TouchScreens – you can see through them, but you can’t touch through them

The screen you’re reading this on is extremely convenient – so convenient you’ve probably forgotten what a remarkable thing it is.  Whether you’re on a phone, a tablet or a computer, that thin film of glass in front of you is the medium for almost anything you might need today.  You consume and you create, plan and procrastinate, read and write, look and see.  Our little screens are remarkable windows to look through.

And there’s the catch.

Because when you reach out to touch them all you encounter is a polished film.  You can look through the window, but you can’t reach through it.

The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said that, ‘the medium is the message’.  By which he meant, every medium of communication determines what kinds of message you communicate, and therefore prioritises certain hidden communicating factors, and deprioritises others. And some things will be essentially overlooked by the communication channel you prefer.

When you write a letter you can do a number of things – but you can’t actually send your voice.  Your colleague, your friend, your lover, has to use their memory, their imagination, to summon that up. A physical letter will prioritise thought over spontaneity. These days, a letter communicates a level of intentionality and importance that it never used to when they were ubiquitous.  A telegram, like today’s text, implied simple urgency. When you send an email you can attach all sorts of items, including even an intimate voice memo – but unlike a letter, you cannot send your touch.  Your handwriting.  A pressed flower. Your smell, even.  

Every communication channel communicates by being a particular kind of channel.

What happens to our Christian discipleship, and our Christian pastoring, if everything is filtered through a film of glass?

Well, there’s an illusion of functional omniscience.  You’re reading Jonah on your screen, and you want to know more about Nineveh – click. There’s the map, the article, the photograph, the secondary reading, the YouTube from Keswick.  Your own notes as well. That is way more convenient than searching on your study shelves, or through the clippings in your filing system.  It is remarkable.  And although I know I mocked it with ‘functional omniscience’, it is a thought worth giving thanks for that you and I have access on our phones to material that would have taken days of research in a decent library to unearth.

That is astonishing.

But, what happens to, say, memory in the process?

Think for a moment about the physical Bible you most frequently use – if you still do.  You can probably picture where some passages are on the page. And even if you can’t, when you read a passage, the surrounding chapters are all around you, informing and reminding you.  Screens tend to lack that kind of contextual sense – which is why I rarely (not, never) use them for Bible reading.  Every ‘page’ looks, feels the same, with very limited context.  

With a physical Bible, Genesis is so obviously at the beginning, Revelation at the end.  Jesus comes up in the last, what, fifth? You can’t miss that with a physical text – but it glides past you on a screen.

And in case you think I’m being romantic, that’s been everyone’s experience since the invention of the codex (bound book) in the early centuries.  Before then, a decently ordered set of scrolls or tablets would have communicated the same for those who had access. And the writing down of God’s Word in Scripture was an early and consistent practice.

There’s a subtle knowledge here as well – if I asked you to find Habakkuk in your bible, you’d probably take a moment.  Or two. I’ll wait. But the process would be one of using your knowledge – Old Testament.  One of the Twelve, so after the big ones, but if I hit Matthew I’ve gone too far. Malachi, so back, back…. You’d get there.

Now here’s a remarkable thought.  That would be the same for any bible that you take hold of (yes, I’m ignoring the Apocrypha, and the differing order in the Jewish scriptures, but those are both consistent and stable as well).  In ten years from now, your phone, laptop and tablet will have gone to the recycling; the software may be unimaginably different, and you might be reading on glasses, or a headset, or on a projection on the wall.  Who knows.  But the new bible that you bought that morning will still have Habakkuk in the same, easy-to-work out order. That would have been true of your great-grandparents, and it will be true for your great-grandhildren. Neither of whom would make any sense of your phone screen.

What’s my point?  The medium is the message. And a book – a library of 66 books – is a message.

I’m not being a Luddite – I’m cheerfully typing this on the newest laptop I can afford, with the best software updates. I’m not being nostalgic – I’d rather write on a quiet laptop than with the background chatter of the random percussion of a typewriter keyboard.  Backspace beats Tippex. And both beat scraping back dried ink on vellum with a bit of sharp deer horn. 

My point is, that we become just a little bit more aware.  

When we write with a pen, or read by turning a page, it’s not better than writing with a keyboard or reading on a tablet, but it’s different. 

I’ve spotted this recently, journalling in a physical notebook, with a good fountain pen. Suddenly, in the silence, I’m aware of the sound of the pen on the paper, the smell of the ink, its gentle drying on the page.  The way the words seem magically to flow and flow out of the nib, and flow again.  It’s not better than the letter-by-letter experience of a word processor.  But it is charmingly, almost hypnotically different.  I’ve never journaled on a phone app, but I can’t imagine it has that sensuous element.  It will of course have others, like remembering the photo I took yesterday, or the song we liked.

And I mentioned a good fountain pen. The tactile nature and context of handwriting can be a pleasure in itself.

When I write a sermon, the same.  I’ve preached from handwritten manuscript, handwritten notes, a screen, and from memory. Other options as well. On the screen I’ve used a word processor, PowerPoint and Keynote. On occasions, I’ve even written the notes in a nice hardback notebook, then snapped them and spoken from the photo image. Which, if you’re counting, means I’m achingly on-trend twice, simultaneously.

When we read on a page, the same.  When you highlight with a pencil or a highlighter, rather than on a Kindle, the same. Different is not inherently better or worse, it’s just different.

The medium is the message.

Increasingly I find that a pen and paper gets in the way less than a screen. By which I mean, that the screen feels like closes down more options than a notebook. Everything  on-screen inevitably feels like I’m writing a formal document (sermon, email, article, paper for the church council) – where the notebook feels like I’m starting to plan and moving towards writing a talk. When I’m at the early ‘what do I want to say?’ stage, playing with a pencil on paper feels more natural than doing a very similar exercise with Freeform. I have space to hesitate, to doodle, or pause. I don’t know how else to describe it.

And at the same time, a screen opens up more options. Too many.  In the way of distraction.  On the same tool I write my sermon, I watch Race Across the World, catch up with the news, and scroll Facebook. I buy a book someone recommended, and search down a virtual rabbit hole.  Behind the screen is a hugely impressive monetising industry designed to distract me, so successfully that I need apps, decisions to help me focus.  

But a pencil and an A4 pad are just there, distraction free.

What’s the point of this article? To make you think about the tools you use to create and communicate and consume. The medium is the message.

What have you found about you reading and writing habits? Have they changed and evolved over time? Pile in!