Johnson, Steven. Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate. San Francisco: Harper Edge, 1997.
A review of Interface Culture by Dawn Hayden
In the preface of Interface Culture, Steven Johnson tells us "this book is an extended attempt to think about the object-world of technology as though it belonged to the world of culture, or as though those two worlds were united" (1). This seems a rather lofty goal. Yet Johnson, the web editor of the on-line magazine Feed, uses his knowledge of semiotics and English Literature to craft a rather compelling argument that the digital medium we are familiar with today is just another expression of an already long existent interface culture. We can better understand this argument when we see that Johnson defines interface as "software that shapes the interaction between user and computer" so that an interface works as "a kind of translator, mediating between the two parties, making one sensible to the other" (14).
Johnson's contribution to the culture of technology comes from the links that he makes in Interface Culture between current technologies and technologies hundreds of years old. For example, Johnson explains to us that the concept of information space has been around since six centuries before the birth of Christ when the poet Simonides was a noted talent for creating "memory palaces." Simonides "turned stories into architecture, abstract concepts transformed into expansive and meticulously decorated--imaginary houses" (13). Simonides relied on his visual memory to help him recall intricate and complicated details for his stories. Johnson sees Simonides use of visual memory as a forerunner to the interface development of the desktop.
Johnson believes that the real breakthrough in digital technology lies with the "idea of a computer as a symbolic system, a machine that traffics in representation or signs rather than in the mechanical cause-and-effect of the cotton gin or the automobile, ... and more often than not, this representation takes the form of metaphor" (15). And it is the use of metaphor which Johnson sees as "the core idiom of the contemporary graphic interface" (15). Johnson borrows the words of McLuhan to reinforce just how interconnected he views the worlds of technology and culture:
At no period in human culture have men understood the psychic mechanisms involved in invention and technology. Today it is the instant speed of electric information that, for the first time, permits easy recognition of the patterns and the formal contours of change and development. The entire world, past and present, now reveals itself to us like a glowing plant in an enormously accelerated movie. Electric speed is synonymous with light and with the understanding of causes. (4)
In his chapter entitled "windows" Johnson examines how the metaphor of the window is used to create the illusion of control for the user of technology. It is in his description of how "the spatial properties of the window weren't a mnemonic device, a way of remembering where you put things. They were a way of representing modes-- and, more important, a way of switching back and forth between modes" (82) that we begin to understand how the use of visual memory has been translated (interfaced) within the development of the desktop and windows. When we are multi-tasking in our windows we discover that "the contents move, not the form" (86).
To those of us not familiar with the birth of the personal computer-- the story of how Doug Englebart introduced this technology to "a motley crowd of mathematicians, hobbyists, and borderline hippies in the San Francisco Auditorium" is particularly interesting. To those not aware of the existence of the think tank Xerox PARC and how the concepts of the desktop and windows were born there, this text offers a particularly insightful history lesson. Interface Culture is very easy to read and is written in such a lively and compelling manner that it is really hard to put down. This book offers historical and contextual insight into the development of the personal computer that so many of us are familiar with and use today. And certainly Johnson provides an interesting introduction to techno-culture.
Does Johnson convince us of the historical interconnectedness of interface culture? Yes and no. Johnson believes that technological change "has been a lightning rod for all manner of cultural electricity over the past two centuries" (5). While we may be willing to accept many of the connections that Johnson makes, his conclusion pushes the interface theory of culture over the edge. With a text full of "links" to literary, architectural, political and religious icons, Johnson compares the faith required in "accepting" the concepts behind the development of the desktop as a "modern interface [which] resonates so powerfully with the customs and pageantry of organized faith." Here he pushes his metaphor just a bit too far. Yes, we do have to take "a leap of faith" to "buy in to" the interface concepts inherent in the desktop and windows, but I see this "leap of faith" more closely linked to the kind of imaginary trust or faith required of viewing a work of art rather than the faith demanded by religions. When we view a work of art, we ask ourselves, "Do I buy this? Does this convention work for me?" If we don't "buy it" then we don't view the work as well crafted art. Do I "buy" Johnson's argument in Interface Culture? Almost, but not quite.