Theory Beyond Codes: Haptics, Mobile Handhelds, and other “Novel” Devices: The Tactile Unconscious of Reading across Old and New Media by Rachel Lee :: CTHEORY: Theory, Thechnology, Culure VOL 35, NOS 1-2 :: Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker.

I. Don’t Press. Just Touch

In a 2007 news article in the ~Korea Times~ covering the then innovative technology of the capacitance v. resistive (i.e., pressure sensitive) touch screens, Cho Jin-Seo uses the lead-in “Don’t Press. Just Touch” to capture the habituated finger knowledge one would have to incorporate in order to switch from the more familiar interface of ATM’s and cashier check-out stands to the newer interfaces of mobile devices. [1] These handheld personal data assistants, iPods, and phones work through a continuous electric current and a multipoint interface that allows for mobile electronic gadgets to detect more than one input (aka touches) simultaneously, as in the “two-finger stretch-and-pinch” that, as Stephen Wildstrom writing in ~Business Week~ put it, “gave the iPhone its initial wow” (5/19/08). [2] “Don’t Press. Just Touch” also provides an apt metaphor for a redirection in critical practice from a penetrating detection of hidden meanings to a more glancing consideration of the ~frisson~ — the shiver of intensity — amplified by a particular event, phenomenon, text, visual medium, and so forth…