**Abstract**

An important aspect of ICT, identified 25 years ago within the user interface design community, is dramatic interaction: The deep engagement promoted by digital technologies that can be better explored by adopting a conceptual framework traditionally used to describe and study theater. This framework offers a wider perspective that demonstrates a deep connection between the qualities of our hyper-connected era and drama as an art of representing action. These concepts transcend the prevailing technical mentality when addressing ICT. They imply that we all participate as "interactors" on the "onlife stage" where other agents (either humans or computer-controlled) are also present. By promoting deep experiences, the hyper-connected environment in which we live in, changes our metaphysics and self-conception. A dramatic framework can explain the power of ICT and help us work towards the development of an equilibrium both personally and collectively: When used to enrich our experiences and extend our agencies, ICT can be considered as an enhancement of reality. When, on the other side, they are used to promote a false reality experience, they should be rectified. Important ethical and anthropological concerns are framed on the same philosophical ground as ancient drama. Ancient drama was a major pillar of Ancient Democracy and served the need to educate citizens with empathy in order to participate as responsible actors in decision making processes.

**Keywords:** performative turn, computers as theater, onlife manifesto, dramatic interaction, hyper-connectivity

## **1. Introduction**

The Onlife Manifesto [1] emphasizes the need to reengineer key concepts in our societies in order to enable a deeper understanding of the hyper-connected reality in which we all live today. This chapter addresses this need for new conceptual frameworks to guide our minds and our actions in appropriating and governing ICT starting from an important aspect of computing identified 28 years ago within the user interface design community: The dramatic nature of the interaction between humans and computer agents, either software agents or more tangible ones such as robots and AI-enabled machines and devices. To better understand the dramatic nature of these interactions a conceptual framework traditionally used to describe

and study theater is really illuminating and opens up an interesting exploration of important implications on issues identified by The Onlife Initiative [1]. This framework has special focus on the so called whole action, i.e. human activity that is complete in terms of goals pursued, loaded with meaning and can be logically justified and interpreted. Whole action in theater is related to the concept of plot and subsumes notions of form and genre and the patterns that define them. In the case of dramatic interactions between humans and computer agents, whole action is collaboratively shaped by the designer of the computer agents and the interacting humans, thus varying in each interactive session.

Decades ago scholars and researchers in social sciences have argued that people act towards things based on the meaning that they attribute to these things and to the relation of themselves with these things [2]. These meanings are grounded in social interaction and modified through interpretation [3]. These symbolic interactions are transformed, through the use of ICT, into dramatic interactions employing concepts and approaches that have initially emerged within the context of theater. In particular, in a seminal book within the Human Computer Interaction domain that was initially published in 1993, Brenda Laurel [4] argues that a model based in Aristotelian Poetics can explain the deep engagement promoted by digital technologies and the emotional experiences triggered by computer agents [5].

Laurel's book has received much attention in the last years. This is related to the fact that her ideas, although quite futuristic when initially introduced, are very well suited with the advances of input and output devices in Human Computer Interaction: Nowadays we often interact with a computer through devices other than the usual screen, keyboard and mouse. These new modalities including mobile devices, voice-operated assistants etc., make it more evident for us to understand today what Brenda Laurel first tried to show in the early '90s: That digital technologies are better understood and better designed if we adopt a conceptual framework that is based on theater where we frame ourselves as "interactors" in relation to "agents" that could be either humans behind the software we use or fully automated agents based on sophisticated algorithms. These "agents" can take forms that resemble living entities, thanks to the plethora of sensors, actuators and more complex input/output devices, thus blurring the distinction between human, machine and nature, as underlined by The Onlife Initiative [1].

This blurring of the living and the non-living is in a way the result of the human tendency to anthropomorphizing whatever things or entities we interact with especially if we attribute to these things or entities the qualities that are found in theatrical characters: capability to think and pursue goals. From the one hand this could be considered as a threatening situation. From another point of view, it is a way by which we humans can find meaning in our interactions and orient ourselves more effectively in complex situations involving multiple acting agents. The key to distinguish between these two extremes is more or less related to the awareness we humans have when we do such anthropomorphizing, i.e. if it is a mindful or mindless act [6].

The blurring between the virtual and the real [1] is complementary with the above and can be explained within the conceptual framework of dramatic interactions enabled with ICT by employing the key concept of engagement: the capability of ICT to establish frameworks governed by causal relationships that can be explored, understood and exploited in order to make decisions and initiate actions. This should be managed in an effective way giving to the human interactor as much control as possible to decide when, where and how she/he will be engaged with the virtual and when, where and how she/he will detach from it, or more accurately where and how she/he will move from one virtual context to another. Consider for example a situation that one suspends a Skype meeting to use a car to go to another

#### *Onlife Drama: Towards a Reference Framework for Hyper-Connected Activity DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.100238*

place and continue the meeting face-to-face. Using a car entails a number of embedded systems such as the ones that control the function of the engine of the car, the flow of fuel, the brakes and the steering of the car. Consequently, the drive to another place is an experience that is in many aspects equally technology-powered as a Skype conference. Consequently, hyper-connected experiences call for a new conceptual interpretation of humans as actors in multiple stages each one with its unique characteristics and affordances.

Laurel is not the first to identify the power of theater as a model for mindful human-computer activity. After a short summary of her ideas, this chapter traces back the influence theater has in social sciences and humanities. A common route is found in the ideas of Nietzsche in one of his first works, namely "The Birth of Tragedy" [7]. There, the German philosopher reconstructs the social and political context that gave birth to ancient drama, especially tragedy, in Ancient Athens and draws important lessons that could be valid for modern societies in terms of pursuing a synthesis between the so called "Dionysian" (the power of emotions and instincts) with the "Apollonian" (the power of reason and logical thinking).

Hyper-connectivity presents an important opportunity to achieve a Dionysian— Apollonian synthesis, like the synthesis achieved, according to Nietzsche [7], in Ancient Athens. A synthesis that is also related to patterns of "dramatic interaction" in public life and especially in political life as described by Mackenzie and Porter [8] who identify what they call Method of Dramatization that links drama to political theory. This method, founded on the philosophical work of Deleuze [9], aims at determining the quality of ideas and concepts by bringing them to life in a way that is similar to the way that characters are brought to life through a playscript. In this respect, the approach presented here addresses some important constraints initially posed by Laurel [4] regarding the applicability of her theatrical approach to application domains of ICT beyond entertainment. The conclusion is that this approach, as enriched and extended following the thought of philosophers like Nietzsche, Deleuze and many scholars from social and human sciences, provides a generic framework equally applicable to all application domains of ICT addressing issues of the new reality codified with the term "hyper-connectivity" in the Onlife Manifesto [1].
