Interactivity??? Ummmm…. What???

Dear All, I welcome myself to the world of blogging!! In short its my first time. Well I am here to give my comment on one of the readings of the first the first lecture. Since I was not ‘privileged’ enough to be a spectator to the movie ‘Momento’, I guess I will have to stick to writing my thoughts on the seemingly restrictive and yet at the same time interesting definition of interactivity as laid down by Chris Crawford. Crawford’s writing style is very conversational and indeed a delight to read, however even though how convincing his argument may sound, I was still left thinking about the veracity of his views. First of all I beg to differ when he choose to ‘define’ interactivity. A definition means a concrete  undebatable truth and for a topic as debatable as ‘interactivity’ enough room should be left for further arguments and counter-arguments. Crawford has indeed covered a lot of ground with regards to his conclusion. However the part where I would like to interject him is when he differentiates higher and lower level interactivity. My view on this is that such classification is not necessary as even a child interacts and learns even though how low the level of interaction may be. Also he fails to take into account the interactivity of print media. Print media may be classified as ‘old’ media but it can indeed be made interactive. The multiple plot novels are a case in example. Also while defining interactivity he neglects the time scale of the response of a system to a particular stimulus. My question is that can u  call a program interactive if it has a complicated response algorithm or the input volume is so massive such that its slows the response of the thinking system even though how interactive the UI is or how well it conform to Crawford’s criteria for interactivity? Well its still left for open debate.  (ps: Boring!!!)