Rating: 
Summary: A Must Read for Interface Designers with 7+ Years Experience
Review: The Interface design profession needs an enema and this is it! Steven Johnson has penned a compelling point of view with a soul. He establishes his credibility by accurately documenting the historical evolution which brought us to today's Interface. The author relates superb insight into the principle components of today's Interface capability: bitmapping, desktop, windows, text, and agents. Looking forward, he evangelizes more than hope for the future of Interface Design. His final chapter lays out themes for the ongoing design discussion. Skip English 101 your Freshman year? No problem, techies are guaranteed to boost their vocabulary with this title. A must read for interface designers among the digital avant-garde who hunger for more compelling interactive experiences.
Rating: 
Summary: Good first chapter, little ensuing worth
Review: The premise of the book set out in the first chapter was fascinating. Interfaces shape our perceptions, just as Marshall McLuhan proclaimed in "The Medium is the Message."Unfortunately, this critical eye didn't find its way into the remainder of the book. I consider "Interface Culture" to be a history of computer interfaces rather than an interpreter of the way our perceptions have changed.
Rating:
Summary: Good first chapter, little ensuing worth
Review: The premise of the book set out in the first chapter was fascinating. Interfaces shape our perceptions, just as Marshall McLuhan proclaimed in "The Medium is the Message." Unfortunately, this critical eye didn't find its way into the remainder of the book. I consider "Interface Culture" to be a history of computer interfaces rather than an interpreter of the way our perceptions have changed.
Rating:
Summary: Moments of insight, but reads like a college senior essay
Review: There are definitely good thoughts in there, but the strained analogies, questionable historical context and funny 25-cent words make this read more annoying than insightful. If only he didn't tried so hard.
Rating: 
Summary: Good level for skimming, a few good insights
Review: This book didn't draw me into slow and careful reading mode, but I found some of the insights genuinely useful. The business about links being intrinsic to the meaning of the text (as opposed to just being tacked on as references) is a case in point. Nice insight, for example, into why the early suck.com was so compelling.
Rating: 
Summary: Some few good thoughts but limited
Review: This is one of the best technoculture books I've read, but don't expect great things, I guess there's still missing THE book in this area. Johnson shows here his literature knowledge but for a complete analysis of society and technology you need a lot more. If you have 20 dollars and a free afternoon, read it.
Rating:
Summary: Interface as an Art Form
Review: Using "technology explanations, historical narratives and cultural anthologies" as his hues, Steven Johnson brushes a picture of interface as a genuine art form which, like earlier fusions of art and technology, serves to make the world around us more intelligible. "Where the Victorian novel shaped our understanding of the new towns wrapped around the steel mill and the cotton gin, and fifties television served as an imaginative guide to the new suburban enclaves created by the automobile, the interface makes the teeming, invisible world of zeros and ones sensible to us" (p.17). And as with the authors of those novels or the directors of the television shows, the interface also serves as a lens or filter through which to view, understand and interpret our current world. Art-related analogies are the predominant motif of this book: the invention of perspective in the art of the Renaissance and the transformation it created in terms of spatial language of European painting is compared to the transformation of current society through the information space of the computer (p.214). The organizing role of the interface and the concomitant value systems that such organization implies is examined in terms of parallels with both Gothic architecture and urban planning. And yet not all the historical analogies are art-related. One of the more thought-provoking comparisons Johnson makes is between the role of the printing press and that of the computer. The printing press did not transform European society out of the Middle Ages simply by making books more available; rather, "it did it by changing the thoughts patterns of those who learned to read" (p.50). In the same way, Johnson argues, computer use too will potentially change the thought patterns of an entire generation of users. Transformation is another theme- transformation of society, of users, and of interface from line code to desktop metaphor, to textual connections. On this last transformation Johnson spends significant time picturing for us the origins, the evolutions and the future of interface. Johnson argues reasonably that today's windows interface is not, as touted, a spatial one in which we remember where we physically placed a file, but rather a textual one in which we remember the name of the folder we placed it in. And yet, he contrasts this kind of textual organization with other textual interface forms which he predicts may well be "the next Great Leap Forward in interface design" (p.149). This book is aptly described on the front cover by the Village Voice as a "sampler of net theory". It is a study in which Johnson sketches pieces of interface theory together using the colors of history, culture and technology. In doing so, he creates an image of interface within an integrated context of time and the people it serves with a focus on the continuities rather than the radical breaks (p.8). This is what I find most compelling about this book- through it we learn more not only about interface design itself, but also about those historical, social and cultural contexts from which it evolved, as well as in which it is also creating evolutions.
