Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace (review)

Daniel Downes's Interactive Realism: The Poetics of Cyberspace is a succinct academic introduction to a popular cultural topic that should be highly familiar to all readers. Raising many interesting and important questions, in the end Downes offers too little critical-theoretical reflection on his subject while relying overmuch on jargon. Another chapter or two would be welcome, as the book consists largely of critical synopses of the canonical texts in the fields of virtual reality, cyber theory, and new media studies. The six brief chapters move from an overview of the early years of cyber theory – the mid-1990s – to a critique of the 'transformative view' of new media: a catch-all term for rampant techno-utopianism. Downes usefully clarifies the often conflated distinction between the Internet and cyberspace, defining the Internet as a 'technological infrastructure' and 'communication system,' while cyberspace is a new kind of 'imaginative space,' a new kind of 'environment for human exchange' made possible by digital technology.

It is not always easy, however, to distinguish Downes's own argument from the survey of 'traditional media theory.' While the title is explicated in the introduction and conclusion, the key term 'interactive realism' is under-defined as 'an approach to studying new media that emphasizes both the linguistic and the non-linguistic importance of cultural artifacts like the computer in the construction of social reality,' and, further, as an exploration of 'the metaphors and images used to represent and model social reality.' The second half of Downes's title, 'the poetics of cyberspace,' denotes 'the collection of metaphors and representations that organize, influence, and constrain our thinking in this new communicative environment.' Frustratingly, the highly suggestive conflation of the technological, aesthetic, social-ethical, and epistemological implicit in the notion of 'interactive realism' is never fleshed out. Downes's frankly acknowledged social constructivist approach is certainly justified, given the proliferation of new technologies, media and cultural forms, new meanings and use values, and resulting new identities, with which consumers are confronted every day. Downes clarifies at the outset that his focus is not the Internet but cyberspace; therefore he does not dwell on what might seem the obvious target in this context: 'the new media economy that threatens to shape reality into a Time-Warner-Microsoft World.' We still need properly critical studies of this aspect of contemporary life that avoid the prescriptive post-Marxist analysis typical of Cultural Studies, and that exploit a knowledge of the relevant technology to pursue subtler, more open-minded investigations of new, complex social realities and the measure of agency the average consumer-citizen wields within them.

Downes obviously possesses this knowledge, but this is not that book. A silent contradiction emerges in his critique of the 'transformative view' of new media, in which he takes sides against a kind of Platonic-Cartesian metaphysical tradition that is itself the ground of the society of the spectacle whose investigation he avoids. As Downes puts it (in a strange verb tense), 'we play inside Plato's cave, yet we can take pride and pleasure in the fact that we can actively participate in its construction in the first place.' While true, this also occludes the possibility of outright escape from the confines of such ancient metaphors. In Henri Lefebvre's words, social reality under late capitalism can be thought as 'an emptiness full of signs' – and if there's a better definition of cyberspace, I'd like to hear it.