response:::sept12

Interface Culture
Steven Johnson

Chapters 1-3

The internet has opened so many different windows that sometimes it’s hard to try to understand it all. Besides having created a whole new level of networking, it intrigues me with its possibilities for the future. We’re reading a book that is now 10 years old and knowing the author’s expectations and dreams for the internet only makes me think of my own dreams and expectations about it too. I mean, the whole tri-dimensional virtual space he thought would be the big thing back there is still not true.

All the years that have passed and all the new advents only makes me think of what’s ahead. No doubt our technological speed is much faster than it was 10, 30 years ago [or as some say, some of these new devices have existed for a long time but only now are the market and the users ready for them]. I confess that I’m impressed with the speed new things are coming. Today, electronics are obsolete in less than one year. There’s so much on the market that sometimes I think that in one point our society will “break apart” and that different groups will live in different [technological] times. [wait a minute… it’s like that for years! Only money brings high technology into your home]. Anyway, the products are many and with them, new interfaces also appear. Take as an example, the new iPhone. One of its interface’s features make the user slide their finger tips to interact with it.

Along with the accomplishment of making users interact with the electronic devices through a physical, actual body movement, there are other features that call my attention. We know that the eager for creating the illusion of a tri-dimensionality on a two-dimensional space is gaining more and more space in the digital world. It all makes me think that during the Renaissance, artists wanted to reproduce exact replicas of the world on canvas, which is the same thought computer people have today. However, computer people think of it as a dynamic space. I confess that the idea of creating a tri-dimensional space on a digital based support excites me (check it out). I’m not talking about computer games or any of those artificial looking environments that already exist. I’m talking about places where are so realistic that makes you lose sense of reality. But I wonder, how far are we from that? I imagine it’s already out there, somewhere, but when will the big public have access to this kind of technology?

I don’t know if I’m thinking too small or too big today. Ten years ago Steven Johnson also wondered about some advances in computer technology. Some of his thoughts seem archaic now, but some may still come true. In the future, the window, the mouse, the keyboard before us won’t be the only [and main] digital reality we’ll interact with, I believe. Who knows if someday you’ll be inside a virtual 3D reality where you’ll be able to reach out for files on a floating folder above your head, or maybe mentally transcript texts to the computer through electrodes placed on your forehead, while your nice plays with her Barbie on a chair next to you?