Interactivity and the problematic nature of a substantivist reading

Dr Marcus LeaningUniversity of Winchester

Paper presented at Interactivity: a symposium, 21st September 2011,University of Winchester

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.

Interactivity and digital media

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

Defining interactivity

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.

Interactivity as a quality of media

‘Amount 'of interactivity

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.

It’s not all roses…

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.

Not only but also…

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).

Mediation

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…

Tools to understand

A broad and critical approach to:◦ Understanding the impact of technology upon society and individuals ◦ Understanding the impact of society and individuals upon technology.

Substantivism

Technology Society and individuals

The story starts in early Modernity…

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.

Modernity – a mixed bag

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 understood to drive development – technology impacts and structures society (Winner, 1987).

Technology transforms…

The handloom gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill society with the industrial capitalist.

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)

The dark side…

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.

Critique of technology - Heidegger

Challenges the modernist ontological divide between humans and non-humans.

Bruno Latour’s critique of the Modernist Constitution

Humans,Culture

NatureNon-humansTechnology

Offers an alternate description of how we exist – in networks of actors (human) and Actants (non-human).

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.

Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-Closer (1988)

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.

Herbert Marcuse

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.

Cultural materialist view of technology

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.

Technology as text

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.

Oh No!

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.

Damaged goods…

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

Rehabilitation

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…

How to engage with interactive media…

Berry, D. M. (2011) The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age, London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Fuller, M. (2008) Software studies : a lexicon, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Giddens, A. (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press.Heidegger, M. (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, New York: Harper

Torchbooks.Jensen, J.F. (1998) ‘Interactivity: tracking a new concept in media and communication

studies’, Nordicom Review, 19(1), 185-204.Johnson, J. (Latour, B.) (1988), 'Mixing Humans and Nonhumans Together: The Sociology of a Door-

Closer', Social Problems, 35, 298-310.Manovich, L. (2001) The Language of New Media, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Marcuse, H ( 1972) Negations, Harmondsworth: Penguin University Books.Papert, S. (1987) Computer criticism versus technocentric thinking, Educational Researcher, 16(1),

24–28.Reinhard, C. (2011) ‘Studying the interpretive and physical aspects of interactivity: Revisiting

interactivity as a situated interplay of structure and agencies’ Communications, 36(3), 353-374.Rice, R. (1984) 'Development of New Media Research' in R. Rice ed. Communication, Research, and

Technology, pp 15-31, Beverly Hills: Sage.Williams, R. (1974).  Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana.Winner, L. (1987) Autonomous Technology: Technics-out -of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought,

Cambridge, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

References