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whose body? the (en)gendered implications of innovations in interface designIn a 1995 article for Rhetoric Review, Tom Willard quipped that “the personal computer has given us two things: bad metaphors and bad posture.” Today, I’d like to talk about the site where these two sets converge--the Human-Computer Interface. This presentation is concerned with the ways in which digital technologies--and in particular the interface design of various operating systems, software applications, and even hardware itself--assume unquestioned subject positions for the user. I’ll start with an overview of how the current interface paradigm anticipates a universal user through the repetition of common design tropes and metaphor, as well as physical functionality. I’m in line with such scholars as Christina Haas, Steven Johnson, and Christine Neuwirth when I argue that these common design features privilege a certain subject position, and that the construct of the universal user serves as a mechanism to de-value those bodies outside of that position. This critique will then serve as a foundation for examining sites of future interface designs, among them advances in streaming video and other multimedia, voice/handwriting recognition software, ubiquitous computing and internet appliances, and virtual reality--all of which suggest an increased awareness of embodiment in the interface design paradigm. Again, the crucial question of whose body (or bodies) is assumed in these new interfaces is explored as it applies to implications of gender, class, race, and the able body. Ultimately, this presentation is a call to extend the conversation of “access” initiated by the likes of Cynthia Selfe and Gail Hawisher so that it applies not only to the material availability of hardware, but also to the symbolic economy of interface design. It is in part this barring of access that potentially limits certain bodies’ capacity for learning and communicating within the digital medium. 
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