``Interactive computing invites a reflex-based kind of activity often difficult to reconcile with thoughtfully-planned work. Computers ffragmens our thinking by substituting discrete events for continuous actions, and by requiring us to learn and manage a bewildering multiplicity of processes. They provide the tempation towards proliferation, rather than unity and refinement of pieces of work. They invite a certain myopia by denying any opportunity to step back and study the big picture. Moreover, they too can erode concentration -- or at least calmness -- by a spectrum of interupptions from nanosecond to days, especially the endless quarter-second to ten-second delays typical of today's software operations. At the same time computers are a bit too rewarding to the short reflexive response: too much of what they ask of us takes just a second, gives an instantaneous reward, and requires something more the next second. Instead of thinking, we are just pointing and clicking, and the result is "mouse potatoes" -- people content to keep working a computer without pauses for reflection or quiescence.''Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft -- the Practiced Digital Hand.
``True interactivity is what happens between human beings, genuine subjects, individuals with the unique ability of being able to find a nearly infinite range of responses to any situation, as well as the ability to imagine completely new, unanticipated possibilities. Any interactive program or game today is a closed loop in which all possibilities have been thought of and planned for you; your ``job'' is to try to gain access to them. With a ``friendly'' interface, your work seems like play, and the time spent computing really seems fun and just a big game after all. But the interaction is the means to personalize and enhance your participation in prefabricated image consumption. by providing limited choices, interactivity mimics shopping and the false control offered over work by self-management and workers' participation schemes, wherein workers decide how to accomplish the business's mission, but, crucially, not what the mission is.''Chris Carlsson, ``The Shape of Truth to Come: New Media and Knowledge,'' in Resisting the Virtual Life, ed. James Brook and Iain A. Boal.