[After a long hiatus, recent _Ctheory articles, including this one, are now
up on the _Ctheory website @ http://www.ctheory.com/ John.]
==================================================================
From: ctheory [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 6:33 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: CTHEORY Event-Scene 94 - Transparency and Deception on the
Computer Fashion Scene
____________________________________________________________________
CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 23, NO 3
Event-Scene 94 06-12-00 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
____________________________________________________________________
You Can't Always Get What You Want:
Transparency and Deception on the Computer Fashion Scene
========================================================
~Marcel O'Gorman~
-----------------
"Technology is gradually becoming a second nature, a territory both
external and internalized, and an object of desire. There is no need
to make it transparent any longer, simply because it is not felt to
be in contradiction to the 'authenticity' of the experience."
--Erkki Huhtamo[1]
While Microsoft chose the Rolling Stones anthem "Start Me Up" to
launch its ubiquitously accepted Windows 95 software, Apple settled
on the Stones' more psychedelic "Like a Rainbow" to introduce the
iMac. But music is not the only link between these two momentous ad
campaigns; they share an essential strategy of Silicon Valley
marketing-the need to make technology transparent to the user. In the
attempt to make the desktop computer approachable and even "cool,"
the Windows 95 graphical interface distanced the user from the
complexity of DOS code entry, and the iMac touted hardware that is
transparently simple to set up. These changes brought with them a
concerted estheticization of computer software (Windows 95 custom
desktops, etc.) and hardware (the iMac as home decoration). The
reasoning behind selecting Mick Jagger as a spokesperson for these
products is far from transparent, but one thing is certain: as the
desktop computer becomes more simple to use and more attractive to
behold, the user is unwittingly faced with an increasing loss of
power and control over the machine. As digital machines become
transparent elements of personal style-voguish signifiers of
well-being in an electronic culture-we are becoming increasingly
ignorant of their actual mechanics and power to shape information and
influence its delivery. If this trend continues unchecked, human
identity will one day be determined by hardware and software
aesthetics, and information will be controlled by the corporate
fashion machines through which it is filtered. The computer fashion
scene is the site of disempowerment, programmed ignorance, and
packaged identity formation.
Fruit-Flavored Hardware Seduction
---------------------------------
"She comes in colors everywhere. She combs her hair. She's like a
rainbow." With this psychedelic refrain swirling through the air
amidst a gaggle of iMacs, Apple launched its incredibly successful
line of fruit-flavored computers. In 1998, Steve Jobs introduced the
commercial to a very enthusiastic audience at the MacWorld 3
Convention, and the rest is history. The big selling point was and
is, of course, the color of these new iMac computers. But what is
more fascinating is the transparent or perhaps, translucent, cases of
these machines. This subtle marketing detail-a design concept as old
as the glass music box-turns the iMac into a hypericon[2] of
corporate computer marketing strategies. That is, a sophisticated
corporate agenda of deception and programmed ignorance is written on
the semi-transparent body of the iMac.
Who could resist the appeal of a yummy blueberry, grape, lime,
tangerine or strawberry digital device? The fruity flavor in itself
is irresistible, but when such cuteness is coupled with a titillating
translucence, a candy-sweet digital striptease, the result is a
lethal seduction machine. We see this recipe for seduction at play
everywhere today, especially in Japanese culture, where the
alchemical blend of cuteness and seduction has spawned a
billion-dollar market for kiddy-porn anime and pink key-chain cell
phones. This craze finds its way into our home offices. Browse
through the pages of any computer magazine, and you will inevitably
be assailed by a selection of colorfully translucent printers,
keyboards, ZIP drives, and even cables. What is the point of all this
transparency? You might as well ask the equally perplexing question,
What is the point of bringing back chinos and Capri pants? Both would
elicit the same answer: fashion has dictated these questionable
visual cults. But you don't have to be a fashion critic to understand
that such trends do not self-generate haphazardly, nor are they
arrived at in a transparently innocent way.
It is no mystery that technology has developed its own, highly
sophisticated fashion system. The reach of this system is extremely
vast; we have "wearable computing" in Silicon Valley and
status-marking cell phones with fashion faceplates in South Detroit.
Some of these phones are, of course, translucent as well. We are
witnessing a culture of digital peacocking: the more colorful
circuits we have to display, the more wired and hip we appear to be.
