“From a young age, we are trained to believe that the boundaries of the interface are always identical to the edges of the material platform of the page – namely, that the cognitive space and the physical dimensions of the page are necessarily conterminous.” (Mak, p.3) This was the sentence that really stayed with me this week, as immediately connected to what I have been thinking about lately: The book as a space, a sequence of rooms where every page could almost feel like its own small book.
“Boundaries,” “interface”, “conterminous”, Mak’s choice of words here make the sentence feel almost like architecture. The words sound like they are building something, setting up walls and lines that shape how we imagine reading. By calling the page an “interface”, Mak turns it into a place where the physical and the mental meet, where what we see starts to touch what we imagine. When she says that the “cognitive space” and the “physical dimensions” of the page are the same, it feels as if she is describing how we have learned to let our thoughts stop where the page ends. Where last week I thought of each page as a room, Mak now makes me realize that I have also been taught to treat the edges of that room as the limits of my thinking.
The word that stands out to me most is “trained.” It shows how much this way of reading is something we have learned rather than something natural. Words inside, white space outside. I never really thought about that before, but it is true. We have been trained to read like that from the very beginning. And what Mak reminds me of here is that this is just a habit. It is not something fixed. Habits can change. You can start to notice the frame and once you see it, you can move past it.
That’s what this sentence does for me. It makes those boundaries visible so we can start to think beyond them. It connects perfectly to what I felt last week. The idea that reading is not just about moving through pages but about moving through spaces. If each page is a room, then it also has a door. The edges do not only hold the text in, they also open it up. Seeing the page as more than a flat surface makes reading feel like a space again. One that does not end where the page does but moves past it. Into thought, into memory, into the next room that quietly waits to be entered.
Wonderful blog post. I see you developing a line of thinking that will certainly serve you in your midterm and final. I hope you will consider doing a deep dive here for the final.
You do a great close reading of the text, pushing your selection of a quote to a very clear idea of what it matters:
“By calling the page an “interface”, Mak turns it into a place where the physical and the mental meet, where what we see starts to touch what we imagine. When she says that the “cognitive space” and the “physical dimensions” of the page are the same, it feels as if she is describing how we have learned to let our thoughts stop where the page ends.”
Great work here, and I look forward to hearing more in class and beyond!
I really enjoyed reading your reflection—it beautifully captures how Mak’s sentence reshapes our understanding of the page. I especially like how you link the language of “boundaries” and “interfaces” to architecture; that metaphor gives real weight to the idea of reading as moving through a constructed space. The way you extend Mak’s idea into thinking of each page as a “room” with a “door” is powerful it suggests that reading isn’t confined but rather opens outward, which mirrors how interpretation can expand beyond the text itself.