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These days everything has to be interactive. Games have suddenly become "interactive experiences" and office software has become interactive too. To an extent these always have been interactive in that both respond to the user's input and the user responds to their output.

Now the term interactive is being bandied about online as a catch-all for what marketers are pushing as a nifty website. This interactivity ranges from chat to basic preferences memory to advanced systems which learn from you and suggest things back such as firefly. I'm not going to get bogged down in the argument raging there. Its up to the pioneers to define what they want interactive to mean in the future.

An equally interesting and possibly more important aspect of interactivity online is that between people, with the computer online. You may ask what's different between this and what I mentioned above. Previously I was referring to two-way response between human and computer. Now I'm talking about two-way response between two humans with the computer merely carrying this response.

This type of interaction always has been, currently is and always will be the most important and fulfilling form of interactivity. But how well does it work online?

At the moment most of the interaction online is via text-based messaging systems. Either plain old e-mail, Usenet postings, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) or web based discussion systems. Apart from IRC and some web systems none of these have the immediacy of a real conversation. But even IRC (and web chats) don't compare. Typing is c l u m s y compared to speech and expressing oneself quickly and concisely is a skill that not many have to a great degree.

With the advent of digital telephony speech communication online will become more and more prevalent. But even so its not the same. Sound quality doesn't permit transmission of all those vocal nuances.

The fact is, nothing beats a face to face meeting. Users of The Well soon discovered that monthly meetings were necessary. Those who did meet up, tended to get along better online as well.

Video conferencing, with good quality sound and video, will be the only way the Net will be able to provide satisfactory replacement for flying somewhere and meeting that person 'in real life'.

But we'll have to keep waiting as the bandwidth just isn't there. So the interaction just isn't here.

 

by Jeep - do you think is video conferencing coming soon?

Is interactivity working online? Tell the poll!

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