CONTROL AND FREEDOM: ON INTERACTIVITY AS SOFTWARE EFFECT
more unedited on the fly notes
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, from Brown University giving the first keynote.
Addressing ISEA’s sins - tendency to take interactive work because of novel technique rather than actual experience.
interrogate conditions required for experience of use.
code is as much affect as cause - code’s airtight causality - new technology is hard to understand because of technique inscribed - not because it moves too fast
user interfaces conflate control with freedom
through literalization with control - doubled by internet running on internet protocol - without control no communications or internet - problem is not with tcpip - but with how it is simultaneously hidden and worked.
importance of race - race as skin deep has been key to understanding internet as screen deep - selling the internet with happy people of color - (slide with MCI commercial) - conflating racial with technological empowerment
racial utopia displaced the image of the internet as porno badland - more conducive to commericial transactions - behind the seeming celebration is a threat - the threat of a racialized other and of being left behind - and the future - where the future is technology.
the subtext of commercial adverts: “buy IT because THEY are - the other who is represented as having technology - and can be a threat.”
potted history of interactivity: reference to john mccarthy - and quote on LISP - naivete of VonNeumann - interactivity as giving over to the machine. interactive interfaces as a face of pleasure and control - freedom - history of computation based on how popel decleare they are liberating the computer.
dream of the direct and pleasant manipulation of the user.
capture seperates efficiency and control - through capture the interface is spread everwhere -
jumping the screen - direct engagement or manipulation - does not supplant programming languages but translates and disseminates their causal pleasure - compensation for lack of knowledge - what we consider programming today was not considered programming in the past
automatic programming is increasingly hidden from the programmer/user
ideology as software - sofware offers an imaginary relationship to our computers - software produces users - “my documents” shamelessly plugs the idea of individual computer ownership. ideology persists in action rather than belief - illusion of ideology - at level of doing - software and ideology fit each other.