[artinfo] Turin Complete User

[olia lialina]

It's a book!

TURING COMPLETE USER - RESISTING ALIENATION IN HUMAN COMPUTER INTERACTION.

<https://t.co/IjGGMvIMS5>https://books.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/arthistoricum/catalog/book/972

qISBN 978-3-98501-072-1

ISBN 978-3-98501-071-4 (PDF)

The following essays were written between 2012 and 2020, a time that 
will hardly be remembered for any groundbreaking hardware or software 
inventions. The iPhone, the Tesla Roadster, Web 2.0,  even the 
Infinite Scroll plugin for WordPress -- all belong to the glorious 
first decade of the new millennium.

The second decade was different, it was about talking, loud and clear.
  "iPad keyboards provide a great typing experience" (Apple 2020); "We 
achieved quantum supremacy" (Google 2019); "I've built a simple AI" 
(Zuckerberg 2016); "Model S is a sophisticated computer on wheels" 
(Musk 2015); "If I ever say the word 'user' again, immediately charge 
me $140" (Dorsey 2012)

The field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and the IT industry at 
large invested in reforming their terminology: banning some words and 
reversing the meanings of others to camouflage the widening gap 
between users and developers, to smooth the transition from personal 
computers to "dumb terminals", from servers to "buckets", from 
double-clicking to saying "OK, Google".

Computer users also learnt to talk, loud and clear, to be understood 
by Siri, Alexa, Google Glass, HoloLens, and other products that 
perform both listening and answering. Maybe it is exactly this 
amalgamation of input and output into a "conversation" that defines 
the past decade, and it will be the core of HCI research in the years 
to come.

Who is scripting the conversations with these invisible ears and 
mouths? How can users control their lines?

I hope this book will make computer users as well as designers aware 
of their roles, and their language. When hardware and software 
dissolve in anthropomorphic forms and formless "experiences", words 
stop being mere names and metaphors. They do not only appeal to 
imagination and give shape to invisible products. Words themselves 
become interfaces, and every change in vocabulary matters.

I'd like to thank Interface Critique interfacecritique.net/ for 
making my publication possible and foremost for being a platform for 
this important discourse.

Olia Lialina