Archaeologies of touch interfacing with haptics from electricity to computing

468 Pages·7.613 MB·English

by  Parisi Harlan, David

Archaeologies of Touch
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Archaeologies
of Touch
Inter facing with Haptics from
Electricity to Computing
David Parisi
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Portions of chapter 1 were previously published as “Shocking
Grasps: An Archaeology of Electrotactile Game Mechanics,”
Game Studies 13, no. 2 (2013). Portions of chapter 2 were
previously published as “Tactile Modernity: On the Scientific
Rationalization of Touch in the Nineteenth Century,” in Media,
Technology, and Literature in the Nineteenth Century: Image, Sound,
and Touch, ed. Collette Colligan and Margaret Linley (Farnham,
UK: Ashgate, 2011), 189– 214; copyright 2011. Portions of
chapter 5 were previously published as “Fingerbombing,
or ‘Touching Is Good’: The Cultural Construction of Technolo-
gized Touch,” The Senses & Society 3, no. 3 (Berg Press, 2008),
302–27; copyright 2008.
Copyright 2018 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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ISBN 978-1-5179-0058-8 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-5179-0059-5 (pb)
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from the Library of Congress.
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator
and employer.
22 21 20 19 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Kristen
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What men make, men may also unmake; but what nature
makes no man may dispute. To identify the role of human
agency in the making of an item of knowledge is to identify
the possibility of its being otherwise. To shift the agency
onto natural reality is to stipulate the grounds for universal
and irrevocable assent.
— Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer,
The Leviathan and the Air- Pump
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Contents
Preface. Interrupting the Networked Body xi
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction. Haptic Interfaces and the Quest
to Reinscribe Tactility 1
Interface 1. The Electrotactile Machine 41
Interface 2. The Haptic 99
Interface 3. The Tongue of the Skin 151
Interface 4. Human– Machine Tactile Communication 213
Interface 5. The Cultural Construction of Technologized
Touch 265
Coda. Haptics and the Reordering of the
Mediated Sensorium 323
Notes 335
Index 419