The Blog
Entry #2 - Reflection on Black Gooey Universe
01/22/2025This week, I watched and read American Artist’s lecture/essay “Black Gooey Universe” (video linked to the left on desktop or above if you’re on mobile). In their lecture, Artist explores the origin of graphical user interfaces, or GUIs, and how they evolved into instruments that exacerbate white supremacy and the wastefulness of capitalism.
One of their most notable observations is how end users have been conditioned to associate the default blank white screen with a blank slate ready for innovation. This concept not only conflates whiteness as the default and as a symbol of sterility and opportunity, but it also is detrimental to the computer’s hardware and energy resources. The additive nature of color in light requires all three lights of an LCD pixel to be activated at full power to reproduce the appearance of office supplies designed for subtractive color use. All this is for the comfort and convenience of the end user who likely does not think critically about the history and ideological grounds of the technology they use on a daily basis.
Artist also draws attention to the “ivory tower” of which western computer technology has been founded. Many of the people who are credited with developing western computer technology are old white guys. One detail that is often overlooked is that these white people are not responsible for the development of computer technology alone, rather they worked with a team to do so; teams which often included non-white developers. Dr. Mark Dean, a Black man who worked with IBM to develop early computers, holds three of IBM’s nine original patents that are still crucial in the development of computer technology today. Dr. Dean’s story is sadly often overlooked due to the perpetuation of white supremacy in our educational institutions.
I am an avid, active user of dark mode on my own personal devices. However many websites are still to this day designed to perpetuate the standard of white negative space. There are programs designed to alter the design of web pages to establish black or another dark color as the background color of otherwise bright, wasteful web design. American Artist’s lecture has compelled me to install one of these programs. It sometimes does not work perfectly, which is slightly upsetting. Many people need programs like this for accessibility reasons, such as increasing the contrast of web elements so that the hard of sight can use them. I urge web developers to consider this as they work, since dark mode is a necessity for some and not just a means of saving power or for comfort reading at night.