Ok. I admit it. The MacBook Air upon which I'm typing IS a black box, or rather, a mysterious slim silver one. And, if you are like me, this is exactly what we love about our computing devices: they just magically seems to work.

In her valuable new book, Reading Writing Interfaces: from the Digital to the Bookbound, Lori Emerson asks us to reconsider the inevitability and desirability of the "invisible" computer interface. This is a topic of critical importance for everyone. Although the book focuses on writing and reading practices, the reader can easily picture the broader political and social implications of blindly embracing "the ideology of the user-friendly" that turns "all computing devices into appliances for the consumption of content," hermetically sealed boxes that are inoperable outside the parameters pre-set by the manufacturers.

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