That is what interactive television was supposed to be about. If you just watch then you lean back, let the content wash over you when the calls to action appear though, you can lean forward, engage with the content.
It has not really been realised yet, the main reason I feel though is the wrong content has been targeted. The documentary is in fact the real arena for interactive television. These are complex narratives with strands that can take you off almost at tangents to the original thesis and then sneak you back to it, via a series of clever conceptual leaps and connections.
The interactive documentary is where you would want to add annotations, snip sections for further discussion (though these snippets would have to always link back to the orignal source). It should allow you to search and discover more background material or perhaps wonder why such material is not there to be found.
It would allow for discussion, possibly for argument. Television should not be passive. It is there in all of our lives, to reduce it to just the passive flickering screen is to accept an opiate and numb our minds. If television continues on this path then it needs to be fought against.
The documentary is the most obvious hook onto which to hang interactivity, to allow for spaces for the viewer to explore playfully the narratives and ideas.
Over time maybe drama will also be able to accept this but conceptually it is harder to accept a drama where you can explore it (at least in the context of television, video games even the most narratively complex at the moment are still emotionally weak compared to the best of drama).
Why am I talking about this now? Well for the last year I have been working with a number of people trying to realise a toolkit to make it easier to build interactive television applications. We are not quite there and I think that we have made a few wrong turns in the development process.
What we have done though is try to think a lot about the possible content. Maybe it is with documentary it is easy to find all the extra material that makes it easy to build an interactive application, to furnish the other routes with content that can be made available. Maybe it is an easy route but we live in a world where a power point presentation on global warming wins an Oscar, where documentaries that are created very much with a personal viewpoint and voice are very successful at the box office.
Whilst my employer (the BBC) seems to cut roles in the areas of News and Current Affairs in favour of big shiny floor shows, there is a thirst for content that stimulates the mind, that does not pacify it by regurgitating safe views in an echo chamber, reinforcing prejudice.
I think very soon tools to enable this will be online, allowing you to create not just mash-ups of content online but allow you to author paths, more depth and options into the content you would put up there. How will it be delivered, well most likely over broadband to you computer at first but with a bit of thought, the interaction can be in a way that would allow you to watch it on your television, with others. To discuss and investigate alone or in a group, to share your views and takes with others online.
The future of interactive television does not really lie with the big broadcasters, to deliver it over the air is too costly. To deliver it over the web makes more sense and we will be able to interact with various devices and new 'cool' technologies.
Yet at the heart of it will be the desire to tell a story, in a way that will help the audience engage with that story by bringing them into the narrative and allowing them the opportunity to explore, play and learn.
