University of California, Berkeley Associate Professor of Film and Media Jacob Gaboury is the recipient of the 2023 CBI Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Award for his 2021 book Image Objects: An Archeology of Computer Graphics (MIT Press).
Gaboury’s Image Objects offers the first comprehensive history of the University of Utah’s path-breaking human interaction research in computing from the 1960s through the 1980s that gave birth to the field of computer graphics. Making key conceptual and theoretical contributions to history, communication, and media studies, Gaboury insightfully structures his book into a successive journey through five technical objects—an algorithm, an interface, an object standard, a programming paradigm, and a hardware platform. In doing so, he unveils how digital graphics transformed computing to make it interactive. Through detailing and analyzing the legendary work of Ivan Sutherland, Dave Evans, and many others (at Utah and beyond), this landmark book serves as a pre-history to the professionalized field of Human-Computer Interaction, and to the ubiquitous design tools, graphical processing units (GPUs), VR, and devices that are changing our world.
Special thanks to HCI pioneers, University of Maryland’s Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant for making this award possible.
The Annual CBI Ben Shneiderman Award in Human-Computer Interaction History recognizes excellence in advancing the history/social study (focus must be change over time) of HCI. The principal award is for a published book, article, documentary, podcast, website, or other media on HCI’s past; a second award is for a top dissertation or thesis (Ph.D./Master’s degree) on HCI history.