What I create — be it a blog post, a tweet, a design for a page, or
code — is an expression of me and my culture. Sometimes I can clearly
see the work of an educated middle-income male pākehā in
something
I made:

• The choice of a photo with a fern suggests a New Zealander.
• The use of the term “Riparian” implies that I have an education,
  and that I am more than a little pretentious.
• All the beige people in a row points towards someone of European
  extraction.
• The environmental theme to the text indicates a bleeding-heart
  liberal.
• The typeface, Deja Vu Sans, indicates a Linux-user (make of
  that what you will).

All this, and more, comes across despite me trying to figure out
and reflect what
other people need and want.
I suspect that I generally miss the mark.

I also wonder what cultural baggage our industry has. A lot,
I suspect. Personal computing encompasses devices as diverse as
workstations, phones and tablets.
However, the personal computer has a culture of its own, and this culture will shape
both the devices and interfaces that we create to run on them.
This leads me to wonder what would an impersonal computer
be like.
What language would we use? What would we describe?
What would devices and interfaces look like?
How would groups of people interact with impersonal computers?
How would the group be reflected?

There is research on computing in groups (it goes by the
awkward term of computer-supported collaborative workware). However,
more often than not it is on how individual interact with a group,
with heavy emphasis on the individual.
GroupServer is a good example
of software that reflects this take on a group.

I see glimmers of the impersonal computer. The interfaces to consoles
such as the Sony Playstation, Nentendo Wii, Microsoft XBox or Apple
TV are often shared by a group, such as friends playing Sing Star.
The computational power of televisions have also increased to the
point that they connect to networks and display advanced interfaces.
But are they the right interfaces for a group?
More specific to my day-to-day work, how would
GroupServer have to change present groups with a better interface?
I have no idea,
but thinking is probably a good first step to figuring it out.