Rating:
Summary: Interface as an Art Form
Review: Using "technology explanations, historical narratives and cultural anthologies" as his hues, Steven Johnson brushes a picture of interface as a genuine art form which, like earlier fusions of art and technology, serves to make the world around us more intelligible. "Where the Victorian novel shaped our understanding of the new towns wrapped around the steel mill and the cotton gin, and fifties television served as an imaginative guide to the new suburban enclaves created by the automobile, the interface makes the teeming, invisible world of zeros and ones sensible to us" (p.17). And as with the authors of those novels or the directors of the television shows, the interface also serves as a lens or filter through which to view, understand and interpret our current world. Art-related analogies are the predominant motif of this book: the invention of perspective in the art of the Renaissance and the transformation it created in terms of spatial language of European painting is compared to the transformation of current society through the information space of the computer (p.214). The organizing role of the interface and the concomitant value systems that such organization implies is examined in terms of parallels with both Gothic architecture and urban planning. And yet not all the historical analogies are art-related. One of the more thought-provoking comparisons Johnson makes is between the role of the printing press and that of the computer. The printing press did not transform European society out of the Middle Ages simply by making books more available; rather, "it did it by changing the thoughts patterns of those who learned to read" (p.50). In the same way, Johnson argues, computer use too will potentially change the thought patterns of an entire generation of users. Transformation is another theme- transformation of society, of users, and of interface from line code to desktop metaphor, to textual connections. On this last transformation Johnson spends significant time picturing for us the origins, the evolutions and the future of interface. Johnson argues reasonably that today's windows interface is not, as touted, a spatial one in which we remember where we physically placed a file, but rather a textual one in which we remember the name of the folder we placed it in. And yet, he contrasts this kind of textual organization with other textual interface forms which he predicts may well be "the next Great Leap Forward in interface design" (p.149). This book is aptly described on the front cover by the Village Voice as a "sampler of net theory". It is a study in which Johnson sketches pieces of interface theory together using the colors of history, culture and technology. In doing so, he creates an image of interface within an integrated context of time and the people it serves with a focus on the continuities rather than the radical breaks (p.8). This is what I find most compelling about this book- through it we learn more not only about interface design itself, but also about those historical, social and cultural contexts from which it evolved, as well as in which it is also creating evolutions.
Rating:
Summary: Connecting today to the past
Review: What do Beavis & Butthead, Talk Soup, and Entertainment Tonight all have in common? The answer is that they are all TV about TV. All of these shows, rather than being concerned with original content, comment on other TV shows. Beavis & Butthead comment on music videos, Talk Soup is a talk show roundup of what's happening on other Talk Shows, etc. This is just one of many clear and insightful observations Steven Johnson makes in his book, Interface Culture. The book is a broad review of the growing role interface design plays in society. In describing the role of interface design, Johnson begins by putting it into historical perspective. According to Johnson, the development of meta-media, like, "Talk Soup" happens whenever a medium becomes mature. It also develops when the content or subject matter begin to overwhelm the people who are dealing with it. He gives several historical examples of this including, Cave paintings, where artists painted what they saw in the natural world as a way of understanding it or to symbolically master it. Medieval cathedrals, where the sacred and profane worlds were modeled physically in stone and in stained glass in a way that an illiterate society could understand. Victorian novels. The industrial revolution brought about great changes to urban life in the 1800's Novels, such as those written by Charles Dickens helped an emerging middle class come to terms with the physical and cultural changes that were happening around them. Interface design is just the latest mixture of art and science that develops, as it is needed, to help people deal with the massive cultural change of computers, data and the internet. The first sign of this change was the development of the desktop metaphor. The desktop helped non-engineers deal with the concept of computing by giving them a familiar metaphor and the ability of "direct manipulation" of their data through the mouse and pointer. The book is a quick read that can be enjoyed by web designers and the general public. It is a wonderful exploration of the historical context of today's emerging careers in the hi-tech world.
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