Representations

Computing, and human interaction with these computational machines, has commonly been thought of as a kind of abstract activity where we manipulate digital objects on glossy screens. It is abstract in the sense that it is hands-on in terms of working with the computer, but still abstract in terms of how that work is to a great extent about arranging and re-arrange ‘painted bits’, click on virtual ‘buttons’, and about processing symbols, work with representations, and even store and access data in ‘the cloud’. How can all of this be even remotely related to materials? And does it really make sense to talk about the materiality of interaction in the context of human-computer interaction (HCI) and interaction design? In short, is materiality really a concern for interaction design? And accordingly, is it meaningful to talk about the materiality of interaction? In this chapter I dwell into these essential questions for interaction design. I do so by revisiting some examples from the early days of computing, and through one such historical backdrop I illustrate how computing was in its early days enabled through material configurations, and how we since then have tried to uphold various distinctions between the material and the immaterial, between the physical and the digital, between the virtual and the real (most recently in the current debate about skeuomorphic versus non-skeuomorphic design), and how computing has always been, and will continue to be a material concern.