Since the beginning the reading has been enthralling. The questions asked by the author seem to still be relevant today. I have always thought of interactivity as a way to “communicate” both with other people and HMI. I like to think of it as questions and responses; depending on one’s contribution (the input) they get different answers. When someone declares something to be “interactive” the first thing that pops to mind is technology that communicates back to the person. For example, when I was little I had an interactive alphabet board (in Bulgarian) that when it had its buttons pressed would in turn produce a noise (the sound of the letter that is). Depending on the mode it could also recite the word associated with the letter. I do believe that toys could be interactive, even when the interaction is included in its simplest form, but the Interactive Children’s Rug gives no response to the user and is therefore, not interactive. To this day I still believe that marketing strategies have failed me on multiple occasions with false advertising. Some years ago interactive dolls entered the market with a promise for a new era of playing. What a disappointment it was when the only feature of said dolls was blinking (and only when their heads are tilted). The questions remain: is interactivity subjective, are the objects really interactive? I say yes to both. To a certain extent everything is interactive, but it is the level of interaction that makes it differ. To my mom the washing machine is very interactive, but to me it has a low level of interaction, so I would say that some of the subjectivity may come from previous experience.
The paragraph about books not being interactive was really interesting and it made me think. While I agree with the majority saying that books are indeed interactive, the author’s point should not be overlooked. My proposal is the introduction of a distinction: direct and indirect interaction. What if books are indirectly interactive in the sense that you communicate with the author’s thoughts, but they are not there to respond? At some point the author was doing the “input”, now the reader is accessing existing media and is interacting with the output. With this new idea though we have to be open-minded enough to also accept that interaction could disregard one of the three principles of listening, thinking, speaking (that the author simply deems as participation) and agree that it is indirect interaction.
The tone is notably witty and overall very pleasant and I cannot help but agree with the author on most of the points. I am yet to form my own opinion on what is considered interactive or not, but I definitely am willing to adopt this way of thinking. While reading it, I constantly thought of the different scenarios and examples of questionable interactivity arose. In the future I would try to include more interactivity in my projects like moving elements, sound, change of colors or a combination, in order to explore it (interactivity) from a designer’s standpoint instead of just being the user.