Why This Text Was Confusing

Right off the bat, I’m just going to admit, this reading kind of flew over my head. It was hard to understand and follow, since the pages were crooked and the reading was long, with repetitive use of metalanguage and a need for contextual knowledge that I was unfamiliar with. Due to this, I will more or less be elaborating one of the questions from the tutorial.

What does Manovich mean when he suggests that cinema, the printed word and HCI could sit within the same conceptual plane

“Cinema, the printed word, the human-computer interface: Each of these traditions has developed its own unique way of organizing information, presenting it to the user, correlating space and time, and structuring human experience in the process of accessing information.”   

Manovich suggest that a cultural understanding is required in not only the understanding of Cinema and printed word, but also in the use of a HCI, as people who have not grown up with the influence of technology would not understand the icons of any computer. This could be explained for say, in the floppy disk icon used on most computers and digital devices, would not be understood by a human who has grown up in technologically behind country. Many other examples may include the symbolic icon of a power button, using both the “1” and “0” of binary to show this button both turns “on” and “off” this device.

https://www.freepik.com/free-icon/power-button-off_744481.htm

Although I also argue against this concept, where I feel that some technology could be understood, such as the concept of arrow keys as the act of pointing is a fairly universal concept amongst humans, so the use of this primitive symbolism may be conveyed through a contextual barrier.