In the text "The Myth of Interactivity" by Len Manovich, the author says various things about interaction with New Media, but I will focus on one phrase that has made me wonder for about an hour. He states "we will interpret interaction literally equating it with physical interaction between a user and a media object (pressing a button, choosing a link, ) at the expense of psychological interaction". This quote is basically stating that people only consider interacting with media when you click here or watch a video, but what Manovich is saying is that their is also a psychological interaction that you don't even think about. My take on what he is saying may be unique, but hey this a blog and I'm the author. I believe Manovich is saying something along the lines of the idea that you are interacting with New Media even when you don't realize it. For example, when you open a webpage you teach yourself to filter out the advertisements and things you don't want to see, subconsciously interacting with the New Media itself. It is an interesting concept, the idea that New Media is so involved in our minds and daily lives that it no longer requires our full intention spans, and actually requires very little when say compared to reading a book or the paper. Surfing the net is something you can do while listening to music, having a conversation, iChatting, doing homework, watching TV, and of course sitting in class. But do we really not even realize we are doing this? I for one am a great example. ESPN.com is a website with ads for companies like Old Spice, UFC, and even Verizon, but the fact is I didn't even see them until I looked for them. My eyes only travel to the places I want to see, to the things I want to see. As a whole society has become less interactive on a psychological level with New Media, and in order to understand its true potential, we all need to sit down, ignore the distractions, and start opening our eyes.
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Brandon,
ReplyDeleteI think you bring up a great point, this is something that Delia and I talked about during our class on Monday. I think that a lot of what this has to do with is your familiarity with a certain website. ESPN.com, facebook.com or cnn.com are websites I spend time on everyday, therefore my mind is almost trained to go exactly to the things I want to read. However, if i was on the New York Times website, which Delia knows far better than I do, she would be able to navigate it quickly, where as I would be stuck sifting through advertisements and other links before eventually settling on something to read. I think it's very interesting that you brought up the mental aspect of new media, because it's not something we have learned much about. I think part of the reason for this is simply that not much research has been done on the topic. I would be interested in researching and learning more about the brain and its role in how people navigate certain things as they become better acclimated to its format.
Along the lines of interacting with new media without even realizing it, I too agree that the brain is capable of performing so many tasks at once and sometimes people are unaware of the subconscious. The whole concept of interpreting interaction literally rather than psychologically is something that is very common for new media viewers. Now we just click on a bunch of hyperlinks and we are taken to places where the author wants us to end up. Rather than reading something and then using our own internal thought process to think of related images and texts, we have become subject to the author through the process of literal interactivity. Therefore, I definitely agree that people have become much less psychologically interactive. I also agree that we multitask and we do several different things while surfing the web and as a result our mind cannot physically take in everything. Going off of what Tyler said, we look for what we are familiar with and overall this comes naturally. People are unaware of the impact interactivity has psychologically on an individual whether the impact is positive or negative. I think this idea of people not noticing the level of psychological interactivity behind our actions, is something that we should try to draw our attention too. I loved what you said in your blogpost, "it is time for people to open their eyes!"
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