a) the place at which independent and often unrelated systems meet and act on or communicate with each other 2) the means by which interaction or communication is achieved at an interface — Merriam-Webster Dictionary

#1: Yeah, the internet at that time was so different. You could kind of conceive of seeing it all in some way. When Yahoo first started, it was something like a user generated directory of websites. For instance, there would be a moderator who would take care of collecting and organizing all the skateboarding websites in California or something. You could just surf through the hierarchy on Yahoo and actually find stuff. —John Michael Boling interview by Asher Penn (2015)

#2: Søren Bro Pold (2005) discusses the workings of the interface from a “realistic perspective” suggesting that it should be looked at not as a concept but as a cultural and an aesthetic form that mediates the relationship between reality and representation and that is constantly changing and developing new languages in relation to technological developments and the way in which its users (and designers) experiment with its limits. — Marialaura Ghidini, Curating web-based art exhibitions (2015)

#3 “desktop is the main element of a human – machine interface
desktop is your window to the digital world
desktop is your first step into virtual reality
desktop is a reflection of your individuality
desktop is your everyday visual environment
desktop is an extension of your organs
desktop is the face of your computer […]” — Alexei Shulgin, DesktopIS (1998)