In the ACM Queue article Above the Line, Below the Line, the late safety researcher Richard Cook (of How Complex Systems Fail fame) notes how that we

Your lying virtual eyes

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2025-01-06 03:30:14

In the ACM Queue article Above the Line, Below the Line, the late safety researcher Richard Cook (of How Complex Systems Fail fame) notes how that we software operators don’t interact directly with the system. Instead, we interact through representations. In particular, we view representations of internal state of the system, and we manipulate these representations in order to effect changes, to control the system. Cook used the term line of representation to describe the split between the world of the technical (software) system and the world of the people who work with the technical system. The people are above the line of representation, and the technical system is below the line.

Above the line of representation are the people, organizations, and processes that shape, direct, and restore the technical artifacts that lie below that line.People who work above the line routinely describe what is below the line using concrete, realistic language.

Yet, remarkably, nothing below the line can be seen or acted upon directly. The displays, keyboards, and mice that constitute the line of representation are the only tangible evidence that anything at all lies below the line. All understandings of what lies below the line are constructed in the sense proposed by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar. What we “know”—what we can know—about what lies below the line depends on inferences made from representations that appear on the screens and displays.