This makes the iMac the perfect home fashion accessory for any living
room. From a consumer's perspective, the clear shell on a digital
device simply looks "cool," it appeals to a post-Y2K, sci-fi
sensibility that wants to demonstrate its digital savvy. Admittedly,
the first time I saw the new iMac, I relished the thought that I was
one layer closer to the circuits that channel my ideas. I was one
layer closer to understanding the mechanics of the digital mediator
of my thoughts. I had achieved a greater level of control over the
enigmatic network of copper and silicon behind the screen. This, of
course, is a fatal error. I had fallen prey to the greatest danger of
this hardware trend: feigned transparency.
If you look closely into the translucent shell of an iMac, what do
you see, really? A few circuits leading into a metallic box with air
vents. In effect, all you can see beneath the translucent, plastic
veil of the monitor is the real casing of the monitor. The colorful
shell of an iMac should be considered as an additional layer between
the operator and the computer, the human and the machine. It is an
illusion, a lie, a fashion effect designed to simulate the lifting of
a veil. We should not confuse this effect with that achieved by the
transparent cases of antique music boxes and pocket watches-these
were created for instruction, not for fashion; they gave a full view
of ticking gears and cogs in full motion, not an obscured view of
immobile, inscrutable copper and silicon. The transparent hardware
case instills us with a false confidence by transforming daunting
technologies into familiar fashion. With this confidence in place,
the user is free to forget about what the circuits and chips are
actually doing beneath the polished, graphical user interface.
To summarize, the more aesthetically pleasing our hardware
becomes-pleasing by means of transparency, that is-the more ignorant
we become about what is actually making it tick. On the computer
fashion scene, there is an obverse relationship between transparency
and understanding. And this is the very equation that computer
corporations, both Macintosh- and Windows-oriented, must uphold to
insure their control of the market.
There is no Transparent Software
--------------------------------
The impetus behind Apple's colorful ad campaign should not be taken
lightly. Apple was acting out of sheer necessity, out of a drive for
survival. For over a decade, Apple had steadily been losing ground to
the ravenous Microsoft Corporation; the iMac strategy was the perfect
tactic to put them back in the running. If Microsoft was transforming
the computing world with its Windows operating system-a software
product-Apple would fight back with hardware. It's much easier to
market a simple and elegant piece of hardware than it is to market a
complex graphical user interface. And who cares about the interface
anyway? As long as it hides those perplexing strings of code, the
consumer will be satisfied. Apple has altered--perhaps
permanently--the computer sales war, by changing the focus from
software to hardware. Most importantly, focus of the consumer has
changed as well. Whereas the hardware-oriented focus of computer
purchasers-a focus limited to geeks who understand the meaning of
RAM, MHz, MB, and SCSI-used to be on interior elements such as memory
and performance, the focus is now on aesthetics, the exterior. Apple
has changed the consumer's focus from software to hardware, from
user-friendliness to fashion, from control and access to simplicity
and cuteness. In short, they have changed the focus from interior to
exterior, and the effectiveness of this shift is such that even the
most die-hard, DOS-oriented PC owners are being tempted into
purchasing a seductively sweet and simple iMac. Will they submit?
Let's hope not. But what is the alternative?
The Apple vs. PC (Microsoft) war has been raging for two decades now.
Historically, Apple users tout the simplicity and intuitiveness of
the Apple operating system, especially when compared to DOS, which
was the only alternative interface before the legendary birth of
Windows. PC users on the other hand, argue that the Mac platform
limits their level of control over files and hardware. The PC
die-hards often describe the Mac OS (operating system) in demeaning
terms-a delimiting force that insults their intelligence. Over the
past decade however, the war has been folding in on itself.
Microsoft's user interface has become more and more like the Mac
interface through the replacement of text with pictures, code with
icons. A Windows 98 user would have a very difficult time claiming
that his or her user interface offers more flexibility, hardware
control, or sophistication than the Mac user's interface-especially
since Windows is fashioned on the original Mac OS in the first place,
and both are committed to the principle of simplicity through
pictorial representation.
The goal of this pictorialization, as Jay Bolter has pointed out in
Remediation, is to achieve a certain representational transparency.
According to Bolter,
Virtual Reality, three-dimensional graphics, and graphical
interface design are all seeking to make digital technology
"transparent." In this sense, a transparent interface would be
one that erases itself, so that the user is no longer aware of
confronting a medium, but instead stands in an immediate
relationship to the contents of that medium.[3]
To begin with, transparent hardware would allow for a seamless
transition between the real and virtual. This is the stuff of
biotechnological implants, but is more readily apparent in the
constant miniaturization of digital devices, which relentlessly
pushes hardware toward the immaterial. All hardware is, in a sense,
striving for invisibility or transparency. Of course, software
strives for transparency as well. The ultimate user interface is one
that doesn't get in the way of what you are trying to accomplish with
your machine-it simply offers a direct, seemingly unmediated line
between you and information or communication.[4] Pictures seem to
accomplish this task more efficiently than words, so we have seen the
replacement of command lines with icons that mimic everyday objects.
