Interactive Media

[al_rants]

I have, in the past, ranted about how I don't like watching television. I'm also not fond of movies. My reasoning for this is because it's passive entertainment. For much the same reason, I don't like spectator sports (I'm fond of saying, "Why watch a bunch of guys run around playing a game when you can be the one running around playing the game on

Comments

[inkbrush76]

Look, if you want more info on passive/active media, read some Marshall Mcluhan. Actually, he breaks it down this way: media can be passive/active and it can be hot/cold. Television is a passive/cold medium. Movies, according to McLuhan, are a passive/hot medium. Books? Books are active/cold, if I remember correctly. (actually, it's been awhile, so I might be off a little bit in how I remember all those.)

Your basic point seems to be that all media is passive, except for those that involve direct interaction between humans, and I'm telling you that's not how people who study this stuff for a living see it. Reading, for example, is not considered passive. It's not passive because the audience actually has to engage with the media for it to work. Reading is not passive, it's active.

I would also posit that there are active and passive ways to view media. A person can be a passive viewer of television, or they can be an active viewer. What is an active viewer? More or less, I would argue, one who is paying attention and actually thinking about what they are watching while it is playing in front of them. In that sense, the viewer is active, because they are engaging with the material themselves. The medium probably doesn't matter as much for a person like this.

Of course, that kind of person is probably a very small percentage of the population.

From the Wikipedia Article on McLuhan:
"Hot" and "cool" media

McLuhan also claimed in the first part of Understanding Media, that different media invite different degrees of participation on the part of a person who chooses to consume a medium. Some media, like the movies, enhance one single sense, in this case vision, in such a manner that a person does not need to exert much effort in filling in the details of a movie image. McLuhan contrasted this with TV, which he claimed requires more effort on the part of viewer to determine meaning, and comics, which due to their minimal presentation of visual detail require a high degree of effort to fill in details that the cartoonist may have intended to portray. A movie is thus said by McLuhan to be "hot", intensifying one single sense "high definition", demanding a viewer's attention, and a comic book to be "cool" and "low definition", requiring much more conscious participation by the reader to extract value.[37]

Hot media are usually, but not always, visual media; for example, print occupies visual space and is "hot". Hot media favour analytical precision, quantitative analysis and sequential ordering, as they are usually sequential, linear and logical. They emphasize one sense (for example, of sight or sound) over the others. For this reason, hot media also include radio, as well as film, the lecture and photograph.

Cool media, on the other hand, are usually, but not always, associated with the sense of hearing. They require more active participation on the part of the user, including the perception of abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts. Cool media, according to McLuhan, therefore include television, as well as the seminar and cartoons.

This concept appears to force media into binary categories. However, McLuhan's hot and cool exist on a continuum: they are more correctly measured on a scale than dichotomous terms.

[al_rants]

My point was not that all media are passive. That was, in fact, the exact opposite of the point that I was trying to make. I was suggesting that some media are active and some passive. The entire point of my rant is that television and movies are passive media, and that reading is an active medium. Which, I notice, is the same way you have categorised them.

I did try to point out that it's not a black and white issue, that sometimes (and for some people) a specific medium can be more or less active or passive than at other times (or for other people). This is also in agreement with what you've posted here.

From what I'm seeing here, it seems like the only difference between what I've said and what you've said is that you've added the "hot/cold" dimension onto the "active/passive" scale. Which is not something I've thought about before. I can see the point that is trying to be made in the snippet of Wikipedia that you've posted, although I'm not sure I agree that television is a cold medium. I say this because television seems more visual than auditory to me, and does almost as much to "demand a viewer's attention" than "requiring... more conscious participation by the [viewer] to extract value."

But other than that, I don't see where there is any divergence in our stated opinions.