CONCEPT
Programmed Visions
Chun's 2011 thesis: software does not merely process information but programs perception—shaping what users see as visible, possible, and normal through interface architecture and default settings.
Programmed visions are the structured perceptual habits that software produces in its users. Every medium shapes what its audience can see, but software does so with a specificity that earlier media could not approach: by organizing the space within which thinking occurs, by determining which options appear as defaults and which require effort to access, by structuring information in ways that feel neutral but carry the assumptions of the system's designers. The user who works within a software environment does not simply use the software—the user sees through the software, the way a person wearing tinted glasses sees through the tint. The color of the world shifts, and the shift becomes invisible because it is total. This is not manipulation in the propaganda sense; it is environmental—a shaping of perception through the architecture of interaction.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Chun's concept emerged from her analysis of how early internet culture promised transparency ("information wants to be free") while actually constructing highly mediated