Interface Culture – Windows

Third chapter of Steven Johnson’s Interface Culture was not as informative as the previous ones [Bittmapping] [Desktop], mainly due to the time the book was written in (1997). He discusses now closed debates like frames and the browsers battle. Nevertheless here are a few quotes including the forcast of the weblog trend:

“The history of interface now neatly divides into two decades: pre-windows and post-Windows”

“As with the original typewriter design, the consistency of the layout is as important as the layout itself. [...] Spacial memory works only if the objects you’re trying to keep track of remain anchored in one place”

“Like many of our file-management tools, windows rarely work in the service of spatial memory, despite what the interface evangelists will tell you. [...] The spatial dimension is just an illusion, or the illusion of an illusion. We pretend to ourselves that we’re remembering “where” we put the file, but what we’re really remembering is the name of the folder that contains it.”

“There is no doubt that the transparent mode switches of a window-driven interface allow us the multitask more easily with our computers, though most of the time our routines involve discrete sequences, wher we concentrate separately on one task after another rather than managing them all at once.”

“The windows didn’t create a new consciousness – it just let us apply our existing cousciousness to the information-space on the screen.”

“Over the next decade, this stitching together of different news and opinion sources will slowly become a type of journalism in its own right, a new form of reporting that synthesizes and digests the great mass of information disseminated online every day.”

“The beautifull thing about this new meta-journalism is that is doesn’t require a massive distribution channel or extravagant licensing fees. A single user with a web connection and only the most rudimentary HTML skills can upload his or her overview of the day’s news. [...] This should be cause for encouragement of anyone interested in a more populist model of journalism, and it is evidence once again of the wide-ranging influences of the digital window and its offshoots.”