> >You don't get choices, you get a no-brainer series of commands
> >that take you through a predetermined sequence...
 
Fact is, if a museum isn't "interactive" in the first place no
amount of technology will make it so. Here's my working
definition for interactivity from Andy Lippman at the MIT
Media Lab as quoted by Stewart Brand in his book "The Media
Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT" New York: Penguin Books, 1987,
p. 46.
 
"Mutual and simultaneous activity on the part of both
participants, usually working toward some goal, but not
necessarily."
 
Lippman suggests that interruptibility is one important key
and that the model of interaction is a conversation versus a
lecture. What videodisks (and now CD-ROMs) offer is alternation
(your turn, my turn) not interaction, which would require that
participants be able to significantly change the flow of
conversation through interruption.
 
Now, back to the lecture.
 
Robbin Murphy
Interruptionist
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