A material history of haptics technology that raises new questions about the relationship between touch and media

Since the rise of radio and television, we have lived in an era defined increasingly by the electronic circulation of images and sounds. But the flood of new computing technologies known as haptic interfaces—which use electricity, vibration, and force feedback to stimulate the sense of touch—offering an alternative way of mediating and experiencing reality. 

In Archaeologies of Touch, David Parisi offers the first full history of these increasingly vital technologies, showing how the efforts of scientists and engineers over the past three hundred years have gradually remade and redefined our sense of touch. Through lively analyses of electrical machines, videogames, sex toys, sensory substitution systems, robotics, and human–computer interfaces, Parisi shows how the materiality of touch technologies has been shaped by attempts to transform humans into more efficient processors of information. 

With haptics becoming ever more central to emerging virtual-reality platforms (immersive bodysuits loaded with touch-stimulating actuators), wearable computers (haptic messaging systems like the Apple Watch’s Taptic Engine), and smartphones (vibrations that emulate the feel of buttons and onscreen objects), Archaeologies of Touch offers a timely and provocative engagement with the long history of touch technology that helps us confront and question the power relations underpinning the project of giving touch its own set of technical media.

David Parisi is associate professor of emerging media at the College of Charleston.

"Archaeologies of Touch weaves a careful history of haptic technology with a provocative analysis on the changing nature of how we recognize and measure touching. This allows David Parisi to provide the remarkable: a history of that which has always appeared just beyond our reach."—Phillip Thurtle, University of Washington

"Archaeologies of Touch convincingly contextualizes recent forms of digital touch within an overarching history of psychophysiological and technological experimentation with the senses and sensory communication. David Parisi pulls together an impressive wealth of resources for scholars to understand how we ‘haptic subjects’ became haptic in the first place."—Mark Paterson, author of The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies

"Parisi provides an engaging history of how humans have interacted with a range of electric and electronic technologies to understand and explore how the sensation of touch actually works, and how it can be simulated. The book effectively highlights the need for more critical analysis of haptic technology and its future. The book is exhaustively researched and includes useful explanatory notes and images."—CHOICE

"Archaeologies of Touch is a fascinating reading about spectacular experiments, forgotten appliances and scientists who have partially come to the fore."—Svenska Dagbladet

"Archaeologies of Touch is a significant achievement in media research. It is lucid, scrupulous, rigorously grounded, and exceedingly informed without ever getting mired in high theory or inconsequential historical asides."—Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association

"Archaeologies of Touch is a work of deep erudition and study, carefully plotted, and written with penetrating insight, establishing Parisi at the vanguard of the developing field of haptic media studies."—Media Theory

"This is a remarkable book, solidly documented and will potentially enlighten a vast number of people working with cultural and social technologies."—Neural

"Filled with archival illustrations, schematics, and images of the various lesser known technologies and experimental research that demonstrate the long history of research of touch, Parisi’s Archaeologies of Touch is vital read for scholars concerned with all things haptic."—New Media and Society

"In thoroughly tracing the connections between touch and technoscience, Parisi offers a powerful and timely argument that encourages a serious reconsideration of touch's technogenesis."—Configurations

"Archaeologies of Touch is an ambitious book chock-full of fascinating experiments and anecdotes."—Technology and Culture