Theme change
Rethinking how to approach the second phase's theme from the perspective of the first phase's collection.- Black Box
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Comfort Items
- Computer Technology
- New Things
In 1984, computers had just emerged and become popular. For people of that era, it was a completely new thing, like a black box, unknown to the world. This book served as a reassurance; its content, free of difficult technical jargon, was easier to understand and alleviated people's anxiety about new things.
Bruno Latour’s concept of the “black box” provides a useful framework for understanding the cultural position of the personal computer in the early 1980s. In Science in Action (1987), Latour describes how technologies can appear as complete objects while their internal complexity remains hidden from public understanding. Although personal computers were beginning to enter public awareness in 1984, they were still unfamiliar to many people and often perceived as mysterious new machines. In this context, Inside the Personal Computer can be seen as a response to that uncertainty. Through pop-up mechanisms, diagrams, and simplified explanations, the book attempts to open the black box and translate an emerging technology into something visible, readable, and approachable.
I want to continue this concept of comfort objects, and I'm thinking that my publications can also have this function in the contemporary social environment.
I want to express, by documenting my day from turning on my computer to turning it off, that digital overload may have become the backdrop of everyday life, yet we have gradually learned to move and pause within it, finding our own rhythm and moments of lightness amid constant connection and change.
Logic
The book Inside the Personal Computer arranges the logic of a computer from input to output. My logic is from turning the computer on to turning it off.
Visualization Methods
As complex digital experiences are reduced into simplified shapes and visual systems, the once invisible structures of interaction begin to emerge as visible and legible forms. Processes that are usually hidden behind screens—such as navigation, data flow, and user behaviour become easier to recognise and interpret. Through this transformation, digital systems can feel not only more understandable, but also momentarily more controllable.
Professor's visual reference suggestions