Interface Culture : How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate |
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| Steven Johnson |
| September 1997, Harper San Francisco, Hardcover, 272 pages, ISBN 0062514822
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Johnson brilliantly charts the vital role interface design plays
in modern society. The founder of Feed, an on-line computer
magazine, reveals the enormous impact "interfaces" -- the visual
icons and cues on a computer screen that help users navigate their
way through a program -- are having on society. |
Preface: Electric Speed
1 Bitmapping: An Introduction
2 The Desktop
3 Windows
4 Links
5 Text
6 Agents
Conclusion: Infinity Imagined
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index |
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Praise for Steven Johnson and Feed magazine:
One
of Newsweek's 50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet
"One
of the Web's intellectual heavyweights."--The Washington Post
"Cyberspace
for Grown-ups."--The Economist
"A
must-read for avid Web browsers."--USA Today
"The
Place to Get Fed."--Spin
From
the Inside Flap
In this hip, erudite manifesto, Steven Johnson, one of the most
influential people in cyberspace according to Newsweek, bridges
the gap that yawns between technology and the arts. Drawing on his
own experience in the humanities and on the Web, he not only demonstrates
how interfaces--those buttons, graphics, and words on the screen
through which we control information--influence our daily lives,
but also track their roots back to Victorian novels, early cinema,
and even medieval urban planning. The result is a lush cultural
and historical tableau in which today's interfaces take their rightful
place in the lineage of artistic innovation. |
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| Steven Johnson has been named one of the most influential people
in cyberspace by Newsweek, New York Magazine, and Websight
magazine. He is the editor-in-chief and cofounder of Feed,
the award-winning online cultural magazine. Johnston has degrees in
semiotics from Brown University and in English literature from Columbia
University. He lives in New York City. |
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Amazon.com
It's rare to find a book on Internet issues that is as cogent,
fair, and insightful as Interface Culture. While the Birkerts
and Negropontes of the world spin out one-sided fables that read more
like the dialogue from characters in bad distopian/utopian science
fiction, Steven Johnson uses a keen intellect, honed with the reading
techniques of Nietzsche and Derrida, but lacking unnecessary jargon,
to show how computer interfaces have transformed our lives. In up-to-the-minute
examples, Johnson presents a compelling case for a cultural shift
as important as the one that accompanied the rise of literacy or the
fall of the church.
The New Yorker
In the genre of books about techno-culture, Johnson's approach is refreshingly levelheaded.... this low-key, informed book is designed to provoke further thought without inciting flame wars.
Wired
"In Interface Culture, Steven Johnson deftly paddles against this zeitgeist by examining the machine, software, and network interfaces of the past half century in light of more archaic developments...He combines his insight and his engaging prose to achieve what so many writers fail to: make the reader feel smart by providing new tools with which to understand technology...Johnson's sitting pretty on a mountain of visions, and, luck for us, her shares the wealth."
Upside, Cliff Barney
Interface Culture examines the state of computing from the perspective of its 29-year-old author, Steven Johnson, co-founder and editor of the Web 'zine Feed (www.feedmag.com) and one of the "50 people who matter most on the Internet," according to Newsweek magazine. Johnson asserts that understanding how we interface with computers is the way to know cyberculture. The author never gets much more sophisticated than hyperlinks and software agents. His primary interest is in isolating the interface as a subject of study; a metaphor for the information age, he says, as the novels of Dickens were metaphors for 19th century industrial society. Here he confuses the medium with the message, not uncommon in the Age of McLuhan. In any case, his discussion of the interface seemed curiously truncated and backward-looking.
Village Voice
"...Interface Culture blends familiar cultural studies
paradigms, a history of interface design, and sharp criticism of
the state of the Web...this is one of the most cogent and accessible
samples of Net theory around." |
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