Tactile Diversity

        As we are all aware, the planet's rich diversity of botanical and zoological beings diminishes daily. MacDonald's and Taco Bell, neckties and blue jeans, rock-and-roll and its offspring endanger the diversity of cultures around the world. I mourn all diminishment of diversity, but these losses remain abstract because distant. I have been thinking lately about the loss of a different kind of diversity, something so individual and small it's easy not to notice. I'm speaking about the tactile diversity we lose when we go digital.

        I have been handling a lot of photographs recently, pulling them from my albums for various projects: my 75 favorite photographs, one of the items on my 75x75 list; 75 favorite hikes, a list I augmented with a photograph from each hike; a slide show of my past and Mike's to run as a loop at our wedding reception; wedding photographs of Mike's family and mine. For all these projects, I was using printed photographs. I touched, felt, and smelled them, besides looking at them. That's when I started thinking about tactile diversity.

        Looking at these pictures, I was fingering slick, cardboard-thick paper. When I held up to the light a picture of me with the dog of my childhood, I noticed its faint scallops of water stains in the upper left corner. I fingered the ragged edges of the picture of me on a glacial ascent in the French Alps. My hands, like my eyes, made adjustments for larger or smaller photographs as I pulled them from their places in albums. My sense of touch was as active as my sense of sight. Digital photographs give us the advantage of superior visual products, but the tactile experience is eliminated.

        Likewise, computer calculations eliminate the pen. We miss the action of flinging the pen into the wastebasket because it's out of ink. We miss the touch of the rounded edges of the hexagonal wooden pencil or the round contours of the cool metal pen or the tacky rubbery spots on the mechanical pencil with its tiny click when we need more lead. We miss the motion of the hand making figures and taking notes. Computers give us accurate calculations with ease while our bodies do nothing.

        As for books, there is something satisfying about opening a book and holding it to read it. Some books, like Disgrace, can be small and light to hold no matter the gravity of the words within. Others, coffee-table books like Oregon Rivers, can be so heavy they pull the hand down when we pick them up. Books might have hard covers with dog-eared edges or soft, slick covers. We hold books with two hands or with one, the edge of the book pressing against our thumb or finger as we read. All ebooks, though, look and feel alike. On an ebook device, we have no tactile relationship with what we are reading.

        When we use our digital devices, we reduce tactile diversity to one thing only: the fingers on the electronic surface. That's like having only squirrels and dandelions as our fauna and flora. I certainly don't think we should return to cameras with film and calculations with pens (though I should hope we never replace books!), but maybe if we are aware of losing tactile diversity, we might pay attention to tactile sensations elsewhere to compensate for their loss when we go digital.