Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace

By Daniel Downes, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005, 192 pages, paperback, $34.95. Reviewed by Melanie Rachael Beacroft in the August 2005 issue.

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In the modern age, understanding the reflexive nature of our interactions with technology is a vital element in unlocking the secrets of the human condition. In Interactive Realism, Downes seeks to chart the modern equivalent of the fourteenth century Inventio Fortunata, the account of travels into unknown lands, seen in this instance as the iconic and imaginary landscapes of cyberspace. (p xi) Against this backdrop, Downes 'raises critical questions about the extent to which we construct, rather than discover, the social world and the importance of communication for this process'. (p 1) While broadly situated in the field of social constructivism, Downes uses elements of social theory, media studies, cultural studies, philosophy, psychology and political theory to examine the environment of cyberspace and the ways in which we use it as a site of exchange. To do this, Downes makes an early distinction between cyberspace and the Internet, describing the Internet as a technological infrastructure, contrasted with 'the imaginative space we call cyberspace', (p xiii) which is not only used but experienced. Downes asks, 'how then do we begin to investigate the specificity of cyberspace as a process of both communication and social construction?'. (p xiii) The answer lies in the use of 'interactive realism', a process by which we can unravel the complexities of the construction of society by 'exploring the metaphors and images used to represent and model social reality'. (p xiii) This has become of great importance following the recognition that 'the sense of mediated reality created by cyberspace is ... one of the key realities of our society'. (p 7)

Throughout the chapters of the book, Downes explores a number of metaphoric themes that reveal an underlying tension in our relationship with technology. These are referred to as the 'poetics of cyberspace', which are 'the collection of metaphors and representations that organize, influence, and constrain our thinking in this new communicative environment'. (p xiv) For Downes, use of metaphor is crucial as it 'is a fundamental tool in the construction of social reality'. (p 15) As such, he examines community, experience, place, language, identity, and transformation through a metaphoric lens. As a result, Downes produces a framework that seeks to conceptualise the construction of cyberspace and the implications for the construction of social reality. However in doing so, he also examines claims that cyberspace presents the possibility of a new form of utopia, 'a sort of digitopia that might be an imaginary space that resolves differences and embodies hope in liberal tolerance' (p 104) by perpetuating the 'myth of communication without the mess of bodies in conflict'. (p 124) However, reluctant to reduce the complexities of human life to a single set of variables or any single theory, Downes instead argues for Foucault's model of heterotopias, 'the characteristic spaces of the modern world' that describe 'the impossible space in which fragments of disparate discursive orders are merely juxtaposed, without any attempt to reduce them to a common order. (p 129) Heterotopias are a useful description because they remain 'real' spaces of interaction that describe multiple domains and their coexistence. (p 122) As such, they are able to pay more justice to the intricacies of embodied human experience, fulfilling Downes' vision for a multidimensional theory of interactive realism.

While Downes' main aim is to produce a theoretical model of the construction of social reality in a digital context, the implications of interactive realism are much more far reaching. Perhaps the most striking of these unintended consequences is Downes' theorisation of identity and the resulting discussion of the importance of the public realm. The link between identity and Downes' central thesis becomes evident as he argues that the sharing of individual experiences and the subsequent building of group consciousness is the process by which a group constructs social reality. (p 83) Further to this, cyberspace allows 'participants a rare form of freedom' in which virtual community members 'can experiment with identity' (p 85) as they are assured a degree of anonymity. But, while acknowledging that cyber communication 'is detached from the intersubjective play of bodies that structures the proximal-social realm', (p 85) Downes is adamant in his claims that theories of cyberspatial interaction that deny the role of the body in generating experience are unsatisfactory. (p 125) Further to this, Downes asserts that embodied experience is a crucial element of social constructivism as we 'relate personal experience to the body as the basis of our cognitive and linguistic categories'. (p 13) In this way, Downes resists moves to a post structuralist understanding of cyberspace by recognising that 'while technological extensions challenge our sense of self in a variety of ways', (p 70) they do not necessitate an entire reconstruction of the existing social reality.

While Interactive Realism sits squarely in the field of social constructivism by providing a means of understanding cyberspace as a social phenomenon, the rich theoretical content of Downes' work means that it is not easily placed into a single category, and it crosses disciplinary boundaries with ease and fluidity. Downes is adept at situating his work in the context of others, providing intense theoretical critique and analysis on one hand, while on the other, using practical and pop culture examples to illustrate his points. Overall, Downes' book is both challenging and rewarding, producing a highly original theory that will be of interest to readers from all disciplines. Not only does it attempt to unpack the complexities of cyberspace and the Internet, it examines with exceptional clarity and insight the difficult relationship between humans and the technology they create. By Downes' own admission, 'the digital is not a separate realm', (p 143) and as such it provides fertile ground for understanding not only social reality, but political, cultural and economic realities as well.

Citation

• Melanie Rachael Beacroft. 'Review: Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace by Daniel Downes' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), August 2005. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 19 June 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• It is commonplace in our digitized world to think that technology is the primary agent of psychological and social change. In Interactive Realism Daniel Downes argues that it continues to be people who construct social reality through their interactions, critiquing the tranformative turn in media studies.
  
  Distinguishing between the Internet, a communication system, and cyberspace, an environment for human exchange, the author provides a framework for exploring the metaphors and images used in cyberspace to represent and model social reality. He clarifies how these symbolic interactions are linked to the technologies used to create, store, and transmit them and to their social context.
  
  Drawing on examples from digital games, web design, film, and photography, the author shows how individual experiences are calibrated by technology and how digital communication contributes to broader processes such as community building and public memory. Downes articulates a nuanced form of media ecology that does not focus on a single cause of change but rather on the relationships between embodied experience, communication systems, and representations. Interactive Realism establishes a new method for understanding the importance of digital media to the construction of social reality.