Interface Culture: How the Digital Medium--From Windows to the Web--Changes the Way We Write, Speak

One of the most thought provoking books I've ever read on the topic, Johnson offers an intriguing perspective on the state of the human-computer interface. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this book is the way Johnson presents so many interesting ideas - each one triggering many new ideas in the reader. Although many will find Johnson's ideas debatable, it is still a compelling read due manner and intelligence in which each argument is presented. Another interesting aspect of the book is the way Johnson attempts to predict the future direction of interface design. Rather than merely extrapolating on recent trends, he looks at deep historical patterns of the social, psychological, and philosophical effect that each interface development had on us as a society and the way they shaped our culture. His arguments take us from the early work done at XEROX PARC to the web-enabled interfaces of today. In the end, Johnson makes a credible argument that is strongly rooted in the broader context of history and culture.

What do Beavis & Butthead, Talk Soup, and Entertainment Tonight all have in common? The answer is that they are all TV about TV. All of these shows, rather than being concerned with original content, comment on other TV shows. Beavis & Butthead comment on music videos, Talk Soup is a talk show roundup of what's happening on other Talk Shows, etc. This is just one of many clear and insightful observations Steven Johnson makes in his book, Interface Culture. The book is a broad review of the growing role interface design plays in society. In describing the role of interface design, Johnson begins by putting it into historical perspective.According to Johnson, the development of meta-media, like, "Talk Soup" happens whenever a medium becomes mature. It also develops when the content or subject matter begin to overwhelm the people who are dealing with it. He gives several historical examples of this including, Cave paintings, where artists painted what they saw in the natural world as a way of understanding it or to symbolically master it. Medieval cathedrals, where the sacred and profane worlds were modeled physically in stone and in stained glass in a way that an illiterate society could understand. Victorian novels. The industrial revolution brought about great changes to urban life in the 1800's Novels, such as those written by Charles Dickens helped an emerging middle class come to terms with the physical and cultural changes that were happening around them.Interface design is just the latest mixture of art and science that develops, as it is needed, to help people deal with the massive cultural change of computers, data and the internet. The first sign of this change was the development of the desktop metaphor. The desktop helped non-engineers deal with the concept of computing by giving them a familiar metaphor and the ability of "direct manipulation" of their data through the mouse and pointer. The book is a quick read that can be enjoyed by web designers and the general public. It is a wonderful exploration of the historical context of today's emerging careers in the hi-tech world.

Steven Johnson has found a way to use the metaphors of the computer (desktop, windows, links, and text) to explain the impact of those metaphors on not only how we use computers in our society, but how they influence our non-technology lives as well. Throughout, Johnson makes a well crafted argument for the limitations of our current computer interfaces, or GUI's (graphical user interface), and how the initial breakthrough of using the desktop as a means for humans to interact with computers has fallen short of unleashing the potential of today's powerful computing systems. Unfortunately, cites Johnson, the advances in computer technology, user sophistication and the Internet have rendered the breakthrough of the computer desktop, and its navigational metaphor, tired and ill-equipped to handle the way in which computer users now demand that their technology work for them.In chapter four, Links, Johnson is particularly critical of the limited way in which hyperlinks are designed into our computer interfaces. He notes that the way links diffuse information, instead of converging it, has more to do with the traditional text-based, linear methodology of books than with the tool from which these links were created, the World Wide Web. Further, in an interesting discussion about non-traditional online magazines, he produces an image of circular linking within text documents on the web that stands the traditional methodologies of today's writer and webmasters on their heads.Compiled skillfully, the concluding chapter of the book brings all of Johnson's thoughts and ideas together in a very interesting look at what computing in the future may look like - if software and interface designers can break out of their traditional coding patterns and approach the computer interface from a different angle. My sense of Johnson's perspective is that irregardless of whether established programmers and companies decide to alter their vision of the user interface, these changes will come. And they will come from a new breed of designer, one who has grown up with the web, and the desktop. These designers don't require a paradigm shift in order to change the way human computer interface (HCI) appears on our monitors, they've been tinkering with the existing model, in their bedrooms (and in hacking chat rooms), for awhile.

