Alex Fleck, English PhD student, appears in the latest edition of The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics for a book review he wrote about “The MetaInterface: The Art of Platforms, cities, and clouds” by authors Christian Ulrik Anderson and Søren Bro Pold. The text explores the aesthetics of the metainterface – it attempts to “map” and understand the features of human relationships to data-driven applications.
The
book
unpacks the
ways
the
“human”
in
“Human-Computer
Interaction”
is
being
displaced
by
companies
that
commodify
our
data
to
improve
data-collating
algorithms
–
think:
Netflix
recommendations,
Facebook
suggestions,
and
Google
searches. Ultimately,
the
authors
aim
to
better
understand
the
relationship
between
individuals,
society,
and
big
data
through
analyzing
the
way
digital
interfaces
create
meaning
or
have
a
particular
flavour
of
their
own.
We
do
still
play
an
important
role
in
technological
advancement
insofar
as
our
behaviour,
or
deviations,
is
aggregated
to
improve
the
accuracy
of
systems.
But
what
if
we
play
with
Kindle
e-book
predictions
by
feeding
it
text
from
YouTube
comments?
Or,
what
if
we
download
browser
plug-ins
that
block
Facebook
data
collection?
“With
media
theory/studies
as
the
broadest
disciplinary
boundary,
The
Metainterface
is
recommended
to
those
interested
in
net/software
art
and
electronic
literature,
digital
humanists
that
already
harness
elements
or
features
of
the
metainterface
in
their
work,
(naturally)
to
those
that
study
interface/design
in
HCI
or
other
fields,
to
literary
scholars
interested
in
the
ways
reading/writing
have
changed
over
time,
and
to
scholars
interested
in
Big
Data
and
its
effects.”
–
Alex
Fleck,
from
the
published
review.