I found very fascinating looking back into the early forms of writing space and the transitions that we experience during different timelines in history that in a way emphasized the relevance of understanding the nature of our current transition: from the printed book to digital texts.
When looking at these early developments of technologies for writing I see reflected a similar initial resistance in attitudes towards the new writing space. As we lurch into a digital text space my intention here is to reflect about how we can preserve the best of older forms to understand and use the new ones in a better way.
As Bolter emphasized, “the writing space is generated by the interaction with the material properties and cultural choices and practices”(Bolter, 2001). In this sense, even though ebooks and hypertext obviously provide experiences that paper cannot, it looks like we are working hard to make this transition on reading modes quite moderate and similar to the experience of reading in the paper. “The reading modes overlay and merge with each other. These are modes of orality, writing, print and electronic transmission.” (Frost, 2004).
A particular early technology for writing that got my attention is the Scroll, as it has been mentioned in Module 3, it was highly associated with recitation and spoken delivery, but it also offered a physical text space with an interrupted sequence. These characteristics of continuity in text could provide some benefits for readers when the text was short, illustrated, or for ceremonial functions when the readings were recited to a group; but I imagine how the Scroll was also hard to use when readers had to go through texts that were long and dense, for example when a reader had to consult text material at opposite ends of the documents so they had to go back and forth in long texts where excessive sheets were glued together.
In a way, the scroll resembles e-reading, when navigating through a digital document I find myself scrolling down as I move forward in an elaborated one long piece of reading. I noticed how I tend to struggle when reading dense documents with this structure, the physicality of the reading space is very different from the paper books.
The implicit feeling of trying to locate a particular piece of written information by a numbered page or by the bottom left corner of a certain page, for example, is a way to orientate myself in the text, and these changes the way I remember and associated information. In my case, I often try to highlight and take notes as I am reading, but sometimes I get lost in the overloads of information that long e-articles provide. Scrolling maybe not ideal for long and dense reading but instead for another kind of text, like news articles or for highly visual ones that hardly fit well in the printed book structure.
Nowadays, many designers are working to make e-reading as close to reading on paper as possible, but at the same time our reading and writing forms are evolving and getting more into a screen-based reading space that offers sophisticated forms of interaction where we decide what to read, hear and see next, and the writing space becomes something else than reading written words.
References:
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Routledge.
Frost Gary, (2004). Scroll to Codex Transition. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20060511022155/http://www.futureofthebook.com/storiestoc/scroll
zarah mathai
July 3, 2018 — 12:17 am
I appreciated your analysis of the early forms and historic transitions of writing space, from printed text to its digital counterparts. I reflected on your ideas and arguments specifically in its application to the classroom, and how I believe that the rise of digital literacies and screen-based reading spaces must be embraced by educators to engage learners in the 21st century classroom. Despite the accessibility difficulties of ebooks and digital texts you mention, the potential of digital literacies in the classroom cannot be understated. In fact, these digital spaces might be a precursor to a rethinking and revolution in pedagogy and practice (Knobel et al, 2009). Recognizing the facility with which students navigate digital spaces, immersing students in these educational, digital domains could be beneficial to comprehension and engagement. For example, in a social studies 10 classroom, instead of lectures and PowerPoints on residential schools, educators could structure lessons around student exploration of digital domains designated for education on the experiences, impacts and consequences of Canada’s Residential School System. “Where are the Children? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools” is an excellent example of such a digital domain. The accessibility challenges you mention is beginning to be countered by sophisticated and optimized hypertext and multimedia. Accessibility itself becomes a strategic access point to student engagement! As students explore these digital spaces, the responsibility to discover shifts to the student as well, and it becomes more clear that lecturing, however powerful, is not nearly as effective valuable a learning experience: “What diehard technology resisters fail to recognize, according to their critics, is that the standard teaching format, even employed by the most charismatic lecturer, doesn’t work very well” (Millar, 2018). These digital spaces allow for students to be the center and their collaboration with their peers the focus. In these spaces, students of varying levels of knowledge interact, and the community fostered here enhances not only student engagement but the competence and knowledge of each student as well.
Knobel, Michele & Lankshear, Colin. (2009). Wikis, Digital Literacies, and Professional Growth. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy – J ADOLESC ADULT LITERACY. 52. 631-634. 10.1598/JAAL.52.7.8.
Millar, E. (2018, May 09). Classroom of 2020: The future is very different than you think. Retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/canadian-university-report/classroom-of-2020-the-future-is-very-different-than-you-think/article4620458/
scott pike
July 5, 2018 — 6:41 pm
Hi Sara,
I really enjoyed your post. It got me thinking about a number of things, namely your initial quote from Bolter. I too get bogged down way too frequently with isolating information in e-books, and in e-scrolls in particular. Even when I have found the information, as I have done in the countless pdfs I have highlighted and annotated for the program, I find retrieving that information is less efficient than if I had a simple book with a dog-eared page. Surely there must have been scholars from antiquity who felt as you do, that it was important to include some system of quick reference for navigating through the scrolls. If we were transported back to the age of the scroll, I doubt it would be that difficult to come up with a system that could accomplish the task.
Yet in the light research I did on this issue, the best I could find was that such a feature to the scroll was not considered to be important. Rather, emphasis was placed on the oral tradition of memorization of the material in the first place, than on establishing a system of quick reference. One of the earliest features of textual referencing, the table of contents, wasn’t until the arrival of the manuscript (thanks, Wiki). In fact, Ong relates that another textual referencing tool, the index, “seems to have been valued at times for their beauty and mystery rather than for their utility”.
It seems like the features you and I prize just didn’t matter that much back then. This seems to be true with the practice of situating a written work within a certain time period, or even with such an indispensible feature as portability, I imagine. Libraries and scriptoriums were places where people sought knowledge or went to complete a task. It may not have been until the advent of the codex that people realized – or even desired – to conduct these pursuits elsewhere.
I think I will always favor books over pdfs. The tangible, instant, and simple interactions are a perfect balance for me. However, as my books shelfs start to overflow, and I begin to trip over my textbooks that have fallen to the ground, the time may come for me to make some changes to the way I interact with text.
References:
Bolter, Jay David. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print [2nd edition]. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
Wikipedia contributors. (2018,June8).Tableofcontents.In Wikipedia,TheFreeEncyclopedia.Retrieved01:35, July 6, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Table_of_contents&oldid=844911517