presentation::interface design(pt.2)

But first, I’d like to proffer a definition of “embodiment,” a word which I think we casually toss about without a full understanding of the concept undergirding it. It’s important that we remind ourselves of this term in order to recognize the kind of paradigm shift we’re approaching in digital technology as a whole--from virtual to actual embodiment. In his 1945 book Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty first gave us a philosophical model for explaining how a subject is constituted as an In-the-World Being. These bodily aspects of subjectivity, which stand a priori to any 2nd-level conceptualization, is the ontological condition Merleau-Ponty termed "embodiment." In this model, Merleau-Ponty distinguishes between the objective body (that physiological mass of quivering flesh that each of us can point to and say “my body) and the phenomenal body (the body I inhabit, as it exists as an active force in-the-world, reacting without conceptualization to the phenomenological data it collects). I can, for example, sit at my desk writing, and as long as things go as expected for me, my experience of my body is subjective, phenomenal, embodied. [note: the desk, chair, pen, and paper constitute “equipment” for me.] The second I turn the sheet of paper over and get a paper cut, I am temporarily removed from the embodied state, and my experience of my body is objective. [note: a “breakdown” has occurred.] Thus, embodiment involves a state of comfort which allows us to forget our bodies as objects. As HCI designs move from virtual to actual embodiment, the user becomes less aware of her body as object --less aware of how her subjectivity is constructed--both the means of mediation and the awareness of the integumental body become subject to erasure .
	Now for a bit of history: The shift in interface paradigms from the Command Line Interface (CLI) to the Graphical User Interface (GUI) standard began way back in 1968, when Doug Englebart invented and publicly demonstrated the computer mouse, what would eventually become the predominant device for navigating the GUI, The programming and design team at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center had developed the first functional GUI in the late ‘70s (around the same time the personal computer was introduced to a mass market), but the CLI remained the dominant mode of screen interaction for all platforms until Macintosh “borrowed” (unscrupulously stole, some say) the GUI model from Xerox in the early ‘80s (until OS X this year, all Mac OS’s have basically had the same look-and-feel). The initial difference in interface standards caused much verbal warfare among the technogeek culture--depending upon where the allegiances lay, they either saw the GUI as childish and the CLI as sophisticated and “pure” or the GUI as user-friendly and the CLI as cryptic an unnecessarily clumsy. This attitude definitively changed in the early ‘90s with the introduction of the PC-platform’s answer to Mac’s GUI--MicroSoft’s Windows 3.11. At this point, when both major platforms had adopted GUI as the primary interface of their respective operating systems, the paradigm shift had occurred; now the GUI analog is a standard in most 2nd-level software applications, and the same iconographic logic pervades the WWW. Early attempts to research the effects of Human-Computer Interface on the learning capacities of users have been characterized as naïve in methodology. Two such studies, which suffered a barrage of criticism after their publications, were Dan Barker’s 1991 report “Gender differences Between Graphical User Interfaces and Command-Line Interfaces in Computer Instruction” and M.P. Halio’s 1990 article for Academic Computing entitled “Student Writing: Can the Machine Maim the Message?” The first article concluded that neither gender nor a shift in interface design were influential factors in computer instruction outcomes, and was attacked for using too small of a data set for too short a duration. The second argued that students using Macintosh machines (because of the toy-like GUI) wrote at a significantly lower reading level and pursued less serious topics than students on IBMs--this upset readers because of the study’s methodological inadequacies as well as unacknowledged subjective bias. Studies like these set the ball rolling, as scholars in rhet/comp and technology studies began examining the ideological assumptions behind interface designs. By this point, it isn’t new thinking for us to consider technology as having a gendered bias--moreover, it is often the product of other privileged positions as well: class, race, language, logocentrism. These lessons have been taught to us by the likes of Cynthia and Richard Selfe in their 1994 CCC article “Politics of the Interface,” Billie Wahlstrom’s “Communication and Technology: Defining a Feminist Presence in Research and Practice,” and Johndan Johnson-Eilola’s “Living on the Surface:Learning in the Age of Global Communication Networks.” Built into computer interface designs are a series of semiotic messages that support a heirarchization along the axes of identity--think of the white-gloved hand cursor, the entire desktop environment, the white, professional figures depicted in clip art These images send powerful associative signals to non-white, lower-class, or otherwise marginalized users that to enter the world of the interface is to enter a world constituted around the values of white, male, corporate professionalism.
But the design paradigm suggested in these interfaces is not likely to stay around much longer. In fact, we already see evidence of a shift away from the iconographical, metaphorical GUI standard, challenging Steven Johnson’s claims that metaphor is crucial in order for an interface to make sense to the user. [note : Johnson says the cognitive energy of the desktop metaphor is that it approximates , but doesn’t duplicate, an actual desktop.] So where are we headed? Basically, the machines are becoming smaller, more tactile and ergonomic, easier to synchronize data with one another, willing to listen to us, and to look us over ever-so-closely (as in the retinal and finger security scanners that are becoming more accessible to the general computer-buying public). Touch-sensitive screens, handwriting and voice-recognition software is being continually upgraded--these types of interfaces allow us to have more direct contact with our machines, instead of having a white-gloved avatar stand in our place on the computer screen. MIT’s Michael Dertouzos, head of the school’s Laboratory for Computer Science, is currently pursuing the Semantic Web project with the WWW Consortium, an attempt to imbue web content with connotative meaning so that it behaves in a more human-centric fashion [ note: of course, the problems inherent in this project involve constructing models for how “the human mind” functions and acknowledging linguistic fluidity.] And the rhetoric is flying high. In addition to Dertouzos’s pursuit of creating an interfaceless computer that thinks with the user, I find many similar claims of the mind-to-machine linkage in popular discourse--for instance, PacificVoice’s slogan to “speak you mind. Digitally.” A recent article in Wired magazine by Dateline correspondent and disability pundit John Hockenberry voices a similar philosophy: “The brain-body-machine interface doesn’t seem to need the body as much as we believe it does. We hybrids are part of a universal redrafting of the human design specification.” [note: this seems potentially problematic, in that technology stands as monolithic “cure” for all disability, erasing the need to speak of a culture of disability.]
	And what about the irrepressible Bill Gates, you ask, as if one man has the capacity to control the direction of this imminent shift (which, in actuality, probably isn’t far off the mark)? In his most recent corporate communiqué, a vision statement entitled “A Software Driven Future,” he offers these insights to his minion (see slide image at left): To my mind, at least, it appears that Gates’ goal here, and indeed the goal of this entire New Interface paradigm, is to render the interaction between human and computer phenomenal--that is, of the order of non-conceptualized equipment. In short, it appears that the ultimate look-and-feel of this new technology is seamlessness : not only will it permeate our environment, but it will incorporate all media at its disposal without complaint, and it will take advantage of our already naturalized relations with established technologies in order to do this. Bully for you, Mister Gates! Hope that little software company of yours works out in the end. I also wanted to find a way to work in a recent article I read by futurist Ray Kurzweil, entitled “As machines become more like people, will people become more like God?” In it, Kurzweil predicts that the second half of the 21st century will see the realization of Artificial Intelligence, but it will take the form of a merging of human and machine intelligence--what he calls a “singularity.” Predicting that capitalism will drive this push, he sees the ultimate end of this exponential technological progression as one where “there will be no clear distinction between human intelligence and machine intelligence”--this will be facilitated by nanobot technology (microscopic robots that float around in our circulatory system). While I don’t mean to suggest this kind of direct, teleological trajectory, I do think there’s a concerted move among the industry as a whole to make the human-machine contact zone seamless--to hide the technological in the biological, to downplay the body’s role in manipulating it, to foster the illusion of a direct connection of technology to mind.

