Steven Johnson

The editor in chief of Feed magazine says the computer and Internet interfaces shape how we view our reality, just as other metaphors shaped how our ancestors did. In Interface Culture he contends that what the cathedral was to the Middle Ages, what perspective and painting were to the Renaissance, what the novel was to the 19th century, the computer interface is to our time.

What's more, this interface will become increasingly important as more of our life and work moves online. As it does, he sees the computer interface evolving into a full artistic form, closer to architecture or painting than to programming. As it does, our current assumptions about Internet interfaces may change. "The assumption that anything graphic will be better than text, may be wrong."

Paul Schindler talks to Steven Johnson about Interface Culture.

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Job
Editor-in-chief, co-founder, Feed Magazine

Education
BA in semiotics at Brown under Umberto Eco.; Columbia MA and M.phil.; Needs only dissertation for a Ph.D. in English literature.

Home
New York City. Single.

Career
Joined Feed in 1995. Served as American correspondent on high-tech issues for Guardian of London. Appeared in Lingua Franca and as a New York Times op-ed writer. Worked as a Website designer -- including the original interface for Feed, for which he wrote all the HTML.

To purchase "Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create & Communicate," click here.

First computer
"An Apple IIe with 32K of memory, on which I mostly played Asteriod. I didn't really get interested in the machine itself. In college I got a Mac Plus. I just fell in love with that machine in 1986."

Optimistic statement about the Internet
"We've begun to see and we will see more of an Interface Design subculture of folks who are not just the leading interface designers squirreled away in an R&D lab in Redmond or Cupertino. Closer to artists. Designing interfaces designed as much to confuse as to acclimate people to information spaces."

Pessimistic statement about the Internet
"There is a richness to the story telling of the 19th century novel that has no other real equivalent and seems to be growing less and less essential to the culture today as we spend more time with television and online, where we get different kinds of intimacy and communion."

To purchase "Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create & Communicate," click here.