The Nature of the Beast - Computers as Theatre - page 2

key ingredient, and conceived Spacewar! as a game that could provide a
good balance between thinking and doing for its players. They regarded
the computer as a machine naturally suited for representing things that you
could see, control, and play with. Its interesting potential lay not simply in
its ability to perform calculations, but in its capacity to co-create and repre-
sent actions with human participants.
The Interface
Why don't we look at everything computers do in the way that the Space-
war! hackers did? Consider the following question: What is being repre-
sented by a human-computer interface?
1. A way for a person to communicate with a computer.
2. A way for a computer to communicate with a person.
3. A surface through which humans and computers can communicate.
4. A way for humans and computers to construct actions together.
Number three comes close, but it implies a membrane or separation
between the human and the computer. But the object is not the membrane;
rather it is the action co-created by the human and technical forces at play.
The difference in emphasis may be the impetus of the trend toward replac-
ing the term “human-computer interface” with “human-computer interac-
tion” in recent years.
There are two major reasons for belaboring such a seemingly obvious
point. First, it wasn't always true—and the design disciplines for applica-
tions and interfaces still bear the marks of that former time. Second, re-
conceptualizing what computers do as enabling and representing actions
that involve both human and technological participants suggests a design
philosophy that diverges signifi cantly from much of the received wisdom
about interface design.
Provenance of the Interface
The notion of the “human-computer interface” was presaged by the fi eld
of human factors engineering, or human factors design. This discipline
was born with the design of airplanes during WWII and the famous Link
Trainer simulations that helped pilots safely learn how to fl y by instru-
ments. The fi eld was informed by earlier work, including the famed “time