[Reader-List] Human-Computer Oscillation

[Are Flagan]

On 11/16/02 7:35, "Harwood" <Harwood at scotoma.org> wrote:

> Q: What are the consequences for the appropriation of value within capitalist
> systems if we interfere with this objectification process within interface
> design?

>> This objectification in interface allows the user to see software structures
>> as part of a fixed, environment that is external from themselves.
>> The production and exchange of value within capitalism requires such a
process takes place.

The process has also been cast, in the Marxist critique, as one of
alienation. This, however, does not mean that the user is excluded from the
process, but rather operates at an implicit remove, once more talking in
Marxian terms, from a historical and material reality, without agency. I
don't quite recognize the description that allows the user to "see" this
structure as fixed and external: it would effectively mean a transcendence
to this reality and also a recovery of agency. Software is arguably a
process that will always "objectify" in favor of a certain remove. The only
recourse may be in the symbolic, interface _design_, which you do not enter
into. Hence the earlier attempts in this discussion to entertain what may be
considered "readings" of features and interfaces to establish their
allocation of value, as a comment of appropriation. Your question remains
unanswered, however.

> Q: Having established that the selective reading of the user's input data
> through the mouse helps lead to objectification of content within interface,
> what happens if we create software that acts on all possible variables within
> mouse interaction?

In other words, what happens when we integrate the movements not anticipated
and logged by software into software? (Many people have attached a pen to
their mouse and done very nice doodles on paper.) Isn't this what the
totally immersive dream of VR seeks to accomplish (if only we could get past
the goggles and the glove)? An integration of all senses into an environment
where software is an extension of all the senses and the world succumbs
entirely to logical-mathematical notation? The mouse is an archaic device
with a growing number of programmable buttons to access structures not
necessarily present, visually, in a particular interface or menu (but by
necessity present in the software). Does this not indicate that the
"objectification" is already taking place without the aid of a GUI, and that
users converse more and more directly with algorithms. I think this returns
to your question above: what are the consequences when software tracks and
objectifies a user's input data and the interface, a symbolic order of
difference, becomes translucent? Of course, we read about new micro chips
and implants every day.

-af