What is “Haptic Reading”?

雖然步入社會之後，閱讀英文的經驗或者習慣並沒有中斷過，但隨著年紀增長，也很清楚巴別塔的詛咒 (語言的隔閡) 不曾消除，甚至英文的閱讀能力始終停滯不前。
這幾天找到一篇普魯斯特相關的文章，光是看到標題就是一個陌生的單字：
http://johnculbert.wordpress.com/tag/swanns-way/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog
Haptic Reading

Haptic
adj.形容詞
Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.

如果以時下流行的低頭族 (Smartphone Addicts、Phubbing) 來切入這篇文章，應該是相當有意思。
作者先是提到一種手勢：
There’s a gesture people sometimes make when handling a photo of their beloved or someone who has passed away: a finger — always the index — touches the surface of the image to stroke the face or hair, as if the person believed they were making physical contact with the one pictured in the print.

然而，這種手勢卻逐漸式微：
That gesture seems to be on the wane. No-one strokes a photo on a screen except to manipulate the file: scroll, select, crop, zoom in, share, flip to next picture.

從羅蘭‧巴特的《明室》(Camera Lucida)，談到福樓拜的《簡單的心》(Un coeur simple)、奈瓦爾 (Nerval) 的《希薇》(Sylvie) 以及最終談到了普魯斯特的 “inner book”，這些讓我們重溫閱讀書本時的種種喜、怒、哀、樂的情緒，恰巧同時回溯了我這幾年的閱讀經歷。
This must be why Proust’s “inner book” of the mind is insistently rendered in images of carved and deeply imprinted physical symbols.

最終，作者卻只能徒留喟嘆，”Haptic Reading” 的未來難以讓人期待：
Needless to say, haptic reading is no longer possible with the majority of texts produced today. Offset, lithograph, laser and digital printing, computer tablets and e-reading devices all deliver their texts on smooth screens and surfaces, preventing any contact with the deeper content of authors’ written works. A whole generation is being raised as spectators to the written page. It seems only the blind still know how to handle a text. The future of reading lies in the faithful archives of older documents and a revival of the Chinese technology of movable type.

或許，當我們不再碰觸實體的照片或書本，手指的觸覺也就因此失去了想像、思念的溫度而僅僅成為滑動機器的冰冷工具吧！