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Turing Complete User

“Any error may vitiate the entire output of the device. For the recognition and correction of
such malfunctions intelligent human intervention will in general be necessary.”
— John von Neumann, First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, 1945

“If you can’t blog, tweet! If you can’t tweet, like!”

— Kim Dotcom, Mr. President, 2012

Invisible and Very Busy

Computers are getting invisible. They shrink and hide. They lurk under the skin and dissolve in the
cloud. We observe the process like an eclipse of the sun, partly scared, partly overwhelmed. We divide
into camps and fight about advantages and dangers of The Ubiquitous. But whatever side we take —
we do acknowledge the significance of the moment.

With the disappearance of the computer, something else is silently becoming invisible as well — the
User. Users are disappearing as both phenomena and term, and this development is either unnoticed or
accepted as progress — an evolutionary step.

The notion of the Invisible User is pushed by influential user interface designers, specifically by Don
Norman a guru of user friendly design and long time advocate of invisible computing. He can be
actually called the father of Invisible Computing.

Those who study interaction design read his “Why Interfaces Don’t Work” published in 1990 in which 1. Don Norman, “Why Interfaces Don’t
he asked and answered his own question: “The real problem with the interface is that it is an Work”, in: Brenda Laurel (Ed.), The
interface”. What’s to be done? “We need to aid the task, not the interface to the task. The computer of Art of Human-Computer Interface
the future should be invisible!”[1] Design, 1990, p. 218

It took almost two decades, but the future arrived around five years ago, when clicking mouse buttons
ceased to be our main input method and touch and multi-touch technologies hinted at our new
emancipation from hardware. The cosiness of iProducts, as well as breakthroughs in Augmented
Reality (it got mobile), rise of wearables, maturing of all sorts of tracking (motion, face) and the
advancement of projection technologies erased the visible border between input and output devices.
These developments began to turn our interactions with computers into pre-computer actions or, as
interface designers prefer to say, “natural” gestures and movements.

Of course computers are still distinguishable and locatable, but they are no longer something you sit in
front of. The forecasts for invisibility are so optimistic that in 2012 Apple allowed to themselves to
rephrase Norman’s predictive statement by putting it in the present tense and binding it to a particular
piece of consumer electronics:

We believe that technology is at its very best when it is invisible, when you 2. Apple Inc, Official Apple (New) iPad
are conscious only of what you are doing, not the device you are doing it Trailer, 2012
with […] iPad is the perfect expression of that idea, it’s just this magical
pane of glass that can become anything you want it to be. It’s a more
personal experience with technology than people have ever had.[2]

In this last sentence, the word “experience” is not an accident, neither is the word “people”.

Invisible computers, or more accurately the illusion of the computerless, is destroyed if we continue to
talk about “user interfaces”. This is why Interface Design starts to rename itself to Experience Design

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— whose primary goal is to make users forget that computers and interfaces exist. With Experience
Design there is only you and your emotions to feel, goals to achieve, tasks to complete.
3. Another strong force behind ignoring
The field is abbreviated as UXD, where X is for eXperience and U is still for the Users. Wikipedia the term User comes from adepts of
says Don Norman coined the term UX in 1995. However, in 2012 UX designers avoid to use the U- Gamification. They prefer to address
word in papers and conference announcements, in order not to remind themselves about all those users as gamers. But that’s another
clumsy buttons and input devices of the past. Users were for the interfaces. Experiences, they are for topic.
the PEOPLE![3]
4. Video of the talk
In 2008 Don Norman simply ceased to address Users as Users. At an event sponsored by Adaptive See also Norman’s 2006 essay
Path, a user interface design company, Norman stated “One of the horrible words we use is users. I am Words matter: “Psychologists
on a crusade to get rid of the word ‘users’. I would prefer to call them ‘people.’”[4] After enjoying the depersonalize the people they study
effect of his words on the audience he added with a charming smile, “We design for people, we don’t by calling them ‘subjects.’ We
design for users.” depersonalize the people we study by
calling them ‘users.’ Both terms are
A noble goal in deed, but only when perceived in the narrow context of Interface Design. Here, the use derogatory. They take us away from
of the term “people” emphasizes the need to follow the user centered in opposition to an our primary mission: to help people.
implementation centered paradigm. The use of “people” in this context is a good way to remind Power to the people, I say, to
software developers that the User is a human being and needs to be taken into account in design and repurpose an old phrase. People.
validation processes. Human Beings. That’s what our
discipline is really about.”
But when you read it in a broader context, the denial of the word “user” in favor of “people” becomes
dangerous. Being a User is the last reminder that there is, whether visible or not, a computer, a
programmed system you use.
5. Lev Manovich, How do you call a
In 2011 new media theoretician Lev Manovich also became unhappy about the word “user”. He writes person who is interacting with digital
on his blog “For example, how do we call a person who is interacting with digital media? User? No media?, 2011
good.”[5]

