GC: n
CT: In computers, interactivity is the dialog that occurs between a human being (or possibly another live creature) and a computer program. (Programs that run without immediate user involvement are not interactive; they’re usually called batch or background programs.) Games are usually thought of as fostering a great amount of interactivity. However, order entry applications and many other business applications are also interactive, but in a more constrained way (offering fewer options for user interaction).
On the World Wide Web, you not only interact with the browser (the Web application program) but also with the pages that the browser brings to you. The implicit invitations called hypertext that link you to other pages provide the most common form of interactivity when using the Web (which can be thought of as a giant, interconnected application progam).
In addition to hypertext, the Web (and many non-Web applications in any computer system) offer other possibilities for interactivity. Any kind of user input, including typing commands or clicking the mouse, is a form of input. Displayed images and text, printouts, motion video sequences, and sounds are output forms of interactivity.
S: http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/interactivity (last access: 23 December 2014)
N: 1. From interactive (adj.), 1832, from interact, probably on model of active. Related: Interactivity.
2. A data processing context in which the computer system and the user work together to solve problems.
3. Usually the interactivity consists of the software prompting the user for information which is then processed in a predeterminated way. Virtually all computer graphics systems are interactive.
S: 1. OED – http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=interactivity&searchmode=none (last access: 23 December 2014). 2 & 3. TERMIUMPLUS.
SYN: interactiveness (Computer Science, Internet and Virtual Reality)
S: GDT
