I found myself pleasantly surprised by the author’s voice throughout the text. This was definitely not something I expected from an academic text. The exploration of the concept of “interactivity” really got me thinking on if my understanding the idea with the text.
I was unsurprised that a fridge was considered interactive. I always assumed that there are definitely different levels to interactivity, and although a fridge would be on the lower spectrum of that, the fact that it is there, and you can do stuff with it make it, like anything else, interactive. Even a rock can be interactive if you put your mind (or muscle) to it.
In the end, I think I disagree with the author’s idea of what interactive is. I don’t think there needs to be two living things for interaction to take place. In fact, even a non-living thing can interact with something living, such as the case for a virus. Even more so, we see interaction between humans and AI on a level which the author’s definition does not account for.
In the end, perhaps the term “interactive” needs some reevaluation in today’s context. Maybe AI stands as the true form of non-human interaction, while everything else falls somewhere on a spectrum between participation and genuine engagement.