This one will be shorter. I promise.
The above phrase is written on the first page of my notebook. It’s been there since I got that notebook back in May. Below it is a short paragraph about “The Conundrum of Reading from a Computer Screen”. The thesis is basically this, since the invention of writing, it’s been hand held or at least hand-holdable. For the last 25 or so years, more and more people have been consuming the written word on a vertical surface that is between 18 and 30 inches from their face. I would wager that most people read more off of their computer screens than they do off of them. I understand why. With the surge in the internet for consumption of news, the creation of reference websites like Wikipedia, and the power of online journals or weblogs to drive the “interestingness” of the content on the web. Coupled with the immediacy of the internet, it is no surprise that consumers would be flocking to the web for all sorts of interesting content.
The problem lies with the ergonomics of reading from a vertical surface that is 18-30 inches from your face. Firstly, you must be sitting upright to read it. All sorts of variables including the position of lights, the comfort of the keyboard/chair/mouse, whether or not the lights are producing a glare, so on and so forth. I’m not saying that ergonomics are necessary for writing with a pen and paper, but it’s certainly easier to move into some place more comfortable to do the job. And that doesn’t just go for writing but reading as well; the phrase “curling up with a good book” wouldn’t be so evocative if that weren’t the case. So we have books, newspapers, blogs, RSS feeds, YouTube, etc. All of these items require you to sit in front of a computer, which if you want to do it for long periods of time is uncomfortable.
About 20 years ago we invented smaller more portable computers that run on batteries that you can sit on your lap. This would seem to be the ideal solution to the conundrum. They’re more ergonomical and adjustable than your average computer, you can very easily change the angle of the screen and you can sit in a comfy chair on on your couch to do those things that you like to do. Still we run into the issues that, navigating with a mouse or a mouse substitute isn’t really that comfortable, even on the couch. Pluse we have the problem with the “curl up” factor.
The solution to this problem really started to surface in 2007 with the iPhone and moreso in 2008 with the advent of the app store for what is now called the iOS.* There were problems though. The iPhone screen was too small. It worked, it just added a new dimension of uncomfortableness. I can personnally attest to this. After reading the last half of The Sum of All Fears on my iPod touch, I can say I greatly prefer to read it on the iPad. Amazon’s Kindle was the first real device to tackle this issue. There were some execution problems, button placement etc., but it worked really well. Essentiallty the rest has been an iterative process. But Kindle can’t handle the web and all of it’s content. It does very well with the content that it has, eBooks and newspapers, but reading Fark is a bit beyond it.
CouchMac is a word that I toss about when people talk about a computer that does all of those things that most of us want from a computer most of the time. Web, email, video, light gaming etc. iPad is just the first of those CouchMacs. In the years to come we’ll have CouchMacs of various manufacturers that are much more capable than the iPad and that is saying something. So after a 25 year blip in the ergonomics of reading, we’ll get back to where we used to be using those things from Star Trek.
*Yes I’m aware of the Android solution, but they weren’t even remotely up to the task until about 8 months ago.
