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Title: Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate by Steven Johnson ISBN: 0-465-03680-5 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 06 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.71 (42 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: theoretically brilliant: the practice falls short
Comment: Johnson's book, Interface Culture, is about the growing culture of the interface, the way we interact with the world around us. It is based on the nearly invisible premise that we interface with much of the world, and have been for most of our time on this planet. I found this immediately intriguing because some f the hardest things to observe are the interfaces that we sue to connect and interact with the world. Johnson frames his discussion of interface with the elements of computer interface; the desktop, windows, links, text, and agents, all common to those people coming from a computer literate society.
Where Johnson really shines (and I admit a personal bias for the topic) is in his discussion about hypertext and the poor job that silicon valley has done in really pushing it to the limits of it possibility. He presents a picture of an industry that continues to try to bring television to the web (real video, real audio, flash) all attempts to bring movement and animation to a naturally solid state-dynamic environment. The real power of the web is in the link, in the ability of authors and users to "create their own story" - to navigate through the content as they wish, not necessarily how the author intended. Johnson uses Dicken's stories as examples of thinking that incorporates the sense of disparate ideas - all connected into one story - the kind of thinking that Johnson thinks needs to be used to harness the power of the link.
Johnson also takes time to explore the differences between "surfing the web" and "channel surfing", arguing that the two are fundamentally different. He argues that the passive, almost lazy activity of channel surfing actually works against our ability to conceive of the web differently. People who have this mentality will not be able to clearly see other possibilities for the web.
Johnson spends quite some time bitterly complaining about the lack of real innovation in hypertext environments, and in the end suggests that his own online magazine "FEED" is at the forefront of hypertext theory, pushing the limits of use. I was less impressed that I though I would be. Johnson is so very eloquent and keenly aware of the need to use hypertext as storytelling environment, to really push out lazy use of it, and to exploit the full potential of this tool. I feel that Johnson fails to acheive the goal that he so clearly lays out in his book. While FEED does use hypertext in new ways, it didn't strike me as particularly clean. By this I mean that the *interface* was clogged with too many links, the user while given many options was not given any clear or clean sense of direction. Burrowing into the site, the linking grew in scope and complexity, but instead of making my interaction more pleasant, I found I was more confused, and really had to try to find order. Perhaps this is just a natural reflexive response to the new use of a familiar thing, but I didn't to stay at FEED. I can see what FEED is trying to do, and I agree with the goal - to provide a dynamic interactive hypertext environment... but the interface was too hard to use. From a design perspective it is always easier to add a bunch of bells and whistles, the hard part is to take away everything that distracts from the message, that interferes with the usability. It seems like the producers of feed became excited about the possibilities of hyperlinking and no one ever stopped to ask when was a good time to stop. While all links are relevant to the content, the sheer volume of linking distracts the user - taking away from their ability to smoothly interact with the environment.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Fusion of Technology and Culture
Comment: Interface Culture is one of those books that comes along ever so often that helps you make sense of a seemingly disparate but conjunctive collection of emerging influences in life. The emerging influences dealt with in this book involve computer technology, cultural changes and human/machine interaction, with the interaction taking place through the computer interface. Johnson says that the book is "...an extended attempt to think about the object-world of today as though it belonged to the world of culture....For the truth is, they have been united all along"(p.1).
He then takes you on a journey through the history of interface discovery and development that opens your eyes to the connections between interface design and implementation and their cultural and historical underpinnings, as well as to their potential impact on the culture of the future. He says that because of Doug Engelbart's interface breakthrough in 1968(first public demo of a Graphical User Interface), "...a machine was imagined not as an attachment to our bodies, but as an environment, a space to be explored"(p.24). And, just like the way the advent of the automobile changed the way cities developed, "the (computer) interface has already changed the way we use our computers....(and) it is also bound to change other realms of modern experience in more unlikely, unpredictable ways"(p.25).
According to Johnson, this book was written about "...the fusion of art and technology that we call interface design"(p. 6). However, it goes well beyond such mild-mannered sounding concerns and invites the reader to consider the influence of technological breakthroughs on society and culture from the time of cave painters, through the Renaissance, past Marx and Mcluhan to the dawning of the 21st century. With the appearance of Apple's Macintosh computer, he says that "...you could see for the first time that the interface had become a medium....(and) if the personal computer [was] a truly new medium then the very use of it would actually change the thought patterns of an entire generation"(p. 50).
Near the end of the book, Johnson visits the controversy growing around the development and use of "agents" in computing. He sees the idea of computer "...windows governed by semantics and not by space"(p. 169) as a possible "genuine paradigm shift" in the employment of computers. This paradigm shift, in the form of "digital personalities," "agents," or "agent-driven interfaces," however, is problematic. Referencing Mcluhan from Understanding Media, Johnson says that "...new technological forms...transform not only the balance of power between our senses, but also our experience of other media"(p. 178). And, that "because agents are the most independent-the most autonomous-tools in the interface repertoire, their influence may turn out to be the most far-reaching, and the most subtle" and because of that, "...the design of our intelligent agents shouldn't be left up to the CEOs and the technocrats"(p. 179). One of Johnson's real concerns with intelligent agents is that, "As in the world of espionage, ...it's not always clear who they're working for"(p. 188). That especially in the Web environment, the development of "counteragents" designed by ad organizations to "lure" personal agents, could result in "...a custom-fit delivery of information and services that's always one step ahead of you," in other words personalized Junk Mail!
I found this book fascinating reading in terms of the content, the hip-but-literary cultured style of the prose and the questions raised by the consideration of how some of our notions about technology and culture came about and the speculation about where we may be headed. The book should be required reading for those in, headed toward or curious about interface design. I would also strongly recommend it to those of us who wonder why we get along better with some computing facilities versus others, and/or are curious or concerned about where the digital revolution might be taking us and our progeny.
Rating: 2
Summary: Good first chapter, little ensuing worth
Comment: The premise of the book set out in the first chapter was fascinating. Interfaces shape our perceptions, just as Marshall McLuhan proclaimed in "The Medium is the Message."
Unfortunately, this critical eye didn't find its way into the remainder of the book. I consider "Interface Culture" to be a history of computer interfaces rather than an interpreter of the way our perceptions have changed.
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Title: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software by Steven Johnson ISBN: 0684868768 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 10 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life by Steven Johnson ISBN: 0743241657 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 10 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution by Howard Rheingold ISBN: 0738206083 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The Perfect Baby: Parenthood in the New World of Cloning and Genetics by Glenn McGee ISBN: 0847697592 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing (via NBN) Pub. Date: 01 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Language of New Media (Leonardo Books) by Lev Manovich ISBN: 0262632551 Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 07 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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