| Abstract: | This paper is a contribution to the study of the esthetics of personal computing. The personal computer (PC) is shaped by ideas, including esthetic values, which it in turn carries into the broader social and cultural context where it is used. Until the early 1990s, this context was limited to a minority subculture who enjoyed interaction with the machine through the medium of learnt “command lines” in arcane computer languages. In the past decade, however, the PC has become more overtly estheticized – a source of multi-medic sensation and apparent personal empowerment – as it has moved into the cultural mainstream. The rise of the seductive “user-friendly” interface has led some to speculate that the PC is a “postmodern” cultural phenomenon, stimulating relativist and anti-realist lines of self-reflection on the part of its users. The paper accepts that the PC has acted as a catalyst for cultural change, raising the profile of some esthetic values and creating awareness of new principles that may be relevant to the esthetics of the future. In place of the idea that this development is “postmodern”, however, the modernist esthetic values of openness to interpretation, challenging audiences to participate in the construction of esthetic effects, and simultaneity as key organizing principle of the work, are put forward as alternative design principles for PC interfaces. It is suggested that application of these principles might produce artefacts that comport better with the ideal of an enlightened autonomous citizenry than do current design standards. |
