For me we, all of us, are humans and each one has unique characteristics. You can find any type of personalities in any gender and culture. Each person has its own weak and strong sides. But I admit, the presenter of this video made me laugh 🙂
Perhaps that is one deep root of my lack of focus 😛 “everything is connected to everything”…
ROLF!!!!
Understandable reaction to boring lectures, in our early 21 century, is to hear the desire to have interactive ones. Wait, what do we mean by interactive courses? Again everybody turns to digital technology for the answer, but is the answer there?
I start to believe that what we refer to interactive is when the conversation between me and the other is in balance. Understanding by other either a person, or a system or a thing, etc. The conversation will not exist if we do not want to listen, and one will never listen someone that one does not want to hear or it is not ready to hear.
When the conversation between two or more is in balance constructive-interactivity exits, because we are able to act on each other.
I will try to make an example: let’s go with the “less” interactive media such as a book. It only has words, in the best of the cases perhaps some graphics. But some books one can’t put them down, because their content is really interacting with our inner, we do not need more sounds, smells or graphics, all it is between me and the book in full interaction. The book is “talking” to me, acting on me. Am I acting back on the book? At the moment I am reading it I am not acting on it, but each time I recommend it or I talk about it, my actions have an influence on the book. The relationship human-book is a constructive-interactivity, however maybe no synchronous in time.
Let’s go to a webpage where we can push tons of buttons, where the information is messy and irrelevant, where the “interactivity” is “high”. First one tries to push all what is possible to see what happens, if the system can capture my attention, after little while one gets bored and quit it. Was the system interactive? According to the definition “a program that responds to user activity” yes, plus the system had a reaction on us to quit it. But in this system did not exist the “conversation” between the user and the system, just an action-reaction type of of relationship.
Why all these babbling? Well, this weekend I “join” the conference of “State of Play” via my Twitter. A full experience, thanks to these folks that are SO ACTIVE, they have interesting topics but overall wonderful backchannels. One can say that these backchannels promote interactivity between their members on-site at real-time, using technology as a tool.
Liz Lawley in 2004 already made an interesting reflection about this backchannels. It calls specially my attention when she writes: “good content + great speaker(s) = near silence in the backchannel, as people focus their attention entirely on the stage“.
She has made a point that made me write these posts. When we talk about interactivity are we refering to physical action? to be entertain? to have a visible action-reaction system? or to relevant an meaningful conversations? As we can see and experience, even if we use all the tools available (technology, resources, people, etc.) what it matters at the end of the day is the combination of the content and the speaker to keep an interactive conversation. Then, what do we mean as interactivity?
Time to the time, as I need to think more on this, and for sure as more I will hear about interactive lectures, interactive systems, interactive games, etc. as more I have the impression I should understand what we “mean” with interactive.
people "back-channel" in conference. - Photo credit: Pete Lambert.
source image: http://pistachioconsulting.com/twitter-presentations/
The last weeks I had gather A LOT of food for the though, or perhaps my brain is strangely configurated since my basics. I will try to process all these ideas before express them out in here step by step. Today’s turn is of “INTERACTIVE”. (Thing I will research after my PhD, as now I am running out of time).
Interactive is a powerful and complex concept, that I do not have on clear. In the dictionary as a second definition of this adjective we find Interactive in “Computer Science: Of or relating to a program that responds to user activity.” But the first definition is: “Acting or capable of acting on each other.” (source: the free dictionary).
Interesting…. as we always focus on the tool (in here any computer and/or machine) and superficial layer of understanding, we think and/or assume that a system is interactive if it makes noises, changes the graphics on the screen, or do something correlated to the “input” we are given to it. In other words we consider that a system responds to our activity if we can perceive without effort a “change” just by looking at it, or smelling it, or touching it or hearing it. Hence, the system is interactive. My question: if something does not “react” or “respond” according to my expectations then it is not interactive ???
To make my post shorter, then I will stop here, continue with the second part…
interactive-website
Credit of image: http://sivers.org/interactive-website
My train of thoughts has been challenged once again. Yeap, let me explain, what do you trust more of its real existence:
a) the money that you have in your bank account and which it is reported in your monthly paper statement.
b) the virtual information that is only in your web-server.
Both concepts exist due to human beings. However we can only touch the money and we cannot touch any virtual information (unless we print it out of course). As a matter of fact the “virtuality” only can be accessed through the use of some kind of hardware. Thus, for its own “nature”, perhaps one could say that the logic of the “virtuality” is more complex to understand than the logic of the money,
Well my dear fellows, I think I am wrong on this. Maybe because I have a close emotional relationship with the fields that are related with -ware (hardware and software) but at least for me at this moment in time:
a) I can try to explain what “virtual” is, and the logic behind it. I think it is clear in my head this concept.
b) I cannot explain what money is, and I am confused about it and its actual logic behind it.
I found a youtube video (bellow attached) trying to explain the logic of money. (I recommend to watch it) . No idea if the concepts and information of it are 100% correct or not. Nevertheless it helped me to clarify:
a) If I lost all my emails (due to a bug or something else) I can keep calm because there are backups for this kind of events. I trust in virtuality!
b) Our economical world system has not backup against wall-street events. And we are exponentially heading to an interesting unknown mess. I just hope that this story has a happy end, because I do not trust (perhaps for the lack of understanding) in our money organization.
Anyway, let’s see what we will happen with these two game arenas 🙂
I would like to hear the argument of the city administrators or economists towards this phenomena:
a bus ride in Helsinki costs 2.20 euros, a bus ride in Tampere costs 2.00 euros and a bus ride in Joensuu costs 2.70 euros
(tickets avaible as evidence)