The problem with this, as any translator, artist, or
poststructuralist[5] understands, is that this replacement of text by
pictures is not a transparent process. Something is lost en route.
Traces of the transformation are left behind. In this case, what is
lost is the user's level of access to hardware control. As Microsoft
pushes the code further and further behind a "desktop" of icons, the
user's command of the machine is increasingly compromised.
But then, who wants increased command, especially if it means
tinkering with all that messy code? This is what the average consumer
is likely to ask-Microsoft and Apple have built their empires on it.
But what is at stake here is not just the ability to make your
printer or hard drive run exactly the way you would like them to run;
what's at stake is the future of information management and control.
This is why the translucency, or "feigned transparency," of the Apple
iMac is a fortuitous development for critics of the hardware fashion
scene. The translucent iMac creates a visual register of the
industry's drive to veil computing processes from the user. The iMac
is a hypericon of computer marketing strategies that are designed to
reduce the consumer's level of control over information systems.
There is no Software At All
---------------------------
Foreshadowing Apple's latest ad campaign, the media critic Friedrich
Kittler paraphrased Mick Jagger in a 1990 essay when he suggested,
"instead of what he wants, the user always only gets what he needs
(according to the industry standard, that is)." In what Kittler calls
a "system of secrecy," computer and software designers have
intentionally "hidden" the technology from those who use the
machines:
First, on an intentionally superficial level, perfect graphic
user interfaces, since they dispense with writing itself, hid a
whole machine from its users. Second, on the microscopic level of
hardware, so-called protection software has been implemented in
order to prevent "untrusted programs" or "untrusted users" from
any access to the operating system's kernel and input/output
channels.[6]
Tipping his hat to Marshal McLuhan, Kittler suggests that all these
levels of secrecy are designed to prevent the operator from really
understanding media. We might consider the design concept of the iMac
as yet another level of secrecy-the translucent case is a red
herring, a decoy, a distraction technique. The motto "Think
Different" works in the same way by attempting to persuade Mac users
that their computer will give them the wisdom to modify social power
structures. What Apple is really trying to do, however, is to divert
them from thinking about their technical ignorance. You may be able
to launch a program on your computer, and you can even see inside its
casing (to a certain extent), but do you really know what's going on
inside? This ignorance, according to Kittler, leaves us open to
manipulation of the highest order. And it is not exclusive to Mac
users. The hardware and software that we use have the power to shape
our relationship to information. And if this relationship is
controlled by corporate interests, then we must consider the
ramifications. In a worst case scenario, "one writes-the 'under' says
it already-as a subject or underling of the Microsoft [or Apple]
Corporation".[7]
The problem with developing a force of resistance against this
"writing under" is that it is dependent upon the inscrutable
complexity of computer hardware and software. Do people really want
to know how their computers work? Do they want to know how to
assemble lines of code? If Kittler had his way, the average Liberal
Arts student would be required to "at least know some arithmetic, the
integral function, the sine function, . . .[and] at least two
software languages."[8] But not all Liberal Arts students are
tempted, as Kittler was, to "pick up the soldering iron and build
circuits" in their free time.[9] Still, Kittler's rhetorical
artillery can be translated into a plan of resistance against
marketing strategies designed to delimit the power of a computer
operator. One method of resistance would be to emulate Kittler and
Foucault in their "attempt to construct sociology from the [computer]
chip's architectures".[10] "It is a reasonable assumption," writes
Kittler, "to analyze the privilege levels of a microprocessor as the
reality of precisely that bureaucracy that ordered its design and
called for its mass application."[11] Indeed, one might analyze the
design of hardware components with the same skepticism. This is why I
have designated the iMac as a hypericon: a visual embodiment of a
corporate discourse network that advocates marketing strategies of
feigned transparency and deception. The goal of this is to change the
signification of the translucent shell from fashion statement to
critical/political statement. Of course, this is only a singular,
rhetorical method that can achieve only a limited effect, especially
when confined to a research article.
