paper on substantivist reading of interactivity. Given at Interactivity symposia, University of Winchester, 2011

1. Dr Marcus Leaning
University of Winchester
Paper presented at
Interactivity: a symposium,
21st September 2011,
University of Winchester

2.  Considerable literature on Interactivity –
intrinsic to digital media.
 Rice (1984) interactivity is what defines
digital media.
 Manovich (2001) cannot talk of digital media
without the concept - cannot conceptualise
digital media without the idea of interactivity.

3.  Jenson (1998) notes its not a fixed concept and
different disciplines understand it in different
ways.
 He notes the current use draws upon:
◦ Sociology - interpersonal interaction
◦ Communication studies more correctly literary / cultural
theory – PM theories of the changing nature of text
◦ Informatics - field of HCI

4.  Dominant view is that it is a ‘quality’ or
characteristic possessed by media forms to a
greater or lesser degree (Reinhard, 2011):
 Definition: Interactivity is a quality of media
technology that allows for control over the
flow of information and the selection of
content presented by the media.
‘Amount 'of interactivity

5.  Important to realise that interactivity is not
‘freedom’.
 Interactivity controls our engagement with a text,
points us in certain directions, prohibits others.
 Better to think of engaging with an interactive media
as entering a maze - you can go in any direction
you want as long as it is not blocked.

6.  Interactivity can also be understood as
communication between people.
 Two meanings here:
◦ ‘Classical’ media mediate content - technology
mediates us.
◦ ‘Architectural’ view – the interactive technology
itself is a design and communicates meaning.
 The issue becomes interesting comes when
we examine the degree to which a technology
represents or stands in for another human.

7.  Interactive media do not simply mediate content (as
old media do).
 Interactive technology is itself a mediation of the will
of the designer.
 We are in ‘dialogue’ with the designer or producer of
the media technology.
 The decisions they make in coding, in software
design are very important and structure our
experience.
 The form of an interactive media is itself a ‘text’ as
much as the content it delivers.
 Emerging field of ‘computer criticism’ (Papert, 1987)
‘software’ or ‘code’ studies (Berry, 2011).

8.  To understand the dual nature of interactivity:
◦ That it both structures our experience and gives us
some (impression, at least) of control
◦ It is itself a text that requires examination
 Various social-psychological attempts to explore
interactivity (Reinhard, 2011) – individualist,
cognitive or biological in explanatory orientation.
 Here I want to draw upon a social theory of
technology.
 However perhaps this theory needs some
rehabilitation…

9.  A broad and critical approach to:
◦ Understanding the impact of technology upon society and
individuals
◦ Understanding the impact of society and individuals upon
technology.
Society and
Technology
individuals
The story starts in early Modernity…

10.  Modernity more than a
drive to rationality.
 As well as the positivist,
teleological emphasis
there also existed the
counter weight of:
◦ the veneration of nature,
◦ Romanticism,
◦ the emergence of the
transcendental-self tied
with nationalism and sub
nationalism;
◦ and a whole plethora of
decidedly anti-‘modern’
tendencies.

11.  Technology, as the
application of science,
was understood in certain
ways in Modernity.
 Indeed technology is
considered by many as an
intrinsic part of
modernity (Giddens,
1990).
 Technology was The handloom gives you
understood to drive society with the feudal
development – lord; the steam mill
technology impacts and society with the industrial
structures society capitalist.
(Winner, 1987).

12.  At the same time there
was a reaction based
upon an economic (real
or not) and ‘spiritual’
rejection of technology
combined with a sense
of nostalgia.
 Luddism - initially an
economic fear - come
to mean a more
cultural fear
 Arts and crafts
movement (late C19th)

13.  This critique of technology saw
technology as something bad and
alienating of humanity from its
integration with nature.
 Became more formalised in
Heidegger’s work esp. his
‘Question Concerning
Technology’ (1977) where he saw
modern technology as deeply
problematic as we are given over
to it and become part of a
‘system’.
 Modern physics based technology
is inherently different older
practical technology.
 Philosophical critique -
technology itself is problematic
for what it does to us as humans.

14.  Challenges the modernist ontological divide
between humans and non-humans.
Humans, Nature
Culture Non-humans
Technology
Offers an alternate description of how we exist – in networks of
actors (human) and Actants (non-human).

15.  Jim Johnson / Latour examines the micro
nature of the impact of technology upon
action.
 Sees technology as functioning as our
‘Lieutenant’ – we give it instructions and it
carries them out and corrals the freedom or
controls the actions of others.
 Adds a sociological sophistication to the
spiritual anti-technology of Luddism.
 But both seem to lack a bit of a cultural
critique.

16.  Frankfurt School Marxist
scholar, Negations (1968)
argued that technology is
not something deployed in
the service of a political
ideology but is essentially
political at core.
 Thus politics is not added
to technology but is their
in technology’s creation
through its design and
manufacture.

17.  In seeing technology in this manner Marcuse
mirrors the Cultural Materialism of thinkers
such as Williams (1974) and cultural
anthropologists.
 Cultural Materialism sees cultural texts as
deeply imbued with the historical situation of
their production, they carry within them a
strong imprint of that situation and it is
possible to read a society’s culture from its
material artefacts.

18.  One of Marcuse’s (many) points is that
technology is the same, it carries cultural values.
 However, because technology causes change and
transforms society, we must be careful.
 If we use technology to drive social change we
automatically import the cultural values of the
society that produced the technology.
 In bringing about a new society with a new social
form we are ‘staining’ the new society with the
cultural values of the originating culture.

19.  Said Pol Pot.
 If we use foreign capitalist
running-dog technology we will
simply create another capitalist
running-dog society!
 The only option is to go back to
Year Zero and start again,
recreate technology from
scratch in a socialist utopia.
 We had best kill all the teaches,
doctors, engineers, intellectuals
and people with glasses so as
to rid ourselves of capitalist
infection.

20.  The adoption of
substantivist principles by
various Maoist
revolutionary movements
and the subsequent
horrific brutality
performed by them when
the principles are taken to
extremes has perhaps
damaged the substantivist
approach to technology.
 Not terribly popular today.

21.  However, I would argue that substantivism
with its double edge of enquiry – examining
both the impact and origin of a technology
offers a valuable lens through which we can
examine interactive media.
 While we often theorize the power of various
technologies to bring about change we rarely
integrate this into accounts of technology’s
history.
 Latour’s work partly did this but could benefit
from a cultural materialist turn

22.  Proposal for a ‘cultural’ or substantive
critique of interactive media - not just
content but technical form.
 Interactive media needs to be examined not
only as a representational form but as a
further structur(al/ing) system.
 Substantivism as a underpining rationale for
semiotics of performative action…

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