the REAL differences between paper & screens

For my final blog post on this subject, I would like to discuss the REAL differences between paper and screens. What I mean by the “real” differences is a slightly more in-depth analysis from the mere statement that “one is physical, one is digital”.

In past blog posts, I have pondered over the reasons why E-book readers are the way they are, and what makes one more successful and appealing to consumers over the other. The result is always the same: the closer the resemblance to a physical book, the more comfortable the consumer is and therefore the more successful the digital reader is. So what makes physical paper a higher preference than digital E-books and all the conveniences that come with them?

An article I recently read entitled “Ebook - the Missing Link between Paper and Screen” by Birgit Lemken attempts to investigate the real differences and details of each literary medium. One key feature of print on paper, as also previously described in prior posts, is its ability to annotate notes and statements in margins. While more recent word processing software has made this a possibility for digital print, it is not frequently used and is considered a tedious task by many. However, the Lemken article augments this notion by pointing out that marginal notes are only apart of a broader scheme that links physical paper text to social relationships. Lemken reminds us that the final result of a digital word processed document is almost always a piece of paper that is printed out. The reason behind this is because “Paper documents have as well some social connotations. Exchanging print outs for review, collaborative modifying and personal delivery of documents can be used to foster social contacts and relations” (Lemken). This assessment illustrates one feature of paper as a shared, social medium which may be difficult for digital e-books to transcend.

Page turning is another surprisingly valuable feature to books and physical text. Studies cited by Lemken show us that there is something inherit within digital text restricts our attention spans as human beings. “We use paper to acquire, provide and modify information. Spatial location, time sequence, frequency of occurrence and word meaning are automatically encoded into memory [HZ79]. As automatic processes they only need minimal energy from our limited-capacity attentional mechanisms. This incidental memory can be effective as a mnemonic device [Roth71]. Lovelace and Southall showed that content recall was reduced by scrolled text presentation [LS83], the most frequent mode on computer screens” (Lemken). This assessment displays how page turning, over continuous scrolling, is preferable for our short term memory and is actually easier to read.

Another contribution to a weakened attention span in screen reading comes from the concept of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks allow readers to jump to a subtext subject within the primary body of work while in the middle of reading. This restricts our attention spans because it enables us to abandon the current reading project at any time and to simply “get lost in cyberspace” with no real direction or end. Hyperlinks can result in endless jumping and prohibit true chronological order that has proven to be essential in literary history.