The Interface as Cultural Form
This chapter demonstrates that the question of the interface as a cultural form arose most productively during the nineteenth century in the context of technologies relating to sea rather than land. The ‘system’ or ‘medium’ at issue was that of the crew and material apparatus of a sailing ship: the ship’s captain gained access to it by means of the quarterdeck, and the ‘digital command’ (Rachel Plotnick) the quarterdeck affords. The question of the interface arises in Joseph Conrad’s most notable sea tales: ‘The Secret Sharer’ and The Shadow-Line. The chapter provides an analysis of these tales, and of Heart of Darkness, in which a sea captain ventures upriver on a steamboat. Marlow’s demonstrable if anguished mastery of his ship-medium can be understood as an attempt to repair and extend the connectivity that sustains empire. Conrad examines the political and moral cost of assuming that the medium is the message.