clay paper light: reading and the medium

The five thousand year history of reading is the history of a technology of communication. There have been three major media, in all of that history. Clay, for cuneiform tablets, the earliest sophisticated writing system. Paper, for the printed book. And light, for the new vehicle of reading, just emerging, the computer.

The question I want to address in this paper is, will the computer take over from the book as the primary medium for reading? Can computers, working in light, deliver the reading experience?

Theorists of hypertext point to the power of the computer in making reading three-dimensional, and to the uncanny way in which hypertext appears to validate deconstructive theories of reading. However, hypertext as a literary medium shows no sign of taking off. Why is this? Does it mean that the computer cannot compete with the printed book?

The answer is sought in an analysis of the nature of the reading experience itself, and its dependence on the physical characteristics of the reading medium. We are all children of the book, which makes it hard to look at it clearly. In order to make the book strange, so that we can see it, a comparison is made with the clay tablet, a quasi-print technology that lasted much longer than print--longer, even, than writing on paper.

Tom Davis (tomdavis@unask.com)
English Department, University of Birmingham.

 

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