Interface Resolution

Definition

In order to handle an increase in data flow, we need wider interfaces, higher resolution interfaces, higher bandwidth interfaces, with those not in our community.

To survive, interfaces must quickly flow from spaces of high-resistance and poor usability to spaces that reduce the number of interface changes needed to get to relevant data. Environments are becoming aware of relevant information, and are able to pull context-aware data into play when necessary. In All That is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman discusses the transition from heavy modernity to light modernity, and the machine revolution that occurred when more power was concentrated into increasingly smaller spaces. As Sheldon Renan says, “devices can be small on the outside, but huge on the inside”.

This is a reversal of the devices of early industry, which has much on the outside, but nothing on the inside. The flat liquid crystal display of the iPhone is a wormhole, black hole and galaxy all at once.

Documentation

"One of the most important pieces of writing good software" says Adron B. Hall on the blog Loosely Coupled Human Code Factory, "isn't the software itself, but instead the documentation, samples, and evangelizing the software to the people who would use it" (http://www.adronbhall.com/blogs/technology__software_development/post/2008/12/29/Writing-It-All-Up.aspx).

As the balloon expands, so does the space between departments and ideas. Communication channels become less robust.

Value without doors cannot be released or dispersed. Forms of value that are the most liquid can flow more quickly than those that don’t. Some forms of value are too thick to push through existent doors.

Enter Twitter. Twitter allows real time exchange of value, passing of value, and reengagement of value at a later time. Twitter allows multiple doors and tracking of different types of value. It can be used for mutable value. A link being one type of value. On Twitter, the distance you are away from an idea is time.

Interactions establish value. Value emerges from interactions. This inquiring and examining has no end: what matters to individuals, societies, and markets never reaches a final equilibrium, but remains constantly in play.

Nowhere is this more understood than on Twitter. It is an open, never-ending human conversation with the least activation energy needed to send and receive messages.

Small, quick interactions establishing little pieces of value. They are lighter than sending email, or driving across town to meet another person. They also allow meaning to develop over time in a way that is very similar to real life.

Topics in Interfaces

Interface Resolution | Interface Culture | The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future | Fractal Prosthetics | Prosthetics And Their Discontents