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one, which is itself a whole, with all the associated formal and structural
characteristics. The upper limit of this recursion is supplied, in part, by the
notion of magnitude (something of a size that can be perceived as a whole)
and in part by the context(s) of activity. While working on this topic, for
instance, all of the actions I undertake (and all of the applications I use)
during a session with the computer are typically related to the activity of
authoring the topic. To the extent that the operating environment supplies
a consistent context (its “interface”), consistent “tools” (like cut and paste),
and some transportability (e.g., the ability to bring a Photoshop image into
a Microsoft Word fi le), the system reinforces this sense of wholeness.
Contrariwise, I may simply get up in the morning, boot up the com-
puter, and diddle around with various tasks: e-mail correspondence, jour-
nal entries, designing party invitations, or what have you.
The artifi cial
bracketing events of turning the computer on and off are not equivalent to the
beginning and end of a whole action; rather, there are several “whole actions” be-
ing pursued concurrently.
The possibility of multiple “whole actions” being
undertaken in a multitasking fashion is not unique to computing; the same
phenomenon occurs in the typical day of any worker, artist, or homemaker,
and it is quite familiar to the sort of reader who has several topics going
at once, reading science fi ction in bed and journal articles in the bathroom.
The point here is not to assert that there is necessarily a single “whole action” be-
ing constructed every time that a person uses a computer, but rather to suggest
that the quality of wholeness has contextual, structural, and formal characteristics.
The multitasking “user” may not experience whole actions. This may
be due to the intent of the “user”; that is, whether or not the actions being
performed in various applications or environments are related in some way
to a common intent. Within a particular application, especially in games,
the player may not experience a whole action when there are parallel plots
or levels unless connections are designed into the game. Why do we experi-
ence frustration when we watch a fi lm or TV show with parallel plots that
do not converge or at least have some relation to each other? We expect a
whole action. Having two separate actions (plots) intercut does not satisfy.
We seek wholeness in dramatic experience. To graduate from one “level”
of a game into another with different affordances and goals and without
obvious connection to the previous levels does not satisfy. Likewise, action
games that can never be “won” may leave us lacking the satisfaction of
a whole experience with beginning, middle, and end. In an unpublished
letter to Alan Kay at Atari Labs, science fi ction author Harlan Ellison ob-
served that it is not possible to meet that goal in many games if the bad
