Team Human Serialization #30: How Interactive Tech Became Opaque

Those of us who witnessed the dawn of the interactive era originally believed that digital technology was going to bring back the human powers and priorities that industrialization had vanquished.

The earliest interactive tools, such as the television remote control, changed our relationship to programming. Where breaking the captive spell of television used to require walking up to the set and physically turning a dial, the remote let us escape with the micro-motion of a single finger. As cable television expanded the offerings, we found ourselves less watching a particular TV program than playing the TV itself: moving from channel to channel and keeping track of multiple shows, or observing the similarities and contrasts between them.

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