Well, I can agree that with all the great things we can do with new media — various modes of
initiation and participation, multiple roles we can fill — that it is a pity to narrow it down to “users”,
but this is what it is. Bloggers, artists, podcasters and even trolls are still users of systems they didn’t
program. So they (we) are all the users.
6. Borrowed from the subtitle “You May
We need to take care of this word because addressing people and not users hides the existence of two Always Choose None of the Above”
classes of people — developers and users. And if we lose this distinction, users may lose their rights of the chapter “Choice” in: Douglas
and the opportunity to protect them. These rights are to demand better software, the ability “to choose Rushkoff, Program or be
none of the above”[6], to delete your files, to get your files back, to fail epically and, back to the Programmed, 2010, p.46
fundamental one, to see the computer.

In other words: the Invisible User is more of an issue than an Invisible Computer.

What can be done to protect the term, the notion and the existence of the Users? What counter
arguments can I find to stop Norman’s crusade and dispel Manovich’s skepticism? What do we know
about a user, apart from the opinion that it is “no good” to be one?
7. “The movie Tron (1982) marks the
We know that it was not always like this. Before Real Users (those who pay money to use the system) highest appreciation and most
became “users”, programmers and hackers proudly used this word to describe themselves. In their glorious definition of this term. […]
view, the user was the best role one could take in relation to their computer.[7] The relationship of users and
programs is depicted as a very close
Furthermore, it is wrong to think that first there were computers and developers and only later users and personal one, almost religious in
entered the scene. In fact, it was the opposite. At the dawn of personal computer the user was the nature, with a caring and respecting
center of attention. The user did not develop in parallel with the computer, but prior to it. Think about creator and a responsible and
Vanevar Bush’s “As we May Think” (1945), one of the most influential texts in computer culture. dedicated progeny.” — Olia Lialina
Bush spends more words describing the person who would use the Memex than the Memex itself. He and Dragan Espenschied, Do you
described a scientists of the future, a superman. He, the user of the Memex, not the Memex, itself was

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heading the article.[8] believe in users?, in: Digital Folklore,

8. 2009
Vanevar Bush, As we may think
20 years later, Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the pioneering personal computer system NLS, as well (illustrated version, PDF facsimile),
as hypertext, and the mouse, talked about his research on the augmentation of human intellect as Life magazine, 1945
“bootstraping” — meaning that human beings, and their brains and bodies, will evolve along with new 9. Thierry Bardini, Bootstrapping, 2000
technology. This is how French sociologist Thierry Bardini describes this approach in his book about
Douglas Engelbart: “Engelbart wasn’t interested in just building the personal computer. He was
interested in building the person who could use the computer to manage increasing complexity
efficiently.”[9]
10. J.C.R. Licklider, Joseph Carl Robnett,
And let’s not forget the title of J.C.R. Licklider’s famous text, the one that outlined the principles for Man-Computer Symbiosis, IRE
APRAs Command and Control research on Real Time System, from which the interactive/personal Transactions on Human Factors in
computer developed — Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960).[10] Electronics, volume HFE-1, p.4-11,
1960
When the personal computer was getting ready to enter the market 15 years later, developers thought 11. Alan Kay, Personal Dynamic Media,
about who would be model users. At XEROX PARC, Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg introduced the 1977, in: Noah Wardrip-Fruin and
idea of kids, artists, musicians and others as potential users for the new technology. Their paper Nick Montfort (ed), The New Media
“Personal Dynamic Media” from 1977[11] describes important hardware and software principles for Reader, MIT Press, 2003
the personal computer. But we read this text as revolutionary because it clearly establishes possible 12. See Douglas K. Smith and Robert C.
users, distinct from system developers, as essential to these dynamic technologies. Another Xerox Alexander, Fumbling The Future,
employee, Tim Mott (aka “The father of user centered design”) brought the idea of a Secretary into the 1999, p.110 (on Google Books)
imagination of his colleagues. This image of the “Lady with the Royal Typewriter”[12] predetermined
the designs of XEROX Star, Apple Lisa and and further electronic offices.

