Touch Screen Theory
eBook - ePub

Touch Screen Theory

Digital Devices and Feelings

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Touch Screen Theory

Digital Devices and Feelings

About this book

Technology companies and device designers correlate touchscreens and online sites with physical contact and emotional sentiments, promising unmediated experiences in which the screen falls away in favor of visceral materiality and connections. While touchscreens are key elements of most people's everyday lives, critical frameworks for understanding the embodied experiences of using them are wanting. In Touch Screen Theory, Michele White focuses on the relation between physically touching and emotionally feeling to recenter the bodies and identities that are empowered, produced, and displaced by these digital technologies and settings. Drawing on detailed cases and humanities methods, White shows how and why gender, race, and sexuality should be further analyzed in relation to touchscreen use and design.

White delves into such details as how women are informed that their bodies and fingernails are not a fit for iPhones, how cellphone surfaces are correlated with skin and understood as erotic, the ways social networks use heart buttons and icons to seem to physically and emotionally connect with individuals, how online references to feminine and queer feelings are resisted by many men, and how women producers of autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) videos use tactile strategies and touchscreens to emotionally bond with viewers. Proposing critical methods for studying touchscreens and digital engagement, Touch Screen Theory expands a variety of research areas, including digital and internet cultures, hardware, interfaces, media and screens, and popular culture.

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Yes, you can access Touch Screen Theory by Michele White in PDF and/or ePUB format. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
The MIT Press
Year
2022
eBook ISBN
9780262372305
Edition
0
Subtopic
Media Studies

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Preface and Acknowledgments
  6. Introduction: The Touchscreen That “fills the hand”: Physically Touching and Emotionally Feeling Devices
  7. 1. The “iPhone fingernail problem”: The Gender Scripts of Capacitive Phones
  8. 2. The “interface, represented as a skin”: Oleophobic Coatings, Touchscreen “Scars,” and “Naked” Devices
  9. 3. The “heart of social media”: Configuring Love Buttons, Hearting, and Members’ Gender and Feelings
  10. 4. Screen “Tapping into your heart”: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response Videos, ASMRtists, and Tactile Addresses
  11. Afterword: Being “less touchy-feely” During the Pandemic: Socially Distancing and Emotionally Feeling
  12. Selected Bibliography
  13. Index