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(April 11, 2003)
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In Interface Culture, Steven Johnson associates the human-to-computer interface with "a kind of translator, mediating between the two parties, making one sensible to the other" (14).
A speech in English to me is often not fully accessible. I feel there is a kind of venetian blind, conveying and concealing what is on the other side at once. During a conversation last fall, Glen Cummings argued that even for people who speak the same language, the interface obstructs the send/receive process of communication. Exchanging ideas with 100 percent accuracy through language is impossible. Rather, on both sides of the interface, our interpretation of a given dialogue is biased by personal perspectives.
--In Chinese, the word "interface," or jie mian, is made up of two characters which mean "border, boundary" and "surface," respectively. The Chinese word carries stronger connotations of physical spaces. The two words "interface" and "jie mian" complement each other to illuminate the theme of the essay.
--When talking about a soundtrack or language as interface, we've entered the "software" world--it's the interface we can't see.
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