Dreaming of seamless interfaces: media and friction from the feuilleton to personal computing

ABSTRACT

In human–computer interaction, the notion of ‘seamless interface’ describes a smooth interactive system that eliminates any possibility of friction between users and digital devices or platforms. Although interface designers have developed sophisticated technologies and strategies to pursue this aspiration, a frictionless user experience remains an ideal but ultimately impossible goal. Relying on the critical exploration of a series of historical case studies – the emergence of the feuilleton or serialised novel in the nineteenth century, the development of TV scheduling in the second half of the twentieth century, and the rise of the personal computer industry in the 1980s –, this article contextualises this ideal within a wider historical trajectory. Through an in-depth exploration of these three cases, we show how the dream of building a seamless relationship between media and readers, viewers or users remained ultimately unattainable due to the inherent frictions that persist between these two sides. The gap between the aspiration and the actual experiences of interacting with media foregrounded the emergence of feelings of ambivalence, conceived as an intrinsic component of people’s engagement with media. The longer history of media frictions provides a useful entry point to the contemporary digital landscapes, where the ubiquity of digital platforms goes hand in hand with a feeling of deep ambivalence from users, as the growing public concerns about the social costs of digital connection demonstrate.

KEYWORDS:

• Disconnection; television flow; user friendliness; media friction; feuilleton; media resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simone Natale

Simone Natale is Associate Professor at the University of Turin, Italy, and an editor of Media, Culture and Society. His latest monograph, Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021, and has been translated into Chinese, Italian, and Portuguese. His publications include articles published in some of the leading journals of his field, such as New Media and Society, Communication Theory, the Journal of Communication, Media, Culture & Society and Convergence. Before joining the University of Turin in 2020, he has taught and researched at Columbia University in the US, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, Loughborough University in the UK, Humboldt University Berlin and the University of Cologne in Germany. His research has been funded by international institutions including the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, the Humboldt Foundation in Germany and Columbia University’s Italian Academy in the US [email: [email protected]]

Emiliano Treré

Emiliano Treré is Reader in Data Agency and Media Ecologies in the School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University in the UK. He has been a Professor at the Autonomous University of Querétaro in Mexico, a Researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Lakehead University in Canada, and a Visiting Professor at more than ten universities across the world. His co-authored book Data Justice (Sage, 2022) inaugurates the Data Justice Book Series and was the runner up of the 2023 Sage Social Justice Book Award.His book Hybrid Media Activism (Routledge, 2019), which explores the complexities of digital activism, won the Outstanding Book Award of the ICA Interest Group ‘Activism, Communication and Social Justice’. Emiliano counts with more than eighty publications in five languages in the most prestigious academic journals exploring the dilemmas and myths of contemporary digital culture and politics. For his university course Understanding Digital Society through Black Mirror, he was awarded the Truman Foundation's Education Innovation Prize. Emiliano co-founded the Big Data from the South initiative and co-directs the Data Justice Lab, a leading research centre that examines the relationship between big data and social justice. His latest co-authored book, Algorithms of Resistance (MIT Press, 2024), explores collective forms of power, agency and resistance in the platform society [email: [email protected]].