In Steven Johnson's text, Interface Culture, his central line of reasoning concerns interface, that point of interaction between a computer and another entity, and its immplications for humanity. As he notes, his text literally becomes a working example of his argument via a new type of criticism. Johnson believes, as I do, that the elements of interface design are comparable to past cultural works: novels, films, and television. In focusing in on the prospects for interface in the 21st century each chapter becomes a labyrinth of historical dialogue, technical clarification, and cultural similitude. Johnson notes in his chapter on links how such browsers as Netscape have ignored the "power and the promise of hyptertext" while concentrating on animation and videos. Though these browsers do direct the PC user to click on a text link, it is nothing more than that. In Johnson's own ezine, "Feed," he has augmented the text link by having it "pop up," so to speak, instead of linking directly to another site. While other critics of hypertext prose have seen them primarily as "disassociative," Johnson sees the link as a "tool" that fuses elements together. He likens the hyperlink to "stream of consciousness" texts, such as Great Expectations. Where the author, Dickens, presents links in the "torn fabric" of societies born out of the Industrial Revolution, the hyperlink, in turn, does the same for the web surfer. The links, for Johnson, become the synthesizer of data on the web. Johnson cites Vannevar Bush's ideas about "trail blazing" as a way to improve the link so that it will "respond to the users world view." Instead of having to follow others perceived connections, the web user would be able to create their own lines of communication. In other words, the PC user would be stimulating his own intellectual and artistic abilities instead of having it done for him. While Johnson states that "every major technological age attracts a certain artistic form" he believes that the "digital age" must gain an appreciation for the interfaces creative genesis and its future prospects. Within this context Johnson explores future possibilities for digital interface. He informs his reader that what will drive the interface forward will be the "development of a functional interface subculture" that will reign as the adversary to the prevailing influences. Real creativity of interface will not come from programmers but from ordinary PC users from whom will emerge the avant-garde. This has already been evidenced in the likes of such ezines as Suck and Johnson's own Feed who have been imaginative enough to explore new "trails." Johnson is correct, of course, most great inventions have come out of those who are unafraid to "blaze" new paths. Though some critics have seen his work as "over reaching" for ideas, I believe this is because they are, apparently, unable to visualize future creations for inter

I've read a lot of these books about cyberculture recently, and Johnson's is one of the best. Positioning itself in neither the camps of "technoboosterism" nor "neo-Luddism," the book is an insightful, informed, and gracefully written history/meditation/prophecy about the evolving nature of "interfaces" as our primary means of inhabiting information society as a culture. Two things about the book stand out for me. One is Johnson's ability to pierce to the core of the notion of "interface" by thinking at a fundamental level about the experience of using such components as "windows," "links," "desktop metaphor," etc. His discussion of these topics is aided by a very judicious, selective look at recent software examples or online paradigms (e.g., his nice discussion of the nature of link discourse on the Suck site). In general, Johnson made me think about these seemingly mundane elements of the "interface" in new, broad ways--technical, social, cultural, and artistic. Secondly, Johnson's penetrating sense of the continuities between current information society and past literary, artistic, and technological societies is a wonder to behold (I enjoyed particularly his comparison of information space to such architectures of the past as the Gothic cathedral or city, and also his excellent comparison/contrast of information space to the 19th-century "connective" novel). He never overdoes the comparisons; I see them as the ballast that accounts for the steadiness of his middle tone between "technoboosterism" and "neo-Luddism." He is not Luddite because he has a strong sense of the evolving, slowly accreting momentum of technical changes and their (sometimes surprising) social reception. (The book thus moves toward an optmistic guess about what a revised text or "meaning"-based interface might look like.) Even the best of the "neo-Luddites" by contrast--for example, Cliffo! rd Stoll's wonderfully droll and insightful Silicon Snake Oil--gives one the impression of being stuck in a little time warp: they came, they saw the limited state of the technology in 1989, or whenever, and they conquered. But on the other hand, Johnson is not boosterish either precisely because his strong sense of history discounts the inflated millennium-mongering of those who claim that every new technological development is revolutionary. A very thoughtful piece of work. I'd recommend it in particular to anyone whose background or current training (e.g., in the humanities, arts, etc.) leaves them grasping for a meaningful way to understand the interface between what they know and love in the past and what the engineers and programmers aspire to in the future.--Alan Liu