Week 6: Reading Response - kalibirdsall/Creative-Coding-Class-Wiki GitHub Wiki

"Manifesto for a critical approach to the user interface", https://interfacemanifesto.hangar.org/:

This manifesto draws attention to the many forms of interfaces we encounter in our lives, and questions what might happen if you tried to disrupt them by using them in ways that are counter to the intention of the design. For example, what if you put a bad photo of yourself on Facebook? What if you traded computers with a stranger? What if you disconnected from the internet? The text asks the reader to think hard about the control that interfaces have over us, and to think about how to make interfaces more visible so we're aware of how they function and influence our decisions and actions.

"Black Gooey Universe", by American Artist

Maybe I'm totally missing the point here, but I just don't think there's anything wrong with white screens. I think other writers have made more compelling arguments about racism in technology by pointing to more concrete examples than the metaphor of black vs. white screens. Surely there are more concrete examples of how the interfaces we use contain bias or exclusion.

I find it easier to write and create on a white screen. A white screen is like a piece of white paper, which is what we all write and draw on. White paper isn't a racist construct, I don't think a white screen is either. I just think this white vs. black screen concept is a lousy metaphor.

Of course I understand, and I am outraged, that most things in the world have been, and continue to be, controlled by white men. It pisses me off. I'm furious that Trump will get votes just because he's a white man. I'm totally angry about all the white men problems in the world. But I just don't think that the remedy is to celebrate the black screen interface.

I remember using computers with black screen interfaces and they sucked. The first computer my mom bought had a black screen and I could barely get it to do anything. The first computer I ever used at school had a black screen and I remember being both bored and frustrated by it. And all my dad's early computers had black screens (Vic 20, Commodore 64, etc.) and I found them completely alien. All these computers were really hard to use which made them near useless to the majority of people. The GUI is an amazing innovation that allowed almost anyone to be able to use a computer. Isn't that inclusive, and not at all racist?

And there's always dark mode. It's great that people with particular sensitivities or preferences can switch to dark mode if it works better for them. It's not like there are no alternatives to screen whiteness.

Just as a side note, I've been looking at a lot of UX portfolio websites over the last year (since I've been trying to build one for myself). I've noticed that the portfolio websites that have dark and/or black backgrounds almost all belong to male UX designers, and the ones with white or light colored backgrounds mostly belong to women (obviously this is just observational, maybe a wider survey would prove me wrong here). And if you look at men's clothing, and other products marketed to men, the colors tend to be darker and less colorful than those marketed to women. So maybe black/dark is actually actually a signifier of male-ness in our current Western cultural moment.

So let's find better examples of technology's biases.