The third chapter that I have read

The Language of new media
Chapter 2 – The interface
By: Lev Manovich

The whole chapter takes the reader through a historical journey and explains the development of the human computer interaction (HCI) with a cultural approach. The author starts of by making some references to the movie Bade runner (1982) and how its view of the future would be taken into account by generations to come and used as a reference. This is explained as how older cultural phenomena have set a standard for the future.

The author then continues by describing three large cultural phenomena’s that in the end get intertwined as the modern day interfaces and substances and that we have in our computers.

I wont go too much into depth about what I have read because the chapter was pretty long and I will just mention some parts that I found interesting.

The first one is the printed word and is explained as the way that we speak with the computer and through it, as well as how we store information in it. In the older days the printed word was a way for humans to store information such as knowledge and memory and served as a link to the art of rhetoric. This is recognized as how for example a writing program looks like. The interface is shaped as a piece of paper. And how the scrolling down of a longer text on a web page is referred to unrolling a scroll. The speaking to the computer part is explained as how for example a programmer tells the computer through different written commands what do.

The second is the cinematic and refers to the way we look on a computer screen, and as how I understood the text, through it. The screen can be described as looking through a lens of a camera or the canvas of a painting. As a the frame of a painting or the rectangular shape of a photograph only shows a part of something larger so does a window in a computer interface. The lens of a camera refers to the way that we ourselves can determine what we want to see by moving around in the window (by scrolling in different directions) or explore three-dimensional space by moving around the viewing point (like in games).

The third one is the human computer interface and explains how different cultural artefacts where transferred to the computer to represent the real world. For example typewriter was made into writing programs, a painting canvas was made into painting programs, icons on the screen represented real world things etc.


This covers most of the chapter in short…


This book seems discuss the historical development of new media, which is interesting to read to get a background of why things are as they are nowadays. But for those that want to read something more hand on which concerns present things I would not recommend this book.