Strategies of Resistance: Electronic Critique
---------------------------------------------
A more pervasive strategy of resistance is to integrate the concept
of transparency into education about media. This can be done in a
very literal way, by teaching students, in Kittlerian fashion, how to
build circuits or wire a building for the Internet. For example, at
the School of Information Science, Technology and Engineering at the
University of Nebraska at Omaha, Engineering students go to classes
in a building where all the ducts, plumbing, Internet cables and
hardware, are completely visible. This model has been seen before, of
course, most famously at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. But in
Nebraska, the goal is instructional rather than aesthetic. The very
building in which students work becomes an object of study. Students
even go so far as to "watch the electrical impulses flying over the
wires" of the network, using particle analyzers.[12] In the words of
Bing Chen, co-chairman of the Computers and Electronics Engineering
Program, "I like students to track it down, almost to the electron
level.... We aren't interested in black boxes, where it just goes out
into the ether".[13] Of course, the university does not describe the
program as a "strategy of resistance," but given the drive of
computer manufacturers to "black-box" information systems, we might
view the program in this way.
For a more self-consciously resistant program, we might turn to the
University of Detroit Mercy, where I am the current director of
Electronic Critique, or E-crit (www.e-crit.com). Students in this
Liberal Arts program are educated in research and design strategies
that can be used to resist corporate illusions of transparency, and
to dissect cultural artifacts-even iMac computers-in order to reveal
the networks of social power that they conceal. Resistance, for
students of E-crit, might be as simple as stressing the importance of
learning HTML code before using a graphical Web page editor. But the
program of resistance goes much deeper than this, as is evident in
the philosophy of the program's founder, Professor Hugh Culik.
Professor Culik developed the program out of a need for unrelenting
skepticism about technology in the Liberal Arts. This metacritical
stance is so rigorous that it borders on paranoia; when Culik found
the university's computing policies unacceptable, he led Liberal Arts
students in the set-up and maintenance of their own Web server. It is
this type of hands-on problem solving and critical vigilance that led
to the creation of the program in Electronic Critique. Students of
E-crit are encouraged to apply their deconstructive methodologies in
the creation of "real-world" projects designed to solve real
problems, and to draw the students' communities into programs of
resistance.
The reason for deploying a Liberal Arts program against the political
forces behind technology development and marketing is well
articulated by Professor Culik in the program's initial proposal
document: "With our tradition of critique, we can articulate the
nature of these new forces, de-mystify their assumptions, and then
deploy them as adjuncts for the committed critical thinking that
extend our mission into the real world".[14] Students of Electronic
Critique demystify corporate marketing tactics, and apply their
knowledge of such tactics in the creation of software and Web
projects that encourage others to resist the temptation of feigned
transparency. In other words, it would not be unusual for an e-crit
student to use iMac design strategies in the creation of a Web site
that ironically demystifies such strategies.
Call this a postmodern methodology of irony if you will, but we might
say the same about the most successful advertising campaigns that
assail us on television, in magazines, and on the Web on a daily
basis. It is time to put those powerful communicative strategies into
the hands of social-minded individuals. What if it were possible to
teach critical thinking skills as effectively as advertisers educate
us in their product lines? This objective might be far-fetched, but
what I am calling for here is a widespread program of resistance that
fights fire with fire; a program that, for example, demystifies the
tactics of persuasion and deception that circulate on the computer
fashion scene.
Notes
-----
[1] Huhtamo, Erkki. "Encapsulated Bodies in Motion: Simulators and the
Quest for Total Immersion." Critical Issues in Electronic Media. Ed.
Simon Penney. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995, p.171.
[2]In Picture Theory, W.J.T. Mitchell defines the hypericon as "a kind
of summary image [that] ... encapsulates an entire episteme, a theory
of knowledge" (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1994, p.49). I have extended the
meaning of the term here and in other essays to include not only
self-referential pictures (metapictures), but any artifacts produced
in and for a visual culture, a culture that, in Mitchell's terms, has
undergone a Pictorial Turn. The goal of this methodology is to
mobilize the hypericon as a tool for generating, organizing, and
disseminating knowledge about cultural processes and systems of power.
[3] Jay Bolter, Remediation: Understanding New Media, Boston: MIT
Press, 2000, p.23-24.
[4] It could be posited that the entire Microsoft antitrust case is
rooted in Microsoft's attempt to make the Windows interface more
transparent by turning it into a portal for the Web.
[5] The illusion of a transparent representation is, of course,
central to the poststructuralist understanding of writing, which, in
the words of Gayatri Spivak "is always impure and, as such, challenges
the notion of identity, and ultimately the notion of the origin as
'simple'. It is neither entirely present nor absent, but is the trace
resulting from its own erasure in the drive towards transparency" (
"Translator's Preface," Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Baltimore
and London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1976, p.xvi). In short, there is no
such thing as transparent communication, not even in computer-mediated
communication. Graphical user interfaces reveal traces of the culture
and industry that created them. On the most superficial level, program
icons present us with graphical cultural biases. More substantially,
the iMac's translucent shell presents us with the entire industry's
strategy of false transparency, which leads us to believe that we are
in control while in truth our freedom is being compromised.
