Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 20:20:13 GMT Server: Apache/1.0.5 Content-type: text/html Content-length: 3239 Last-modified: Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:29:21 GMT
Engagement * Interface * Community
The open secret of the Internet is community: open because among its users it's well known; secret because as obvious as it is, many folks don't "get it."
Community -- in whatever form -- is about engagment. Engagement in its active forms means beloninging, the glue that binds together folks who might otherwise have little in common. They form to preserve something for themselves - against the boundariless body politic. Communities exist as differences in needs - one identifies with a community in the context of these needs and mantains relationship in community as long as these needs are perceived as important.
Interface, equally, is about engagement. The invisible interface -- an ideal -- engages us totally, at every point, in a subterranean narrative which feels absolutely natural. And interfaces exist to fufill a need.
So community and interface share an isomorphism -- the need to engage. Their
meeting point, the Internet, brings both together into autopoeic unity.
It's impossible -- and self-defeating -- to separate them.
Information provided for the Stanford Computer Science Department by the HCI Course Coordinator as part of the description ofHCI at Stanford. Last updated September 30, 1996.