Page 135 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

INTERACTIVITY

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Further reading: Drahos (1999)

INTERACTIVITY

Interactivity signifies the development of the relationship between
person and computer, and with others via the computer. Our ability to
have a two-way communicative process with technology means that
we are not ‘destined to become a race of baby-sitters for computers’
(Bagrit, 1965: 1). Instead we are ‘navigators’, ‘end users’, ‘surfers’, in
control of where the technology takes us. We can be constructive
through our choices, and our own invention.
Marshall McLuhan wrote in 1964 that ‘automation is not an
extension of the mechanical principles of fragmentation and separation
of operations. It is rather the invasion of the mechanical world by the
instantaneous character of electricity’ (ibid.:349). The ‘instant
inclusive embrace’ of automated technology, meant that the consumer
also became the producer, ‘fusing’ information and learning. The
progression from the mechanical to the automated has brought with it
newpossibilities for participation, our ability to make choices:
technology becomes a means to empowerment. In McLuhan’s and
Bagrit’s early accounts, interactivity is an antidote to the factories of
the industrial revolution in which people’s work had to be adapted to
accommodate machines. This imagery and language have reappeared
in accounts of digital technology. By being able to direct,
communicate and create through newinteractive technologies, we
are becoming ‘rehumanised’ (Pearce, 1997).
The excitement surrounding the emancipatory potential of
interactive media has been curbed by more cautious theorists who
remind us that the interactive uses of newtechnologies are not driven
by democratic ideals on the whole, but by commercial imperatives,
and that although these can coincide, they do not have to. As the
development of the technology has been left largely to the market,
citizen feedback is likely to entail online shopping, interactive game
shows and discussion resembling talk-back radio (Calabrese and
Borchert, 1996; Schultz, 1994).

See also: Cyberdemocracy, Cybernetics, Cyborg

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