After reading Johanna Drucker’s Reading Interface, I came to see that interface is more than a neutral screen or surface. It is a boundary space that organizes how people perceive, act, and even think. Drucker argues that we often overlook the interface precisely because it feels transparent. But every icon, menu, or layout carries historical and rhetorical values and influences the user’s experience.
The essay traces the interface back to its physical and tactile origins from early punch cards to the WYSIWYG systems. What I found most engaging is Drucker’s claim that metaphors such as “desktop” or “folder” do not simply represent real-world objects. Instead, they enable certain behaviors by analogy. The interface therefore functions as a system of cues that teaches users how to act, rather than a window that shows them what is real.
I also find her critique of usability culture important. The ideal of a “seamless” interface hides its power to shape users’ cognition. The easier an interface becomes, the more it connects our attention and habits without us noticing. In this sense, human capacities develop alongside technological design and the negotiation of power dynamics between human and computer.
This reading encourages me to treat interface as part of storytelling. It should not only display information but also expose the interpretive process behind it. Understanding the interface as a dynamic space of mediation helps me see how technology and human subjectivity continuously produce and reproduce one another.