My Observations On Interactivity In Life

Everyday I'm learning about new ways we humans interact with each other and the world. I observe that interaction or interactivity greatly enriches or greatly frustrates each of our lives. In some ways it splits us up and we grow farther from each other and in other ways it brings us much closer to each other.

I'm thinking that with new technology comes new innovations, like new ways of teaching. I also understand that with new innovations come new technology - we come back full circle. And smack dab in the center of that circle is a seed called human interaction. Always looking for faster and better ways of doing things, this seed grows into a tree and eventually, its branches meet with the boundary of the circle sharing with technology and innovation its experiences, wants and needs before the tree dies. But like the saying goes, "the old becomes new." So sooner or later a new seed is planted in the circle and the process repeats itself over and over and over again. I always wonder if there'll ever come a point when this circle and everything inside it will implode - I hope not.

I'm not going to go into a whole essay about interaction. We live with it everyday, we take part in it and we take it for granted... sometimes. I say sometimes because if you're an international corporate executive, you know about social interaction in different countries and cultures. You will not take this human-to-human communication for granted because it's important to establish rapport and therefore, garner a partnership that will help your company grow and prosper. The way you shake hands will differ between France and Japan. Once you've sealed the deal and start to work together with your new partner overseas you will plant a seed in your circle and through effort, experiences and more interaction, your money tree will grow and its branches will touch the boundary of the innovation/technological circle and subsequently another seed will be planted and the process starts again.

We see human interaction co-mingled with technological (ie. online/internet) creations in new media and the arts. For instance, a website called Wetpaint Please Touch invites guests to use different types of artistic media to paint a wall. They can interact with others by passing it along for the next person to finish or submit it to a gallery where others can rate it. Another website called Finish-a-Story encourages readers to creatively write and share their endings to different stories.

Another type of interaction we might take for granted is human-to-artifact communication. When I test out cell phones at a store the design, color and features are only one part of the equation. I also look at how intuitive it is to operate. How easy is it to navigate the interface? How cumbersome is it to push the keys to make a call, or control the volume? The interactivity of a cell phone is the behaviour of its user interface, the artifact, as experienced by me, the user. A very unique interactivity that in my opinion might be an extreme form of human-to-artifact communication is found in Empathic Painting. This is a video-based human-computer interface that allows an artist to convert an input photograph into a painting using stroke patterns and colors selected by special Computer Vision algorithms capable of recognizing facial expressions. So bright, happy smiles will translate to bright, vibrant paintings and sad ones will translate to gloomy, dark paintings. That is so very cool!

Haptic technology is another way for computers and software to interact with humans. Haptic coming from the Greek, Haphe, means pertaining to the sense of touch. The technology is seen and experienced through the use of devices such as the Wacom Pen Tablet. By applying force onto the tablet you can get different size strokes and effects just as if you were using the real medium. When I play games on the Wii, like tennis, it provides vibrations in the controller to simulate and enhance the virtual sensation of hitting the tennis ball. When you set your cell phone on vibrate, you're making use of haptic technology. New cutting-edge computers now allow the wave of your hand over the screen to manipulate objects and documents. Doctors will use teleoperators, or remote controlled robotic tools to perform surgery over long distances. The force-feedback reproduced to the surgeon will give them the sense that they're actually right there with the patient. I think the seed planted by haptic technology will give birth to more innovative products for users who'd rather interact with an interface through the sense of touch by applying forces, motions and feedback.

We have come full circle but the wheel of life never stops spinning, and I'm sure we're in store for a lot more innovations in humanoid, I mean, human interactivity.

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