Bram Dov Abramson on Wed, 8 Apr 1998 03:11:54 +0200 (MET DST) |
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Re: <nettime> Interactivity: Hicks responds to Hopkins, Stalder |
>[Felix Stalder] wrote: >> There are definitely more or less interactive devices. In some cases, say >> the elevator, the interaction is extremely limited -- up or down -- in >> other cases it is more sophisticated. The point, however, is that ALL >> machinery has SOME degree of interactivity, with the single exception of >> clocks. A. Cinque Hicks wrote: >i don't really see the use of an adjective so vague that it describes >*everything*, but okay, if we provisionally agree that all machinery has >SOME degree of interactivity, then in fact clocks do as well. i have a >clock sitting right in front of me and believe me i have to interact >with that goddam thing every morning at 8:30. for that matter why limit >interactivity to physically touching things? At the risk of committing that cardinal sin, jumping in halfway through a conversation -- we all deal with information overload in our own ways -- let me offer someone else's thoughts on the matter. Specifically those of two Montrealers, Serge Proulx and Michel Sénécal, who have an article called (in French) "Is Technical Interactivity a Mere Pretense of Social Interaction and Democracy?" (_Technologie de l'information et société_ 7:2, 1995), which got translated in a handy volume called _Communication and Multimedia for People_, put out by Transversales Science/Culture in Paris. Anyway, Proulx and Sénécal attack arguments which "shift between the description of conditions considered as necessary to technical interactivity and the mention of new possible avenues for social interaction and the democratization of communication. These sociotechnical arguments, however, seem to confuse the technical mechanisms of interactivity between humans and machines with the social mechanisms of interaction between individuals. There is a danger here of propagating a technical- cultural myth which recurs in the development of new media technologies -- namely, the myth that the creation of new systems of technical interactivity necessarily leads to a greater democratization of social communication. In this article we propose some ideas toward a critique of the social use of this notion of interactivity, and for the deconstruction of this new contemporary myth." To which I'd add only: right on. Interactive? Yeah, of course. So what? Bram Dov Abramson Communication Policy Research Laboratory Université de Montréal --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@desk.nl and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@desk.nl