'Rethinking Interactivity' By Yuping Liu and L.J. Shrum

'Rethinking Interactivity'

- The article begins by establishing the ambiguity of interactivity, and the unusual idea of the equally ambiguous presence, understanding, and recognition over the prevalence of interactivity, which can be witnessed on a global scale. In addition, the article then goes onto stating that the complexities and conceptualisation of interactivity, which may become paramount in establishing the profound effects that it has had on the contemporary world, and on our new evolution of human association.

The idea of advertising as being a fundamental view of the 'persuasive communications' of interactive media, which are based around the prevalence of digital technology that can interpolate users into a mediated environment; of which they are led to believe that they can modify or control. Also, the concepts of temporal and spacial affordances of digital and technological interactivity are stated to be witnessed particulary in large business cooperations, which may target users through email and other notifications that are formatted and compiled for the specific individual; giving reference to automated technology, and our human associations with those kinds of personalised communications and messages.

Also, 'user-machine interaction', 'user-user interaction', and 'user-message interaction' is approached as being three generic and useful points of analysis over the nature of interactivity. These three ideas combine the use of machine based interaction, and new or traditional notions of human interaction, in which the structure, medium, or framework of the interactivity becomes the message. Similarly to Marshall McLuhan's article "The Medium Is the Message", it may be said that the analysis of new human associations with the object rather than the content of interactive based media can be represented by the idea of The Mirror Stage. In addition, the psychoanalytical implications may suggest that where technology is interacted with physically, where the content is interacted with mentally or subconsciously, and where the notion of the nature of the interactivity is similar to The Mirror Stage; where mental recognition, self-reflection, sense of detachment, the desire for the object once more, and the transition from the old ways to the new beneath the view of the normative and the real model forms a new association on interactivity.

It may also be said that the new human association and need for technological medium and interactivity may have the eventual reverse effect, in which the desire for the object or the medium consequently makes the content the nature. This presents the need for, and the notion of, a new model figure in society and more traditional associations of the individual in that community. This may give reflection on Adorno and Heinhorker's article that the model macrocosm, and the view of the normative individual, is applicable to the prevalence of interactivity in the notion of new human associations and inadvertent requirements.

Additionally, the need for the notion of two-way communication in the media may be said to show how the need for interactivity and audience control is essential in the development in new media, as an industry which can both surveil and be surveilled, in the efforts for a sense of democracy and independence from the digital communication, information, education, and leisure industries; giving a sense of false-consciousness.