So, it’s important to acknowledge that users existed prior to computers, that they were imagined and
invented — Users are the figment of the imagination. As a result of their fictive construction, they
continued to be re-imagined and re-invented through the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and the new millennium. But
however reasonable, or brave, or futuristic, or primitive these models of users were, there is a
constant.

Let me refer to another guru of user centered design, Alan Cooper. In 2007, when the U word was still
allowed in interaction design circles, he and his colleagues shared their secret in “About Face, The
Essentials of Interaction Design”:
13. Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David
“As an interaction designer, it’s best to imagine that users – especially — Cronin, About Face 3: The Essentials
beginners — are simultaneously very intelligent and very busy.”[13] of Interaction Design, 2007, p.45

It is very kind advice (and one of the most reasonable books on interface design, btw) and can be
translated roughly as “hey, front end developers, don’t assume that your users are more stupid than
you, they are just busy.” But it is more than this. What the second part of this quote gets to so
importantly is that Users are people who are very busy with something else.
14. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream
Alan Cooper is not the one who invented this paradigm, and not even Don Norman with his Machines, Revised Edition 1987, p.9
concentration on task rather than the tool. It originated in the 1970’s. Listing the most important
computer terms of that time, Ted Nelson mentions so called “user level systems” and states that these
“User-level systems, [are] systems set up for people who are not thinking about computers but about
the subject or activity the computer is supposed to help them with.”[14] Some pages before he claims:

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15. Scanned from Computer Lib, page 3

[15]

One should remember that Ted Nelson was always on the side of users and even “naïve users” so his
bitter “just a user” means a lot.

Alienation of users from their computers started in XEROX PARC with secretaries, as well as artists
and musicians. And it never stopped. Users were seen and marketed as people who’s real jobs,
feelings, thoughts, interests, talents — everything what matters — lie outside of their interaction with
personal computers.

For instance, in 2007, when Adobe, the software company who’s products are dominating the so 16. See for example the trailers for Adobe

called “creative industries”, introduced version 3 of Creative Suite, they filmed graphic artists, video Creative Suite 6, 2012

makers and others talking about the advantages of this new software package. In particular interesting
was one video of a web designer (or an actress in the role of a web designer): she enthusiastically
demonstrated what her new Dream Weaver could do, and that in the end “I have more time to do what
I like most — being creative”. The message from Adobe is clear. The less you think about source
code, scripts, links and the web itself, the more creative you are as a web designer. What a lie. I liked 17. Douglas Rushkoff, Program or be

to show it to fresh design students as an example of misunderstanding the core of the profession. Programmed, 2010, p.131

This video is not online anymore, but actual ads for Creative Suite 6 are not much different – they
feature designers and design evangelists talking about unleashing, increasing and enriching creativity
as a direct result of fewer clicks to achieve this or that effect.[16]

In the book “Program or be Programmed”, Douglas Rushkoff describes similar phenomena:

[…] We see actual coding as some boring chore, a working class skill like
bricklaying, which may as well be outsourced to some poor nation while
our kids play and even design video games. We look at developing the
plots and characters for a game as the interesting part, and the 18. Vanevar Bush, As we may think

programming as the rote task better offloaded to people somewhere else.[17] (HTML version), The Atlantic
Magazine, 1945

Rushkoff states that code writing is not seen as a creative activity, but the same applies to engagement
with the computer in general. It is not seen as a creative task or as “mature thought”.

In “As we may think”, while describing an ideal instrument that would augment the scientist of the
future, Vanevar Bush mentions

For mature thought there is no mechanical substitute. But creative thought

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and essentially repetitive thought are very different things. For the latter
there are, and may be, powerful mechanical aids[18]

Opposed to this, users, as imagined by computer scientists, software developers and usability experts
are the ones who’s task is to spend as little time as possible with the computer, without wasting a
single thought on it. They require a specialized, isolated app for every “repetitive thought”, and, most
importantly, delegate drawing the border in between creative and repetitive, mature and primitive, real
and virtual, to app designers.

