By all means, this passage intrigued me first by its plain and candid tone and the approach to start with ‘trying’ to define instead of throwing jargon and how the author concedes to potential arguments and circumvents them. As a person who loves to define terms and concepts – for a particular context, of course – I found that I much echo my own habit.
Hence, even though I do not 100 percent agree with the statements (although I appreciate that brave attempt to disentangle and establish something beyond old paradigms, a new paradigm), at least for now, the author successfully grasped my willingness to ‘listen’ to the message.
Ironically, despite the author negating words as an ‘interactiveable’ media, the words of the passage did evoke some sort of interactive process in my reading process according to the definition given (although it could be again argued that reaction is not interaction, etc.)
Indeed, I strongly concur with the idea that definitions should serve as guidance rather than constraints, particularly for concepts like interactivity that are swiftly evolving, as mentioned by the author. Sometimes, I hesitate to offer definitions in conversations for fear of appearing imposing to others, when in reality, my aim is not to assert an absolute truth but to establish a ground for my understanding.
While the author’s spectrum to evaluate interactivity from low to high and placing them in contexts of the interacter involved makes much sense to me, I’d still like to not argue but bring up an idea from theater given it is denied to be decently interactive by the passage. Also, starting with definitions, an academically common definition of theater could be ‘a relation between the actor and the spectator.’ This approach to constructing the definition actually resembles the author’s. As the author here tackled the tricky arguments of what counts for an actor in the interaction by dividing different levels of interactivity, it similarly reminds me to maybe use this approach to explain the question in theater definition: what constitutes a spectator or an actor; do they have to be aware of their action or not; etc.
On top of that, I found Socrates’ words very much relatable. That inactive nature of words – the creator cannot protect or explain them or themselves after the creation – is something that bothered my expression in many cases as well, whether in poetry or speech, whether with a real person or anonymously online.
Nevertheless, when it comes to what can be regarded as a strong interactive system, the answer seems hidden within the definition already – only depends on how we interpret those three stages. In terms of ‘listening,’ it could deal with how much it can listen, how fast it can listen, how many types of things it can listen, how obvious or undercovered it can listen, plus when, where, and other Ws. Similarly, with thinking, it really touches the black box of unlimited possibilities. But in simplest words, I would put it here as ‘the extent to which the information listened can be used and processed to present and serve as a whole to reflect the message of the system.’ Eventually, for the speaking, it seems to me that it’s a matter of picking and developing the niche method to communicate information, aka the role of media. When all three stages are carefully designed in a well-rounded manner, it may qualify as a strongly interactive system.
‘Show but not tell’ goes a long way in theater and other performative arts, and maybe for this time, we should not only satisfy with showing but reach beyond it – with whatever we have.