Screen Essentialism

When dealing with Digital Matter it is especially important to realize, that the object in front of us always has/had multiple forms and more or less accessible aspects. Not realizing this is called screen essentialism, as in taking what we see on screen as all there is.

“Similarly, when understanding code there remains these difficult ‘mysteries’ and we must place them in their social formation if we are to understand how code and code-work are undertaken. However, this difficulty means that we also cannot stay at the level of the screen, so-called screen essentialism, what Waldrip-Fruin (2009:3) calls ‘outputfocused approaches’, nor at the level of information theory, where the analysis focuses on the way information is moved between different points disembedded from its material carrier. Rather, code needs to be approached in its multiplicity, that is, as a literature, a mechanism, a spatial form (organisation), and as a repository of social norms, values, patterns and processes.” (Berry, 2015, p. 36)

See The philosophy of software: code and mediation in the digital age.

“The most basic and essential skills of forensic source criticism for historians working on born-digital objects include overcoming “screen essentialism,” the ability to retrieve and interpret metadata, knowledge of encoding formats and their meaning, and the ability to read and understand code. Overcoming “screen essentialism” (Owens 2018, 46) means acknowledging that the interfaces through which we interact with computing devices should be understood as performances. Interfaces themselves are complex interactions between various programs, routines, hardware, and software, not only the displays, screens, input-output devices, and peripherals allowing us to control the operations of the computer. They are designed to free the user’s mind from thinking about all of these underlying functions, enabling her to focus on her specific task. The downside of this comfortable arrangement is that the user loses sight of many preconfigured decisions on how to process, render, and display data. “Screen essentialism” refers to the tendency to take “what you see for what there is.” Overcoming it means understanding that the visual impression we get on a given system is just one of many possible others. Think of resolution and colors on a basic level, think of the difference between a text-editor on the one hand and an integrated development environment on the other. Being able to distinguish between the “performative” elements of the display and the core properties of a digital object is an essential part of digital literacy. The properties characterizing a digital object are often stored in its metadata.” (Feichtinger, 2024)

Bibliography

Berry, David M. 2015. The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Feichtinger, Moritz. 2024. “From Source-Criticism to System-Criticism, Born Digital Objects, Forensic Methods, and Digital Literacy for All.” DigiHistCH24 Book of Abstracts. July 26, 2024. https://digihistch24.github.io/book-of-abstracts/submissions/474/.