Jill has a well-placed ironic comment to a department which claims to have cracked the "code of interactivity". The way, they announce it, you would think they had cracked the human genome code or something similar... Problem is, that within the Humanities tradition, you might come up with a good definition or explication of a concept, but it can never be objectively more "true" than other definitions. It can make more or less sense, or be more or less applicable, or more or less quoted by others, but such a thing as bullet-proof DEFINITION, you have to go to other sciences to find. Rather, perhaps a good definition of a good definition in the tradition I come from, is that a good definition is one which, while also making sense and being applicable, also gives raise to continued debate and further questions concerning the concept described, rather than being one which solves "a problem" once and for all.

Jill is kind enough to post to a little overview I once made of different people's definition of the concept. I have expanded this introduction and added a few more articles in the summary: this now forms the beginning of chapter 8 in my thesis. You can download it here. Comments welcome, but since I don't have a comment-box (yet), you will have to do it by mail :).
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:58