Steven Johnson, in Interface Culture (1997), argues that the rise of the computer interface has dramatically impacted our conception of the relationship between media, culture, and reality. He observes the rise of an "interface culture" that is more interested in representations of reality than reality itself.

Johnson claims (legitimately, it seems) that without the creation of the user interface the internet revolution would never have penetrated so far and deeply into contemporary culture.

"A computer thinks—if thinking is the right word for it—in tiny pulses of electricity, representing either an 'on' or an 'off' state, a zero or a one. Humans think in words, concepts, images, sounds, associations. A computer that does nothing but manipulate sequences of zeros and ones is nothing but an exceptionally inefficient adding machine. For the magic of the digital revolution to take place, a computer must also represent itself to the user, in a language that the user understands" (14).

At the core of his argument is the idea that the interface is a virtual environment. With the ability to directly manipulate the images on a computer monitor, "a machine was imagined not as an attachment to our bodies, but as an environment, a space to be explored" (24).

Most people who visit and "read" hypertext read the interface produced by HTML (Javascript, etc.), and explore the environment of a website. While the actual language (the code that produces a webpage) may be visible to the reader with a mouse click, most readers have little interest in viewing that code. In fact, many would not understand the code if they saw it.

The interface invites users to manipulate, interact with, and explore a particular hypertext. Reading the text on the monitor may comprise a part of that exploration, but the exploration does not end with the text itself.

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