[6] Friedrich Kittler, "There Is No Software," Literature, media,
information systems: essays, Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 1997, p.150.
[7] Kittler, 156.
[8] Matthew Griffin and Susanne Herrmann. "Technologies of Writing:
Interview with Friedrich A. Kittler. New Literary History 27.4 (1996):
731-742, p.740.
[9] Griffin, p.731.
[10] Kittler, p.162.
[11] Kittler, p.162.
[12] Lisa Guernsey, "Nebraska Students Get a Look at the Innards of
the Internet," New York Times, 5 August, 1999, natl. ed., D7.
[13] Guernsey, 7.
[14] Culik, Hugh, "Proposal for the Institute for the Study of
Electronic Culture," Detroit: 1999.
____________________________________________________________________
Marcel O'Gorman is Director of the new Electronic Critique Program at
the University of Detroit Mercy. His essays and hypertext projects
trace the discourse networks that flow through the circuits of media
theory. Somewhere between the imagetexts of William Blake and
Friedrich Kittler's media scenes, O'Gorman hopes to discover a mode
of scholarly discourse more suitable to a digital/visual culture.
____________________________________________________________________
* CTHEORY is an international journal of theory, technology
* and culture. Articles, interviews, and key book reviews
* in contemporary discourse are published weekly as well as
* theorisations of major "event-scenes" in the mediascape.
*
* Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
*
* Editorial Board: Jean Baudrillard (Paris), Bruce Sterling (Austin),
* R.U. Sirius (San Francisco), Siegfried Zielinski (Koeln),
* Stelarc (Melbourne), Richard Kadrey (San Francisco),
* Timothy Murray (Ithaca/Cornell), Lynn Hershman Leeson
* (San Francisco), Stephen Pfohl (Boston), Andrew Ross
* (New York), David Cook (Toronto), William Leiss (Kingston),
* Shannon Bell (Downsview/York), Gad Horowitz (Toronto),
* Sharon Grace (San Francisco), Robert Adrian X (Vienna),
* Deena Weinstein (Chicago), Michael Weinstein (Chicago),
* Andrew Wernick (Peterborough).
*
* In Memory: Kathy Acker
*
* Editorial Correspondents: Ken Hollings (UK),
* Maurice Charland (Canada) Steve Gibson (Victoria, B.C.).
*
* Editorial Assistant: Richard Moffitt
* World Wide Web Editor: Carl Steadman
____________________________________________________________________
To view CTHEORY online please visit:
http://www.ctheory.com/
To view CTHEORY MULTIMEDIA online please visit:
http://ctheory.concordia.ca/
____________________________________________________________________
* CTHEORY includes:
*
* 1. Electronic reviews of key books in contemporary theory.
*
* 2. Electronic articles on theory, technology and culture.
*
* 3. Event-scenes in politics, culture and the mediascape.
*
* 4. Interviews with significant theorists, artists, and writers.
*
* CTHEORY is sponsored by New World Perspectives and Concordia
* University.
*
* For the academic year 2000/1, CTHEORY is sponsored
* by the Department of Sociology, Boston College
* (http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/soc/socdept.html)
*
* The editors wish to thank, in particular, Boston College's
* Dr. Joseph Quinn, Dean, College of Arts and Science, Dr. John
* Neuhauser, Academic Vice-President, and Dr. Stephen Pfohl,
* Chairperson, Department of Sociology for their support.
*
* No commercial use of CTHEORY articles without permission.
*
* Mailing address: CTHEORY, Boston College, Department of Sociology,
* 505 McGuinn Hall, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467.
*
* Full text and microform versions are available from UMI,
* Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Canadian Periodical Index/Gale
* Canada, Toronto.
*
* Indexed in: International Political Science Abstracts/
* Documentation politique international; Sociological
* Abstract Inc.; Advance Bibliography of Contents: Political
* Science and Government; Canadian Periodical Index;
* Film and Literature Index.
____________________________________________________________________
************************************************************************************
Distributed through Cyber-Society-Live [CSL]: CSL is a moderated discussion
list made up of people who are interested in the interdisciplinary academic
study of Cyber Society in all its manifestations.To join the list please visit:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cyber-society-live.html
*************************************************************************************
|