There are periods in history, moments in life (and many hours a day!) where this approach makes
sense, when delegation and automation are required and enjoyed. But in times when every aspect of
life is computerized it is not possible to accept “busy with something else” as a norm.

So let’s look at another model of users that evolved outside and despite usability experts’ imagination.

“A scientist of the Future” Russian travel blogger Sergey Dolya

Title picture of Vanevar Bush’s “As we make think” photo by Mik Sazonov, 2012
Illustrated version from Life magazine, 1945 19. Don Norman, “Why Interfaces Don’t
Work”, in: Brenda Laurel (Ed.), The
Art of Human-Computer Interface
Design, 1990, p. 218
General Purpose, “Stupid” and Universal
20. Transcript, Video
In “Why Interfaces Don’t Work” Don Norman heavily criticizes the world of visible computers,
visible interfaces and users busy with all this. Near the end of the text he suggests the source of the
problem:

“We are here in part, because this is probably the best we can do with
today’s technology and, in part, because of historical accident. The accident
is that we have adapted a general-purpose technology to very specialized
tasks while still using general tools.”[19]

In December 2011 science fiction writer and journalist Cory Doctorow gave a marvelous talk at the
28th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin titled “The coming war on general computation”.[20]
He explains that there is only one possibility for computers to truly become appliances, the tiny,
invisible, comfortable one purpose things Don Norman was preaching about: to be loaded with
spyware. He explains,

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“So today we have marketing departments who say things like ‘[…] Make
me a computer that doesn’t run every program, just a program that does
this specialized task, like streaming audio, or routing packets, or playing 21. John von Neumann, Introduction to

Xbox games’ […] But that’s not what we do when we turn a computer into “The First Draft Report on the

an appliance. We’re not making a computer that runs only the “appliance” EDVAC”, 1945

app; we’re making a computer that can run every program, but which uses 22. M.Mitchell Waldrop, The Dream

some combination of rootkits, spyware, and code-signing to prevent the Machine, 2001, p.62

user from knowing which processes are running, from installing her own
software, and from terminating processes that she doesn’t want. In other
words, an appliance is not a stripped-down computer — it is a fully
functional computer with spyware on it out of the box.”

By fully functional computer Doctorow means the general purpose computer, or as US mathematician
John von Neumann referred to it in his 1945 “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC” — the “all
purpose automatic digital computing system”.[21] In this paper he outlined the principles of digital
computer architecture (von Neumann Architecture), where hardware was separated from the software
and from this the so called “stored program” concept was born. In the mid 40’s the revolutionary
impact of it was that “by storing the instructions electronically, you could change the function of the
computer without having to change the wiring.”[22]

Today the rewiring aspect doesn’t have to be emphasized, but the idea itself that a single computer can 23. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream

do everything is essential, and that it is the same general purpose computer behind “everything” from Machines, Revised Edition 1987,

dumb terminals to super computers. p.37

Doctorow’s talk is a perfect entry point to get oneself acquainted with the subject. To go deeper into
the history of the war on general computation you may consider reading Ted Nelson. He was the first
to attract attention to the significance of the personal computer’s all-purpose nature. In 1974 in his
glorious fanzine “Computer Lib” which aimed to explain computers to everybody, he writes in caps
lock:

COMPUTERS HAVE NO NATURE AND NO CHARACTER

Computers are, unlike any other piece of equipment, perfectly BLANK. 24. See Kevin Kelly, What Technology

And that is how we have projected on it so many different faces.[23] Wants, 2010

Some great texts written this century are “The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It” (2008) by
Jonathan Zittrain and of course “The Future of Ideas” (2001) by Lawrence Lessig. Both authors are
more concerned with the architecture of the internet than the computer itself but both write about the
end-to-end principle that lies at the internet’s core — meaning that there is no intelligence (control)
build into the network. The network stays neutral or “stupid”, simply delivering packets without
asking what’s inside. It is the same with the von Neuman computer — it just runs programs.

The works of Lessig, Zittrain and Doctorow do a great job of explaining why both computer and
network architectures are neither historic accidents nor “what technology wants”.[24] The stupid
network and the general purpose computer were conscious design decisions.

