ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a discussion of the aesthetics of personal computing. It looks at the evolution of interface design standards and argues that, although they are often overtly aesthetic as well as technical, the dominant views on interface design effectively codify hegemonic interests into the social shaping of Personal Computer (PC) technology. The chapter suggests an idea towards a theory of computational temperaments, which is partly a function of the PC interface and which becomes the basis for sociological theorisation of the game playing and hacking subject positions. It argues for a kind of consistency between the early hacker ideal of machine transparency and of an austere and challenging relationship with the machine and a modernist aesthetics of PC design. Only interfaces that encourage experimentation and intelligent, curious responses from their users are really consistent with the efflorescence of individuality trumpeted by post-modernist talk of a politics of self-hood.
