interface

interface

The use of this word was transformed between the publication of the original OED entry in 1901 and that of the updated entry in OED2 in 1989. To the earlier editors it meant simply ‘a surface lying between two portions of matter or space, and forming their common boundary’. In the 1960s, two disciplines adopted it for their own special use and effectively rivalled each other in their efforts to propel it into vogue use: the computer industry and that special branch of sociology known as communications theory, represented especially by the Canadian critic and theorist Marshall MacLuhan (The Gutenberg Galaxy, 1962). Now, an interface was, on the one hand, ‘an apparatus designed to connect two scientific instruments, devices, etc., so that they can be operated jointly’ and, on the other, ‘a point where interaction occurs between two systems, processes, subjects, etc’. Its vogue status was assured when it was applied ever more widely to the relations between business development and marketing systems, lecturers and students, unions and management, and other areas of public life:

• The issue of insanity as a defense in criminal cases…is at the interface of medicine, law and ethics —Scientific American, 1972.

McLuhan was also responsible for the first use of interface as a verb, meaning ‘to come into interaction with’, first recorded in 1967, and a corresponding use in computing and electronic technology soon followed. There are signs that the onslaught from this word has abated somewhat, leaving it to be used more effectively in technical domains. This is fortunate, when more familiar (and usually more precise) alternatives, such as (for the noun) boundary, contact, link, liaison, meeting point, interaction, and (for the verb) communicate, have contact with, interact, are readily available to cater for the general meanings. The popular press, however, still embraces the word when writing about gadgets:

• The principle might work well on the current generation of ‘smart’ mobile phones, but interfacing with the interface is much easier when you're walking down the street than flying down the motorway —Hull Daily Mail, 2007.