Turing Complete User: Resisting Alienation in Human Computer Interaction
<p>The following essays were written between 2012 and 2020, a time that will hardly be remembered for any groundbreaking hardware or software inventions. The iPhone, the Tesla Roadster, Web 2.0, even the Infinite Scroll plug-in for WordPress – all belong to the glorious first decade of the new millennium.</p> <p>The second decade was different, it was about talking, loud and clear.</p> <p>“iPad keyboards provide a great typing experience” (Apple 2020); “We achieved quantum supremacy” (Google 2019); “I’ve built a simple AI” (Zuckerberg 2016); “Model S is a sophisticated computer on wheels” (Musk2015); “If I ever say the word ‘user’ again, immediately charge me $140” (Dorsey2012).</p> <p>The field of human–computer interaction (HCI) and the IT industry at large invested in reforming their terminology: banning some words and reversing the meanings of others to camouflage the widening gap between users and developers, to smooth the transition from personal computers to “dumb terminals”, from servers to “buckets”, from double-clicking to saying “OK, Google.”</p> <p>Computer users also learnt to talk, loud and clear, to be understood by Siri, Alexa, GoogleGlass, HoloLens, and other products that perform both listening and answering. Maybe it is exactly this amalgamation of input and output into a “conversation” that defines the past decade, and it will be the core of HCI research in the years to come…</p>
Authors: Olia Lialina
Editors: Florian Hadler, Daniel Irrgang, Fliss Bage
Designer: Alexander Schindler, Daniel Irrgang, Olia Lialina, Florian Hadler
ISBN: 978-3-98501-071-4