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w h O S E b O dy ? Looking Critically at New Interface Designs ben mccorkle The personal computer has given us two things: bad metaphors and bad posture. —Tom Willard Think of it as the thin chrome line, the literal contact zone between the human body and the personal computer. Industry insiders refer to it as HCI—the human-computer interface—and it represents the convergence of the two data sets identified by Tom Willard in the epigraph above, exemplified by anyone suffering from mouse-induced carpal tunnel syndrome or confused by the concept of dragging a compact disc icon into a trashcan in order to eject it. It is along this thin line of demarcation that I propose we focus our critical attentions because soon that line will become blurred and indistinguishable, or will even disappear altogether. Beyond the questions of aesthetics or ease of use, our gazes should be concerned with the ways in which designers of digital interfaces—and by this, I mean to suggest a broad categorization including the interface design of various operating systems, software applications, and even hardware itself—assume unquestioned subject positions for the user. We can begin this critique by revisiting the conversation arguing that the current interface paradigm anticipates an impossibly idealized universal user through the repetition of common design tropes and metaphors, as well as physical functionality. In the spirit of such scholars as Christina Haas, Steven Johnson, and Christine Neuwirth, I contend that these common design features actually privilege a certain subject position at the exclusion of others, and that the construct of the universal user serves as a mechanism to devalue those bodies outside that position. From this foundational critique, we can look ahead to examine sites that offer us glimpses into the likely future of interface design, among them advances in touchscreen hardware, voice/handwriting recognition software , ubiquitous computing and internet appliances, and virtual reality— all of which suggest an increased attention to embodiment in the interface design paradigm. Again, the critical question of whose body (or bodies ) is being assumed in the development of these new interfaces is crucial, 10 Whose Body? 175 especially as it applies to implications of gender, class, race, and the able body. While some artifacts from the future, as it were, are designed in an attempt to conceal their interfacial properties from the user, creating the illusion of direct, in-the-world manipulation of content, we can also glimpse hopeful sites of resistance, notably in a counterbalanced set of artifacts designed to remind us explicitly that we are interacting with the machine. Without such a critical counterbalance, the predominant logic of the new interface will likely be reified via a variety of mechanisms: the language used to frame the user experience (in advertising and technical documents, for instance), the sanctioned uses to which new technology is put (touch-sensitive table displays intended for corporate settings), and the deeply embedded assumptions about how the body ought to behave in the face of new technologies. Collectively, these formal and discursive factors will result in a thin chrome line that only certain types of bodies are allowed to cross, bodies that have historically known the privileges associated with the technological vanguard. Ultimately, then, this chapter serves as a call to extend the conversation of access initiated most forcefully by Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe. I argue for a more expansive notion of access so that it applies not only to the material availability of hardware and software , but also to the symbolic economy of interface design. It is in part this barring of access that potentially limits certain bodies’ capacity for learning and communicating within digital media environments. For teachers and scholars of composition in particular, the stakes in this encroaching shift are high. For one, we have an opportunity to be ahead of the technological curve, helping to act upon it rather than react to it, unlike other moments of technological transition across our history. With that opportunity comes an obligation to insist on maintaining an ethical character to the ongoing conversation affecting how we develop these new technologies, how we recognize the variety of eloquent and useful new forms that will undoubtedly emerge, and how we teach people to communicate effectively using them (in the realms of both academic and civic discourse). As a field, we risk being caught flatfooted if we think the next technological paradigm will simply mark a return to orality; instead, we will be entering a stage...

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