2. (To) interface is a verb (I interface, you interface ...). The interface occurs, is action.
Notable propositions:
- Be gentle with your keyboard, after 70 years typewriting your fingers will appreciate it.
- 'View source' of a webpage, and print. Replace each verb you do not understand, by a verb you are familiar with. Read the text out loud.
- Do not click today.
I'm interested in the second tenet because it frames the interface in terms of verbs rather than a physical or visual artifact that users interact with. The interface emphasizes what a person can do--and conversely what a person can't do. In this way, the interface provides an insidious way to obscure what can and cannot be achieved within a system.
The last proposition "do not click today" reminds me of this dilemma the most. As a CS student, I'm anecdotally familiar with a preference among the technically savvy for command line interfaces over GUIs. While both provide an avenue to do, computers were truly designed with command line interfaces, hence interacting with the command line tends to be much more powerful than interacting with the GUI. I think this is a clear example of how the presentation of the interface has powerful implications for what a user can do and how much power a user has within a system.