Interactivity is nothing new

Modern technology of the human-computer interface is very interactive. Interactivity is built in to the structure of computers. The user interface allows the user to control the computer in real-time by clicking on different options on the screen. This has completely rethought how we think of new media. Once anything is displayed on a computer it becomes interactive. It is easy to click, specify and redirect to interactive structures like apps or programs. It is hard to work out the users experiences and relationships with these apps and companies try to convey interactive emotions through this. 

Visual art has always been interactive. People went to see sculptures, paintings, photography and theatre to interact and study them. Nowadays people interact in a different way, with a click of a mouse.

Modern media has decently changed how we interact with everything we can now recreate an artistic technique in seconds that would of took days to complete. These have become natural in everyday life. It has pushed techniques and designers to do more and create more and interesting products.  

The whole reason of computers is to solve mental functions on screen. When people get dependent on computers to carry out mental problems a psychological hypothesis forms. “Technologies externalise and objectify the mind.” Eisenstein thought in 1920 that film had the power to control thinking. Only if he could see that technology has become the main tool in changing perception of mental life. 

In the 1980s, Jaron Lanier talked about how VR can take over human memory and how you can playback memory and classify it. I often wonder if I will have a Facebook when I’m 80 years old and still have all of the photos stored publicly from my childhood. New generations will only know Internet sites like Facebook and YouTube and therefore be eternally locked in virtual reality caves, identifying with somebody’s mental structure. 

Bibliography

Manovich,L. (2001). The language of new media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press