CONCLUSION:

As I bring this presentation to a close, I’d like to voice a number of questions and concerns that orbit this approaching shift in interface design paradigm--questions and concerns to which--and I borrow from the language of Cindy Selfe--it would do us good to pay attention.

My first general concern is that the critical work already done in the area of technology studies will be deemed impertinent or inapplicable to these new design standards, and the assumptions identified by this work will be allowed to continue without scrutinization. I wonder how we can extend the conversation of “access”--that crucial buzzword that seems to offer us a way of bridging the digital divide between the technological haves and have-nots--so that it applies broadly to the realm of design. The technological challenges driving assistive technology gives us a good start, but can we identify bodies that are left out or unconsidered in these new interface designs, claims of individualized customization to the contrary?

I’m also cautious about a return to the overriding cultural myths about technology, the kind that Christina Haas outlines in her book Writing Technology. When the machinery itself becomes hidden, when we forget our integumental bodies, conditions are prime for a reiteration of technology as a transparent, neutral tool that merely facilitates the transfer of information with no inherently politicized bias built into it. The other end of that spectrum is the myth that technology has a liberatory, all-powerful essence (note: We see this with Bill Gates, John Hockenberry, and “speak your mind” slogan).

As I mentioned above, a necessary component of the embodied state is its hidden nature; when comfortable, when properly functioning In-the-World, the body hides itself from itself.

My concern is that the push towards an embodied interface will facilitate real-world practices of silencing and marginalization, essentializing difference. In other words, will the mistakes that were previously blamed on bad interface design, because the technology will go into hiding, by default fall into the lap of the user?

What role will market forces play in the development and dissemination of this new technology? At very least, financial standing will limit some groups’ ability to benefit from interacting with these new interfaces (further expanding the digital divide?). But surely a more pervasive, philosophical problem is this: how do we address the conflict between the unique phenomenological condition of embodiment and a marketplace whose logic is predicated on normalizing mass production?

Lastly, where can we identify sites for resistance? Certainly, we should continue the pursuit Cindy and Dickie Selfe call for when they suggest that we become “technology critics as well as technology users”--this applies to our scholarly work as well as the work we encourage of our students in the classroom. But in addition to becoming critical readers of the New Interface, we should think of ways of participating, for example, in the design process of software as end-user tech consultants making up part of a professional collective. And insofar as it’s in our power as writers of grants, influencers of policy, and purchasers of technology, we should strive to see that that technology is distributed equitably. Basically, we should try to position ourselves professionally at the reception and production ends of the technological assembly line. . .one small way of ensuring that our push towards participatory democracy in the digital world can be realized--for everybody, and every body, involved.

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