User Interface: The Transformation of Subjectivity in the Cultural Practices of the Digital Environment

The subject of the study is the transformation of human subjectivity in the digital environment under the influence of the evolution of user interfaces, as well as the cultural practices that emerge in this process. The interface is considered not only as a technological solution, but above all as a cultural form of mediation that organizes everyday experience, directs user action, and consolidates reproducible patterns of participation in the digital environment. In this way, the interface is involved not only in providing access, but also in the redistribution of initiative, choice, patterns of attention, and everyday modes of action. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the transition from instrumental forms of interfacing to algorithmized, agentic, and environmental formats of human–AI interaction alters the user’s status and the conditions of subjectivity. The study is conducted within the framework of a cultural approach, drawing on the comparative-historical method, the analysis of cultural practices, and the interpretation of the interface as a form of mediation. As a research tool, it employs a scheme of subjectivity transformation that makes it possible to correlate the stages in the evolution of the user interface with changes in human subjectivity. It has been established that, as the interface evolves, not only does the form of human interaction with the digital environment change, but also subjectivity itself: from being the source of action, it shifts toward guided, reactive, hybrid, and partially predetermined participation. As the interface becomes more deeply embedded in the environment, it becomes less visible to the individual as an autonomous form of mediation. A pattern has been identified according to which increasing algorithmization, personalization, and environmental embeddedness of the interface are accompanied by a weakening of the human reflexive distance and a redistribution of their capacity to initiate, sustain, and reconsider their own action. It is concluded that, within digital culture, the interface functions as one of the key forms of cultural regulation, shaping cultural practices and, through them, human subjectivity.