Posted inOpinion

A Map, Not a Territory: Apple and the End of Skeuomorphism

In an influential special issue of Scientific American appearing in 1991, the computer scientist Mark Weiser wrote of the challenges in integrating computers to “the natural human environment” such that they “vanish into the background.” Though not quite a theory of user interface design, Weiser’s notion of “ubiquitous computing” remains definitive in its vision for computing as a pervasive but unobtrusive element of the human experience.