For Norman, further generations of hardware and software designers and their invisible users dealing
with General Purpose technology is both accident and obstacle. For the rest of us the rise and use of
General Purpose Technology is the core of New media, Digital Culture and Information Society (if
you believe that something like this exists). General purpose computers and Stupid Networks are the
core values of our computer-based time and the driving force behind all the wonderful and terrible
things that happen to people who work and live with connected computers. These prescient design
decisions have to be protected today, because technically it would be no big deal to make networks
and computers “smart”, i.e. controlled.

What does it all have to do with “users” versus “people” — apart from the self evident fact that only

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the users who are busy with computers at least a little bit — to the extent of watching Doctorow’s
video till the end — will fight for these values?

I would like to apply the concept of General Purpose Technology to users by flipping the discourse
around and redirecting attention from technology to the user that was formed through three decades of
adjusting general purpose technology to their needs: The General Purpose User.

General Purpose Users can write an article in their e-mail client, layout their business card in Excel
and shave in front of a web cam. They can also find a way to publish photos online without flickr,
tweet without twitter, like without facebook, make a black frame around pictures without instagram,
remove a black frame from an instagram picture and even wake up at 7:00 without a “wake up at
7:00” app.

Maybe these Users could more accurately be called Universal Users or Turing Complete Users, as a
reference to the Universal Machine, also known as Universal Turing Machine — Alan Turing’s
conception of a computer that can solve any logical task given enough time and memory. Turing’s
1936 vision and design predated and most likely influenced von Neuman’s First Draft and All-purpose
Machine.

But whatever name I chose, what I mean are users who have the ability to achieve their goals
regardless of the primary purpose of an application or device. Such users will find a way to their
aspiration without an app or utility programmed specifically for it. The Universal user is not a super
user, not half a hacker. It is not an exotic type of user.

There can be different examples and levels of autonomy that users can imagine for themselves, but the
capacity to be universal is still in all of us. Sometimes it is a conscious choice not to delegate
particular jobs to the computer, and sometimes it is just a habit. Most often it is not more than a click
or two that uncover your general purpose architecture.

For instance, you can decide not to use Twitter at all and instead inform the world about your breakfast
through your own website. You can use Live Journal as if it is Twitter, you can use Twitter as Twitter,
but instead of following people, visit their profiles as you’d visit a homepage.

You can have two Twitter accounts and log in to one in Firefox, and the other in Chrome. This is how
I do it and it doesn’t matter why I prefer to manage it this way. Maybe I don’t know that an app for
managing multiple accounts exists, maybe I knew but didn’t like it, or maybe I’m too lazy to install it.
Whatever, I found a way. And you will do as well.

A Universal User’s mind set (it is a mind set, not set of rules, not a vow) means to liaise with hardware
and software. Behavior that is antipodal to the “very busy” user. This kind of interaction makes the
user visible, most importantly to themselves. And, if you wish to think about it in terms of Interface
Design and UX, it is the ultimate experience.

Does this mean that to deliver this kind of user experience the software industry needs to produce
imperfect software or hold itself back from improving existing tools? Of course not! Tools can be
perfect.

Though the idea of perfect software could be revised, taking into account that it is used by the General
Purpose User, valuing ambiguity and users’ involvement.

And thankfully ambiguity is not that rare. There are online services where users are left alone to use or
ignore features. For example, the developers of Twitter didn’t take measures that prevent me from
surfing from profile to profile of people I don’t follow. The Dutch social network Hyves allows their
users to mess around with background images so that they don’t need any photo albums or instagrams
to be happy. Blingee.com, who’s primary goal is to let users add glitter to their photos, allows to
upload whatever stamps they want — not glittery, not even animated. It just delivers the user merged

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layers in return.

I can also mention here an extreme example of a service that nourishes the user’s universality —
myknet.org — an Aboriginal social network in Canada. It is so “stupid” that users can re-purpose their
profiles every time they update them. Today it functions as a twitter feed, yesterday it was a youtube
channel, and tomorrow it might be an online shop. Never-mind that it looks very low-tech and like it
was made 17 years ago, it works!

In general the WWW, outside of Facebook, is an environment open for interpretation.

Still, I have difficulties finding a site or an app, that actually addresses the users, and sees their
presence as a part of the work flow. This maybe sounds strange, because all web 2.0 is about pushing
people to contribute, and “emotional design” is supposed to be about establishing personal
connections in between people who made the app and people who bought it, but I mean something
different. I mean a situation when the work flow of an application has gaps that can be filled by users,
where smoothness and seamlessness are broken and some of the final links in the chain are left for the
users to complete.

