Interface Culture
by Steven Johnson
Johnson attempts to analyze the "agent" and to understand its role in the future of technology, which is quickly taking on the face of the future of our culture. He argues that the true danger behind the anthropomorphism of these interface agents is the way that they will shape our culture by playing on the increasing stupidity of humans and by altering our experiences by making our decisions for us. He says, "The original graphic-interface revolution was about empowering the user-making "the rest of us" smarter, and not our machines. Agents work against that trend by giving the CPU more authority to make decisions on our behalf," (Johnson 180). It is here that Johnson ties in the genre of literature and film that play upon cyborgs and the creation by man of machines that can think for themselves. To illustrate this point, Johnson takes the seemingly harmless example of allowing the computer to tell him what music he might like. He takes this example to the extreme, detailing how it might result in, "...our old cultural appetites fractalized, torn asunder," (Johnson 205).