Key ideas presented in the text Interactive Realism by Daniel Downes.

1. interactive realism / cyberspace as social phenomenon
Downes, Daniel, Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace. Montréal. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2005. Print.
Dual specificity of Cyberspace
1. Technological Infrastructure
2. Interaction & Immersion
Procedural, Participatory, Spatial, Encyclopedic
INTERACTIVE REALISM investigates the significance of new technologies
…by exploring the opportunities they offer for new experience.
METAPHYSICAL REALISM* CONSTRUCTIVISM
< Meaning is discovered Meaning is produced, created >
*PROBLEM: Assumes the structure of rationality transcends structures of bodily experience.

2. interactive realism / cyberspace as social phenomenon
Downes, Daniel, Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace. Montréal. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2005. Print.
EMBODIMENT
We relate personal experience to the body as the basis of our cognitive and linguistic categories
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
The experience of self exists in the ongoing interchange w/others in the construction of social realities.
TECHNOLOGY & THE TRANSFORMATIVE TURN:
Common assumption that technology dramatically restructures people and societies.
> The effects of technology & their scope are unanticipated <
> We are changed not by technology but by experiences <
MEDIA ECOLOGY proposes that the dominant technology of
communication in a society functions as the transformative agent.
Oral tradition > printing press > electronic media
Central to all these theories is a critique of technology (ideological, feminist, and
culturalist) all of which see technology as a totalizing force.

3. interactive realism / cyberspace as social phenomenon
Downes, Daniel, Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace. Montréal. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2005. Print.
Michael Heim argues that changes in the human psyche are the result of
changes in the technology of writing.
Mark Poser’s media ecology views historical periods not by modes of production
but by means of symbolic exchange.
- Broadcast model of media
- Two-way de-centered information exchange
Pre-mediated Age First Media Age Second Media Age
one to one > one to many > many to many/all to all
Both share the notion that computers are disjunctive to our relationship with the world.
The perception of technology as a veil pulled over the eyes is linked to a deeper
suspicion of the body as the medium by which we experience the world.

4. interactive realism / cyberspace as social phenomenon
Downes, Daniel, Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace. Montréal. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2005. Print.
THE PROSTHETIC OTHER
Humans are simply biological mechanisms that will eventually be replaced by a
more adaptive species of intelligent machines.
Exhibit A: Intelligence can be coded in computer programs.
Exhibit B: The computer is the agent of human displacement in evolution.
CYBORGS or THE ARTIFACTUAL SELF
By incorporating the power of technology into the human we can attempt to
avoid our eventual replacement by powerful machines.
“One of the striking things about a virtual world system…is that the
distinction between your body and the rest of the world is slippery”
~ Jaron Lanier

5. interactive realism / cyberspace as social phenomenon
Downes, Daniel, Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace. Montréal. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2005. Print.
Our existence as embodied beings within the world is the natural
and necessary condition of all human knowledge.
The authenticity of an image is always socially constructed and reinforced. A
representation of the real owes its objective appearance not to its agreement
with the very reality of things but rather “to conformity with rules which define
its syntax within its social use.”
Perception theories that consider images as reductions of the world…are fantasies of control.
Cyberspace challenges the fixed moment of the photograph; it is
a world of image using representations as working models.

6. interactive realism / cyberspace as social phenomenon
Downes, Daniel, Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace. Montréal. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2005. Print.
INTERACTIVE REALISM: THE ICONIC LANDSCAPES OF CYBERSPACE
THE HISTORY OF REPRESENTATIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF PLACE: ‘Landscape’ refers to an
ensemble of material & social practices and their symbolic representations; a social product that
embodies a point of view. Images of landscape are visual transcriptions of social practices w/in
geographic boundaries. Methods of constructing landscape reflect & reinforce sense of place & self.
It is possible to think of cyberspace as an iconic landscape for social interaction. Assumptions:
that space is socially constructed, that technology generalizes communication, that technology is an
evolutionary agent, that interactions can be detached from the proximal realm through the application
of global telecommunication systems, and that through technological means a ‘perfect’ society might
be achieved.
Problems created by this perspective: a digital utopia wherein the Internet solves all of societies ills,
and the opposing dystopian view wherein technology will destroy us.
http://www.explore-science-fiction-movies.com/cyborgs.html + http://www.androidworld.com/prod07.htm + http://www.feministsf.org/bibs/vidfilm.html
“the narratives of any social group help constitute the reality in which they function as a collective.”
“Mediated experience has come to replace participation in events beyond the proximal realm.”
Heim “maintains that bodily existence stands at the front of personal identity and individuality. Both law and morality
recognize the physical body as an absolute boundary establishing and protecting any privacy. The computer
network simply brackets the physical presence…by omitting or simulating corporeal immediacy.” He suggests w/o f2f
communication, which “supports a long-term warmth and loyalty as well as a sense of obligation” ethics will languish.

7. interactive realism / cyberspace as social phenomenon
Downes, Daniel, Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace. Montréal. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2005. Print.
BUILDING HETEROTOPIA
Downes suggests “digitization signifies a new materialization of communication. This new
materialization is neither universalizing nor abstract. It recalibrates, rather than replaces the human
body in relation to communication.”
Social construction he argues is about “creating and maintaining a sense of common reality – a social
narrative of text, image, audio, and video collected in a vast interactive transcript.”
In a technological society, he suggests, it is innovation not structures of thought that concerns the
social transcript. An optimist, he disagrees with the notion that a single culture is represented by the
social imaginary.
He pushes back against the Baudrillard and Vattimo by theorizing memory not as primarily functioning
to preserving the past, but as “the process of internalizing what a society deems worthy of recall,”
which is adapted to “enrich and manipulate the present.”
His vision of cyberspace as heterotopian cityscape reflects the reality that is today’s
lifestreaming…”the impossible space in which fragments of disparate discursive orders are merely
juxtaposed without any attempt to reduce them to a common order.” (129)