The Dematerializing Interface

Abstract

‘Media’ is coming to mean not the discrete, dedicated devices of old but functionalities that are increasingly available through non-media objects. The interface remains the form of access, inviting the use of media affordances, but its design grows more natural, demanding less of the user – especially because behind the interface are intelligent information machines that are able to anticipate the user’s desires.  These conditions in turn allow people to experience greater emotional and imaginative relations with media; together they form ‘assemblages’ of embodied and extended cognition. The automobile is used as a case study of this transformation, which poses difficult challenges for a material approach to media studies.