One of my earliest memories involves picking up my late grandfather’s TV remote control in my hand and staring at it with awe, it had five large chrome buttons, one was the on/off switch, another two controlled the volume, and the bottom two were the channel changers.
It seems rather pathetic now, looking back on it, that anyone could be as impressed as I was by such a basic piece of technology, however it was the idea of interactivity that took a hold of me, that and the distinct lack of wires.
Besides I am old enough to remember the UK when we had just three channels; BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, and half the time they’d do little more than display a testcard. For the first few years of my life I was convinced that the strange looking girl sitting by a blackboard with a toy clown and what appeared to be a skull had some sort of quasi-religious connotation. Of course i didn’t want to step on any toes in those formative years (how times change), I wasn’t ready for a full blown theosophical debate (just yet) and so I let it pass.
Back to my point, and that is that a little interactivity can go a long way to impress minds both young and old. Being online, it’s easy to imagine that clcking buttons, watching a video or two, chatting with a mate about last night’s match, and reading a few articles can count as an interactive experience. Although when one considers the fact that almost as much interactivity is required from an ATM or a TIVO, relatively speaking it’s tantamount to twiddling one’s fingers and watching the world roll by.
Technology for the main part has done very very little to encourage more interaction, the argument put forward that advances in technology have brought the world, communities and individuals closer together doesn’t quite stand up, and here’s the reason why.
In Britain, historically speaking, the majority of our society had at one time little to do but work, eat and sleep, and in the few moments that the working classes could claim as their own they’d most likely visit church, drink beer, watch a football match, and very occasionally take a coach tour to the seaside for the day. Yes it does sound awful, and it most likely was, even when the government wasn’t rolling out a spate of rationing most lives were lived frugally to say the least.
However they did do one thing very well, they entertained themselves, they didn’t play music on an iPod, they played the piano and sung as best as they could, they didn’t text each other, they talked, sometimes for hours, they didn’t watch television, they went out to the cinema and collectively soaked in the propaganda. I’m making a whole heap of generalisations here, I don’t mean to paint a rosy picture of the past, I’m only making one point. There was little to consume, materially or ethereally. Allotments were all the rage, after WW2 and the aforementioned rations, most people began to grow their own food, they’d cook it too, and eat together around a table. Where no doubt they would begin to discuss their day, local and national events, and so on and so on. Essentially people interacted with each other on a personal basis, because there was no alternative, if you didn’t like the movie at the Odeon, you’d have the choice of walking out or sitting there and lumping it. There wasn’t Youtube, there wasn’t Facebook, there wasn’t an Internet, and there wasn’t even digital technology. Radio was popular, and eventually, here in Britain, by the 1960s TV was starting to take off too, but for the vast majority of people, personal human interaction was the next best thing to being entertained.
Nowadays we live in "their science fiction", we are the future, sure we’re not flying off to the outer reaches of the galaxy (quite yet), but if we could drag any of our technology back a century (and make it work) we’d probably unwittingly become dictators of the past or most likely burned at the stake for witchcraft. Yet what do we do with it? Convenience is the watchword, for many consumers of our day, the more and the faster and the easier it is the better. Yet somehow I think we may be missing out on something here, something that will take society a good few years to realise it’s worth, as they say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
What we are missing is intelligent and emotional interactivity, Wii games cannot provide good conversation, and chat applications, even with video and sound, cannot replace the complexity of emotional feedback generated by the slightest gesture of body language, or a "look in the eye". The subtle tones and hues of what essentially makes life worth living have been appropriated and white-washed by the corporate giants of the world, and the consumer is a willing participant in this sordid experiment. We are losing our humanity, it’s as simple as that. Give it another century and we’ll probably be a stack of brains in jars, connected by infinite bandwidth wireless connections, gods of a hyperreality of our own making, but until then we can still use a little human touch just to make life bearable. Now I’m not saying art will save the day, but using the creative side of one’s mind might just delay the inevitable for a while.
If you’re bored of the limitations of the Internet, here’s one good way to bridge the soulless void that is the digital divide, creatively and instantly. I’ve included a list of some of my favourite digital art sites where you’re positively encouraged to produce rather than merely consume, I’m sure you’ll find something worthwhile, and perhaps even rewarding on some level. Have a great time with your imagination, get high on hand eye co-ordination, and flex that superior human intellect over the technological slaves that may one day be our supreme masters 
http://windowseat.ca/viscosity/create.php An amazing graphics script for instant creativity.
http://www.glassgiant.com/ascii/ Create ASCII art (art from numbers and letters).
http://www.typorganism.com/asciiomatic/ Create more ASCII art.
http://www.zefrank.com/scribbler/ A fantastic scribbling site.
http://graffiticreator.net Instant graffiti designer.
http://www.wackerart.de/fractal_english.html Make some fractal art.
http://nag.iap.de/?lang=en Instant Cubist collages!
http://www.artcontext.org/glyphiti/docs/index.php For the small scale graffiti artist – glyphitti.
http://artcontext.org/act/04/imprimatur/ A groupware poster and illustration layout site – instantly create posters.
When you’ve worn out your creative impulses you might find that these artistically themed sites will help you wind down.
http://www.pixmaven.com/phrase_generator.html An instant and highly amusing art critic generator!
http://www.magatsu.net/art/ An art themes prompter
http://www.artificial.dk/articles/artgamesintro.htm Art games without frontiers!
