The Medium is the Message

THE INTERFACE

TWO AESTHETICS OF THE FUTURE NOW

Blade Runner

Mac GUI circa 1984

Between these dystopic (digitality will ruin everything!) and utopic (digitality makes everything better!) extremes, what is your developing opinion on the changes in all aspects of our culture brought by new media?

A BIG QUESTION

CIRCULAR INFLUENCE

CultureDesign and Aesthetics

Ways of Thinking

Cut & Paste & CopyImagesMoviesTextSounds3D Models

INTERFACE IMPOSES ITS LOGIC

Distinguishing between a part and a whole/a beginning and an end is potentially meaningless

Distinguishing between a copy and an original becomes problematic

Distinguishing between diff erent types of media is meaningless because we interface with them all in the same way.

WORK/PLAY

Not only use same interface logics, but are switchable with the simple click of a tab. What happens to a person/culture where work and play are interfaced the same way?

“A point where two systems, subjects, organizations, etc., meet and interact.”

Webster’s Dictionary

GUI (Graphical User Interface): “a human-computer interface (i.e., a way for humans to interact with computers) that uses windows, icons and menus and which can be manipulated by a mouse or finger (and often to a limited extent by a keyboard as well).

INTERFACE

TMITM

“The Medium is the Message.”

-Marshall McLuhahan

But what does this mean?

“When you use the internet, everything you access- texts, music, video, navigable spaces- passes through the interface of the browser and then, in turn, the interface of the OS. In communication, a code is rarely simply a neutral transport mechanism; usually it affects the messages transmitted.”

Manovich (64)

KEY QUOTE

MEDIUMS

PAST INFLUENCES

In many ways, most websites reflect the values of print culture before them:

• Rectangular surface• Limited amount of info

• “The screen is aggressive.”

• Designed to have an order

• Some relationship to other pages

• Embedded images, drawings, and tables

Why?

PAST INFLUENCES

• Movable Camera• Rectangular

Representation of Reality

• Something “inside” and something “outside”

“The acceptance of hyperlinking in the 1980s can be correlated with contemporary culture’s suspicion of all hierarchies, and preference for the aesthetics of collage in which radically diff erent sources are brought together within a singular cultural object.”

Manovich (76)

Think about Your ipod Your dinner table Your wardrobe Your television habits Your computer bookmarks

SEEMINGLY SIMPLE HYPERLINKS, BUT ONE OF THE BIGGEST

DIFFERENCES

Put Differently: If the WWW was created in the 1940s or 1950s people would most certainly not have been ready for it.

ORGANIZATION OF COMPUTER DATA

• Hierarchical• Organized• Linear Logic• Clear Paths to Results• User Control

Manovich suggests this is more than a way to organize computer data- the decision to organize computer data in this way reflects a worldview.

ORGANIZATION OF THE WWW

• Non-Hierarchical• Emergent Importance• User Chosen

Paths/Wandering• Associative Logic• User Creation

A very different worldview than system data information.

We switch back and forth between these two interfaces all the time, every day.

INTERFACE LOGIC/WORLD VIEWS

Computer Systems• Hierarchical• Organized• Linear Logic• Clear Paths to Results• User Control

Web Systems

• Non-Hierarchical• Emergent Importance• User Chosen

Paths/Wandering• Associative Logic• User Creation

As we use computers, we switch back and forth and back and forth between these two interface worldviews everyday (or sometimes use them simultaneously as we wander/explore to a new site but then are asked to upload a file from the rigid hierarchy of our OS). What are the larger cultural, personal effect of this switching?