Text Transformations’ have been a cause of discontent for Alma and she has served her sentence in prison for distributing printed copies of deleted sections of books. The lack of access to physical copies explains Alma’s reaction when Mr Urbina presents her with the hardcopy of Hamlet. “A codex that would only ever display that one text” is “an anomaly” (Tosca, 2015, pp. 89). Her discontent with the Text Transformations is further showcased by her comment that “maybe the old book would tell a different story, one could only hope” (Tosca, 2015, pp. 91).
Editing and modifying passages in the most-read books makes reading driven more by what others think of the book rather than what the author intended, or the reader could have experienced. Alma indicates that the older book would tell a different story and that the reading experience is somehow altered just as much as the book is, making it highly opinionated and not something that is open to new interpretations of the same material.
Though the transformations are based on the readers’ annotations, I do not get the impression that this is a collective social experience. The reading chair must be connected to the Internet to access these books, however, the mention of collaboration through book clubs and online discussions is missing, which the tablet seamlessly makes possible today, thorough apps such as Goodreads. What role do you think collaboration will play in the future when it comes to reading? What role does it play already?
Conclusion
Taking inspirations from her interviewees, Tosca (2015) presents a future of the e-reading experience set some hundred years in the future when books are no long allowed by law to exist in physical form, and instead, narratives must be accessed through a digital device on a codex. However, the story leads to many questions, such as the case for portability of the reading experience, and the way collaboration is possible in tablets today, leaving one to further ponder whether we must go backwards to bring the e-reading experience close to that of reading a physical book. If you have any comments to share, share them below. 🙂
References
Bradbury, R. (1962). Fahrenheit 451. 1950. New York: Ballantine, 7-19.
Klein, E. (2008, May/June). The future of reading. Retrieved from Columbia Journalism Review: https://archives.cjr.org/cover_story/the_future_of_reading.php
Knox, P. (2012, September 7). What does your bookshelf say about you? Retrieved from The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/07/bookshelf-say-about-you
Nuwer, R. (2016, January 25). Are paper books really disappearing? Retrieved from BBC – Future: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160124-are-paper-books-really-disappearing
Tosca, S. (2015). Dreaming of e-reading futures. Digital Creativity, 26(2), 83-91.
Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14626268.2015.1046082
Tosca, S., & Pedersen, H. N. (2014). Tablets and the new materiality of reading. Comparative History of Literatures in European languages, 27(vii), 357-367.
This article is adapted from an assignment for a cyberliterature course, Winter 2018.
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