Fifth Law of the Interface: Interfaces coevolve with their users

/Coevolution/ is a phenomenon of mutual evolutionary adaptation between two or more biological species based on their reciprocal relationships (Allaby, 1998). These relationships can be symbiosis, parasitism, competition, pollination, mimicry or the eternal fight between prey and predator. In coevolution, evolutionary changes in one species place pressure on the selection process of the others, which in turn affects the first species. A classic example of coevolution is the complementation that exists between flowering plants and insects; for example, for the pollination of their flowers figs (Ficus) depend on small wasps (Hymenoptera chalcidoidea). Simultaneously, these wasps develop their larvae in the ovaries of figs, so the two species are interdependent. Today for you, tomorrow for me.

Media as extensions

In the first pages of Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man Marshall McLuhan (2003[1964]) introduced the idea that each medium – and, consequently, every technology – extends some physical, cognitive or social function of Homo sapiens.

During the mechanical ages we had extended our bodies in space. Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned. Rapidly, we approach the final phase of the extensions of man – the technological simulation of consciousness, when the creative process of knowing will be collectively and corporately extended to the whole of human society, much as we have already extended our senses and our nerves by the various media (...)(McLuhan, 1964: 3).

McLuhan warned that the effects of technology “do not occur at the level of opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance” (18). Homo sapiens are born, grow up and live in technological environments that model their perception and cognition. These intuitions, developed by McLuhan in the postwar period when brain research was still barely in its infant stage, return to us today with an unusual force.

The relationships between Homo sapiens and technology have never been easy to understand and the phantom of determinism is always lurking around them. In The Laws of the Interface I place my bet on a dialectical relationship between subject and technology (Second Law) within the framework of an eco-evolutionary conception (Third and Fourth Laws).

Human-technology coevolution

The World Wide Web has evolved since the creation of the first website in August 1991. Today any home page can contain dozens of blocks of text, images, videos, infographics and hundreds of links. The whole surface of the screen is covered with contents; it's as if web designers are afraid that there will be blank spaces on the screen. Horror vacui.

But... What would have happened if, back in 1995, a contemporary website suddenly popped up on my Power Macintosh 7200 screen? Would I have been able to navigate it? Would I have been able to understand the amount of information and links it contains? Surely it would take me a while to understand the interaction proposal (Second Law) and adapt to such a baroque interface... What has happened? The web has evolved and I, like the rest of the early users, have also evolved with it. In other words, the World Wide Web and users have coevolved over the last quarter century. And the interface has been the witness and the place of that coevolution.

In the coevolution between humans and technologies we can identify three actors: the designers, the users and the technological artifact. The interface is the place where these three actors interact and establish (or break) contracts of interaction (Second Law). The designer, understood as a creator of interaction spaces, is a transversal professional expert in the generation of links and combinations between human and technological actors (Tenth Law). The user, as we conceive it in The Laws of the Interface, is an active subject that can dispute the designer’s power (Second and Ninth Law).

Deviated uses

In 1982, a decade before the arrival of the World Wide Web, the French public company PTT (Poste, Téléphone et Télécommunications) introduced a new service: Minitel, a videotext system that operated through the telephone network. Users could make purchases online, book trains, look up stock market values, find people in the phone book or even chat with other subscribers. Minitel was originally designed to query databases but the French appropriated the technology and put it at the service of their interpersonal communications (Perriault, 1991). In this way Minitel ended up becoming a gigantic space to chat and exchange information among users, and the other possible uses became marginalized. If the designer proclaims “do as I say”, users will retort: “we do what we want”.

Future coevolutions

To imagine the future of interfaces it is not enough to talk to designers, inventors and users: to visualize the future artists are the best interlocutors we can find. In his one-man show Transpermia (2003) the Catalan artist Marcel·lí Antúnez presented a utopian vision of human-technology coevolution that begins with the origin of life on Earth more than 3,000 million years ago and continues with a surprising series of new interfaces to perceive and intervene in the world.

During the show, the artist is embedded in his Dreskeleton, a body interface of exoskeletal nature with which he samples his voice, modulates sounds and controls the videos that are projected on the screens. Among many other devices Antúnez presented the Neurohelmet, a brain interface that reads neural connections and allows telematic action on things, or the Telesensor, a prototype for a “full bodily experience” that includes tactile mesh, nasal spray, taste ball, hearing aids and screen glasses. The Tactile Net is a device that reproduces the tactile sensations thanks to vibrators located in the epidermis. Other technologies that Antúnez described in Transpermia are the Vocalometer, a translation interface that allows users to speak any language; Teleidentity, a connection between the Neurohelmet and foreign identities; and Ultrainterfaces, a global system of automatic interfaces without human intervention, making it possible to control the climate and the over-exploitation of planetary resources.

Not even Black Mirror dares to image so much.

Note: This text is a synthesis of my book Las Leyes de la Interfaz published by Gedisa in 2018.

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References

Allaby, M. (1998). A Dictionary of Ecology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

McLuhan, M. (2003 [1964]). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York, NY: Gingko Press.

Perriault, J. (1991). Las máquinas de comunicar y su utilización lógica. Barcelona: Gedisa.

Scolari, C.A. (2018). Las Leyes de la Interfaz. Diseño, ecología, evolución, tecnología. Barcelona: Gedisa.