To begin with, this reading was really fun and it showed me another dimension of the word “interactivity” and what interactive media really means. I have always struggled explaining to my friends and family back home when describing my major: soo you work with computers? programming? robotics? but wait you also design?
-Well yeah I kind of do it all 🙂
Nevertheless let’s get back on the subject. I really agree with the authors description of interactivity, a combination of subtasks (listening, thinking, speaking) or all in all a conversation between two and more people/objects…
Since its start in 1980 and its peak in 1990, the word interactive has really changed a lot and at the same time used in the wrong way. Take a look at this advertisement:
How can a chocolate almond coconut raisin bar be interactive? On the other side we have the fridge theory? – Is the opening and closing of the fridge while the light is turning on and off any kind of interaction.
To answer the question the author looks at interactivity as a combination of listening thinking and speaking and they all have to be present (none can be left out). On the scale of interactivity though we can have highly interactive, moderately interactive and so on. The fridge is a very low level interaction.
Important mention: things that are not interactive :
-Books
-Movies
-Dancing
-Performance art (or is it? I will let you think about it:)