ABSTRACT
First of all, we need to defi ne more closely what we mean by the term “ interactive. ” Although interactive media were enabled by the convergence of computer, video, and audio technology in the same digital environment at the end of the twentieth century, there are previous examples of interactive structures in our culture. Although the term “ interactive ” is new, the phenomenon is not. We can even see this before the Gutenberg era of print media, which is only now being displaced by digital information technology. Although we associate books with print technology, a book is a piece of technology that preceded the printing press. Medieval monks wrote books with numbered leaves of paper or vellum bound together in a sequence so that the reader could keep the printed matter in a compact space and access any part of it very readily. Consider some of the alternatives — clay tablets, parchment scrolls, or palm leaves sewn together — all diffi cult to handle and absolutely linear . Those more primitive technologies use the writing medium in a sequence that is analogous to a straight
line. You have to move along it in one direction, forward or backward, starting at the beginning or at one particular point. If you are in the middle of a scroll and you want to consult the beginning, you have to roll the scroll backwards, just as you have to rewind a videotape.
