Touch, Screen

The operating system is a metaphor: files on a hard drive are not really organized in directories, and a cursor shaped like an arrow does not actually press buttons. The metaphor is intended to facilitate our interaction with devices and software. Each device has its own language, each program has its own language, and our interaction with them is comprised of a combination of the program’s interface language (X closes the window) and the hardware’s interface language (moving the mouse to position the cursor over the X, and clicking on the left button).

It would seem that the easiest language to learn is that of the touch screens on tablets and cell phones, which removes layers of intermediation – instead of moving a physical object (mouse) which causes the movement of a virtual object (cursor) which performs an operation on a virtual object (the program’s menus), our (false) sense is that our fingers are operating directly on the program, just as if we were writing with a pencil, cutting with scissors, and opening a lock with a key.

This is such an easy language, that children pick it up and adopt it intuitively. Here is a baby operating a tablet:

And here is a baby trying to operate a printed magazine as though it has a touch screen, but without success:

“I believe that in ten years or so these gestures will completely change,” writes artist Gabriele Meldaikyte on her website. Gabriele, who has a B.A. in Design, and is a Masters student in Design Products at London’s Royal College of Art, addresses these gestures in her work, Multi-Touch Gestures, which was on display in November at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This work brings five multi-touch gestures for the iPhone from the virtual-representational work back into the physical world, so that each gesture is translated into a mechanical device that performs a similar operation to that performed by the gesture on a touch screen. “Tap” is a press on a button that sits on a spring, which provides feedback to the finger of the person pressing; “Scroll” is a network of pulleys which, when turned, moves a piece of newspaper, and advances the reader down the text; “Pinch” moves a magnifying glass closer to, or further from, a text, thus magnifying or shrinking it; “Swipe” moves a transparent circle over a map, thus bringing the user to the part of the map that he wishes to view; and “Flick” spins a toothed wheel that “flicks” through a series of text pages. “My aim,” she writes, “is to perpetuate them so they become accessible for future generations.”