Hello, and welcome to Blower Boy's Thoughts and Musings, a little blog I've made because occasionally (say, once a week or so) I get it into my head something that just needs to be said, and I might as well get those thoughts out there. Now, rather than talk about myself, my world view, I'm just going to give you a preview of those things by telling you that I'm a young adult, male, born in southern Louisiana, the Acadiana region to be specific, and am a student of interactive media (a fancy way of saying game design) at the University of Southern California. For this reason, as you might imagine, I am quite interested in interactivity, that is to say, two things that interact with one another. This might sound like it is stating the obvious, but considering how much the term "Interactivity" gets bandied about these days, I feel it is appropriate to state the obvious in this case.
For the moment I'd like you to watch the following video:
Gear Ring Video - Youtube
Now, this is an example of interactivity in a way that has not occurred before, at least it has not occurred on a large scale. A ring is not an interactive object, it is not designed to be. You put it on your finger, other people look at it. The ring might have significance in some way, it might designate your marital status, or your high school or college, it might simply be a display of wealth or any number of other things, but it is certainly not meant to be interacted with. You put it on your finger and forget about it, it is decoration. But here, we have something that is new, that is fascinating. It is a ring you can DO something to, and it will visibly have something done to it. Now, obviously this can be done with any ring, you can turn it about your finger, or wear it on different fingers, but they are not constructed with this in mind, they rarely, if ever have been constructed with such things in mind. Yet, here we have a ring that quite obviously is meant to be played with and interacted with. This may not seem all that miraculous to you, but consider that more and more, such objects are appearing in our homes, in our clothing, in our pockets. More and more we are finding our selves in an increasingly interactive world, where things are meant to be touched, to change, to be done to, rather than to sit there and look pretty.
What could have brought about this change though? I think the answer lies in the computer. The computer was a device that not only could, for example, have things done to it, but it could do things back in response to the things done to it. Yes, there have been machines throughout the ages that have functioned like this, but none so effectively or with so wide a basis in technology that we have today. The computer, I feel, as a device than can react in complex and meaningful ways to a variety of stimuli, has transformed, fundamentally, how people today think and feel. The gear ring is an example of this in a fundamental way, since it is a normally non interactive accoutrement that has been made interactive. Don't believe me? Look at the other things that have been made interactive in recent years: Phones (look at your cellphone and tell me it isn't interactive), advertisements (those little game banners on top of your webpage), comics (quite a few interactive webcomic games out there now, but a good example you can find on drowtales.com in the form of Path to Power). I could go on, but my point is made. Take a look around yourself some time, find things that have become interactive that even ten years ago were passive devices.
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