I’ll leave you with an extreme example, an anonymous (probably student) project:
“Google Maps + Google Video + Mashup — Claude Lelouch’s Rendezvous”:

25. Web 2.0 was supposed to be a

complete merge of people and
technology, but was again progressing
alienation and keeping users and
developers apart. People were driven
from self-made home pages to social
networks.

It was made in 2006, at the very rise of Web 2.0[25], when the mash-up was a very popular cultural,
mainstream artistic form. Artists were celebrating new convergences and a blurring of the borders
between different pieces of software. Lelouch’s Rendezvous is a mash up that puts on the same page
the famous racing film of the same name and a map of Paris, so that you can follow the car in the film

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and see its position on the Google map at the same time. But the author failed (or perhaps didn’t
intend) to synchronize the video and the car’s movement on the map. As a result the user is left with
the instruction: “Hit play on the video. […] At the 4 second mark, hit the ‘Go!’ button.”

The user is asked not only to press one but two buttons! It suggests that we take care ourselves, that
we make can complete a task at the right moment. The author obviously counts on users intelligence,
and never heard that they are “very busy”. 26. “Politics is a system, complex to be
sure, all the same. If people

The fact that the original video file that was used in the mash up was removed, makes this project even understand something as complicated
more interesting. To enjoy it, you’ll have to go to YouTube and look for another version of the film. I as a computer, they will demand
found one, which means you’ll succeed as well. greater understanding of other
things.” — Respondent’s statement,

There is nothing one user can do, that another can’t given enough time and respect. Computer discussed in Sherry Turkle, The
Users are Turing Complete. Second Self, edition 2004, p.163
27. “Instead of teaching programming,

*** most schools with computer literacy

curriculums teach programs [… ] The
When Sherry Turkle, Douglas Rushkoff and other great minds state that we need to learn bigger problem is that their entire
programming and understand our computers in order to not be programmed and “demand orientation to computing will be from

transparency of other systems”[26], I couldn’t agree more. If the approach to computer education in perspective of users” — Douglas
schools was to switch from managing particular apps to writing apps it will be wonderful. But apart Rushkoff, Program or be
from the fact that it is not realistic, I would say it is also not enough. I would say it is wrong to say Programmed, 2010, p.130
either you understand computers or u are the user.[27] 28. “Direct-manipulation systems, like the
Macintosh desktop, attempt to bridge
An effort must be made to educate the users about themselves. There should be understanding of what the interface gulf by representing the
it means to be a user of an “all purpose automatic digital computing system”. world of the computer as a collection
of objects that are directly analogous
General Purpose Users are not a historic accident or a temporary anomaly. We are the product of the to objects in the real world. But the
“worse is better” philosophy of UNIX, the end-to end principle of the internet, the “under complex and abundant functionality
construction” and later “beta” spirit of the web. All these designs that demand attention, and ask for of today’s new applications — which

forgiveness and engagement formed us as users, and we are always adjusting, improvising and at the parallels people’s rising expectations
same time taking control. We are the children of the misleading and clumsy Desktop Metaphor, we about what they might accomplish
know how to open doors without knobs.[28] with computers — threatens to push
us over the edge of the metaphorical

We, general purpose users — not hackers and not people — who are challenging, consciously or desktop. The power of the computer is
subconsciously, what we can do and what computers can do, are the ultimate participants of man- locked behind a door with no knob.”
computer symbiosis. Not exactly the kind of symbiosis Licklider envisioned, but a true one. — Brenda Laurel, Computer as
Theater, 1993, p. xviii

Olia Lialina, October 2012

I would like to thank

Caitlin Jones for correcting my English and
Dragan Espenschied for designing this page.

Consider reading the folow up articles

Rich User Experience, UX and Desktopization of War
The morning after experience design
Olia Lialina, 2015-01-03

Not Art&Tech
On the role of Media Theory at Universities of Applied Art, Technology and Art and Technology.
Olia Lialina, 2015-11-17

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Appendix A: Subjects of Human-Computer Interaction

UX Web 2.0 Cloud Computing Gamification

computer technology social network The Cloud epic win

user interface experience submit button upload button epic win

users people you download button gamers

Appendix B: Users Imagined

year source imagined user statement

1945 Vannevar Bush: Scientist “One can now picture a future investigator in his laboratory. His hands are free, and
As we may think he is not anchored. As he moves about and observes, he photographs and
comments.”

