Information Interaction Beyond HCI

Abstract

HCI might well be poised to break out of its mould, as defined by its first half-century history, and to redefine itself in another mould that is at once more abstract and wider in scope. In the process, it would redefine its very name, HCI becoming a subset of the larger field of information interaction (II). This potential transformation is what is described here. At this point in our technological era, we are in the process of symbolically modeling all aspects of reality such that our interactions with those aspects of the world around us that are most important are more digitally mediated. We are beginning to inhabit information environments and to interact ever more with artifacts, events, and processes that are pure information. This is the world of II, and what this means for HCI is what is examined here. The presentation has a largely abstract character to it. Indeed, it seeks to reframe our discussion of the phenomenon of interaction under study in such a way as to go beyond the pitfalls of concrete problems usually associated with the field. By stepping back from the usual issues of concern and from the usual way of categorizing the elements of the field (Helander et al., 2000; Jacko & Sears, 2003), the goal is to contextualize HCI within a broader, necessarily philosophical plane of concern in order to look at it afresh and thereby see where it might be headed. The direction proposed is decidedly more englobing, more abstract, and, hence, more theoretical in its analysis.