Fingerbombing, or “Touching is Good”: The Cultural Construction of Technologized Touch

Abstract

The development of new interface technologies involves reimagining perceptual processes. Grounded in histories of perception, this paper examines the discursive framing of touch in the advertisements for Nintendo's Dual Screen portable gaming system, explaining the way that the ads posit the DS as a means of reconnecting with a lost and repressed mode of perception. In the process of technologizing touch, the ads paradoxically assert a nostalgic memory of a pretechnological sensorium that can be restored using technology. However, in doing so, they displace older models of touch and attempt to redefine what it means to touch. I argue that the DS ads, in addition to demanding new body habits, call for a reconfiguration of perception that brings it into accord with the limits of the present technology. The DS interface serves as sensory armor that allows the subject to touch without feeling, to manipulate without sensation.

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