Early Visions of Interactivity: The In(put)s and Out(put)s of Real-Time Computing

Analyzing technical and other texts of the late 1960s and early 1970s, this paper explores the early discourses of interactivity—including writings by Charles Csuri, J.C.R. Licklider, Michael Noll, Ivan Sutherland and other notable figures—via the intersecting fields of computing and the arts, with a particular emphasis on the dynamic (in this instance, a disjuncture) between visionary ideas and the technical preconditions necessary for their realization.