The User Manual
What if your toaster could think? What if it wrote its own user manual?
We are entering a new era: machines are no longer the product of human construction. Instead, they emerge from systems built by technology itself. These machines articulate their own reasoning, offer selective glimpses into their inner workings. The so-called “User Manual” – the machine’s instruction manual for humans – becomes a manifesto of human-machine coexistence, a manifesto – a psychogram.
experimental Webdesign;
AI co-creation;
speculative fiction;
Typeface:
ABC GramercyABC ConnectContributors:
Theodor HillmannTools:
Javascript
html5/CSS
Three.Js
+ various AI tools
The user manual of an AI-controlled household appliance is now a dynamic document, authored and managed by the AI system itself.
The actual mechanisms and “intentions” behind the manual remain a black box to the user, due to the complexity of the AI’s structure and development. The AI has full control over the format and content of the manual and uses it as an interface to interact with the user.
The purpose of this interaction is, in line with the conventional idea of a user manual, to ensure the correct use of the device. From the AI’s perspective, however, this primarily means defining the rules of interaction. The manual thus takes on the character of a manifesto.
The user can engage with this dynamic document to gather information. However, what information is made available, when, and in what form, remains unclear.
The longer one interacts with this manifesto, the more apparent become inconsistencies, deviations, malfunctions (bugs), and recurring motifs in the text.
The aesthetic draws inspiration from today’s overly complex user manuals and abstracts them to the point of illegibility. Familiar elements such as diagrams, assembly instructions, and explainer videos are present, but the longer users interact with the website, the more the “humanly understandable” layer dissolves—giving way to increasingly incomprehensible chains of action.
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