1962 Douglas Engelbart: Knowledge Worker “Consider the intellectual domain of a creative problem solver […]. These […] could

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Augmenting Human Intellectual Worker very possibly contribute specialized processes and techniques to a general worker in
Intellect Programmer the intellectual domain: Formal logic—mathematics of many varieties, including
statistics—decision theory—game theory—time and motion analysis—operations
research—classification theory—documentation theory—cost accounting, for time,
energy, or money—dynamic programming—computer programming.”

197x J.C.R. Licklider: Real Users “People who are buying computers, especially personal computers, just aren’t going
Some Reflections on to take a long time to learn something. They are going to insist on using it awfully
Early History, 1988 quick.”
in: Adele Goldberg (Ed),
A History of Personal
Workstations, 1988,
p.119

1974 Ted Nelson: Naïve User “Person who doesn’t know about computers but is going to use the system. Naive
Computer Lib/Dream user systems are those set up to make things easy and clear for such people.
Machines, Revised We are all naive users at some time or other; its nothing to be ashamed of. Though
Edition 1987, p.9 some computer people seem to think it is.”

1975 Tim Mott, Lady with the Royal Typewriter “My model for this was a lady in her late fifties who had been publishing all her life
as quoted in: and still used a Royal typewriter.”
Fumbling The Future,
1999, p.110
(on Google Books)

1977 Alan Kay: Children “Another interesting nugget was that children really needed as much or more
Personal Dynamic Media Artists computing power than adults were willing to settle for when using a timesharing
Musicians system. […] The kids […] are used to finger-paints, water colors, color television, real
musical instruments, and records.”

1982 Steven Lisberger: Deity — “You believe in the users?”

TRON — “Yes, sure. If I don’t have a user, then who wrote me?”

(view this dialogue on YouTube)

1983 TIME Magazine The “person of the year” is a machine:

“Machine of the Year: The Computer Moves In”

1993 Eric S. Raymond: clueless newbies “September that never ended: All time since September 1993. One of the seasonal
September that never rhythms of the Usenet used to be the annual September influx of clueless newbies
ended, Jargon File who, lacking any sense of netiquette, made a general nuisance of themselves. This
coincided with people starting college, getting their first internet accounts, and
plunging in without bothering to learn what was acceptable.”

1996 Eric S. Raymond: hackers = Implementors “hacker n. […] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable
The New Hacker’s lamers = Users systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to

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Dictionary learn only the minimum necessary.” — p.233

“lamer n. […] Synonym for luser, not used much by hackers but common among
warez d00dz, crackers and phreakers. Oppose elite. Has the same connotations of
self-conscious elitism that use of luser does among hackers.” — p.275

2006 TIME Magazine YOU

2008 Don Norman: People “I’d prefer to call them people.”

Talk at UX Week 2008

2009 Sir Tim Berners-Lee: them “20 years ago […] I invented the World Wide Web.”
The Next Web,
TED Talk

2012 Jack Dorsey, executive Customer “If I ever say the word ‘user’ again, immediately charge me $140.”
chairman of Twitter:
Let’s reconsider our
“users”

2012 Janet Murray, interaction Interactor “[User] is another convinient and somewhat outdated term, like ”interface” […] A user
designer, educator, may be seeking to complete an immediate task; an interactor is engaged in a
author of Hamlet on the prolonged give and take with the machine” p.11
Holodeck:
In introduction to
Inventing the Medium

2013 Bruce Tognazzini, Buyer

principle of Nielsen
Normal Group: The Third
User

2011 Facebook People (public relations) All of our dashboards, instead of saying
/ ‘daily average users,’ say ‘daily average
2014 people.’

—Robinson Meyer: Facebook No Longer Likes the

Word ‘Users’, The Atlantic, 2014

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Facebook's HQ, photo by

dnlklr.com

Target (internally) The privacy activist group Europe vs Facebook analysed a data set disclosed by
Facebook in 2012, finding out that ”target” is the name of the item containing a user’s
ID number and the date of its generation.

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