One of the projects I’m working on next year is a research project about cyberpunk as a body of intellectual work. I’ll also be look at cyberpunk as a design aesthetic. As part of this research I will be looking at a number of specific businesses that have embodied cyberpunk values. The 3 big businesses that I want to look at are Microsoft, Google and IBM.

So I was interested to see a number of advertisements for Google and Microsoft products that still seem to be tied into a very specific cyberpunk style. The android advertisement below very blatantly references Tron, one of the first cyberpunk films. The second references Minority Report.

A number of writers have contrasted the cold, machinelike cyberpunk aesthetic in these ads with the human-focused connectivity, ‘invisible interface’ of Apple products, and the earthy, imperfect future described by Berg. The UX folks at Google seem to have picked up on the contrast between cool interfaces and actual usability, at least:

“With Android, people were not responding emotionally, they weren’t forming emotional relationships with the product. They needed it, but they didn’t necessarily love it.”

Matias says that the studies showed that users felt empowered by their devices, but often found Android phones overly complex. That they needed to invest more time in learning the phones, more time in becoming an expert. The phones also made users feel more aware of their limitations — they knew there was more they could do with the device, but couldn’t figure out how to unlock that power.

I keep coming back to the tagline from the original Matrix film – the future will not be user friendly – which I think some designers and developers use almost as a mantra and as a means of policing boundaries through technical ability.

Someone posted on the Nettime list recently:

Cute ‘user friendly’, ‘idiot compatible’ & ‘low friction’ interfaces trigger lower level emotional responses and reflexive actions. This is why they exist…

…The cuteness of interfaces is far from being neutral. Insisting on it is like retaining pacifiers in adulthood. It’s hard to talk with that thing in your mouth.

It’s an interesting perspective, and one that betrays a level of boundary policing around who should be allowed to engage in politics and how. It also exactly mirrors the kinds of insults that used be thrown at Mac users, and were trotted out again to dismiss the iPad.

It’s probably also worth keeping an eye on the uptake of Siri on the iPhone. Cyberpunk’s vision of mobile, ubiquitous computing was often centred around visual implants (Neuromancer, Noir) and head-up displays (military sci-fi, Accelerando). It’d be interesting if the breakthrough interface for ubiquitous, mobile computing turned out to be voice.