Little Machines: Rearticulating Hypertext Users

In recognizing ourselves as computer users, we are also articulated (at least partially) as the used, the variable piece of the machine that closes the circuit, like a key in the ignition of a car. We are happiest when our technologies when they work automatically, when the machine appears to anticipate our every desire. The machine is never completely absent from our attention, but it is becoming increasingly difficult--pointless, it seems--to think critically about the operations of the machine and our position within it. We don't think often about the ways in which the technology (and the larger, social technical system) construct users in ways that presuppose a simple, mechanistic model of efficiency and value. If the programmers have done their work well, we reason, then we shouldn't have to think. Functional hypertexts (online documention, references, tutorials) are defined, socially and politically, in this politics of amnesia.

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. Clarkson University (1995). Articles>Rhetoric>Hypertext