Interactive Realism

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.

This book provides philosophers of science with new theoretical resources for making their own contributions to the scientific realism debate. Readers will encounter old and new arguments for and against scientific realism. They will also be given useful tips for how to provide influential formulations of scientific realism and antirealism. Finally, they will see how scientific realism relates to scientific progress, scientific understanding, mathematical realism, and scientific practice.

"This book focuses on the study and application of human computer interaction principles in the design of online education"--Provided by publisher.

The present volume is an excellent introduction to the study of human nonverbal communication, including interaction and gesture, for students and specialists in other disciplines, as well as a convenient compilation of significant contributions to the field for experts. Part 1 includes four articles, the import of which is primarily theoretical or methodological. Part II comprises eight articles in which instances of interaction are examined and attempts are made to explain how the behavior that can be observed in them functions in the interaction process. Part III presents six articles on what may broadly be referred to as 'gesture'. These articles deal with specific actions, mostly of the forelimbs, which are usually deemed to have specific communicational significance. In an introductory chapter, the volume editor, Adam Kendon, not only examines the various issues raised by the eighteen papers but also shows the relevance of each article as a contribution to the development of an understanding of how human visible behavior functions communicatively.

This book argues that the internal dynamics of states affect their foreign policies, as well as the nature of the international system.

Recent shifts in new literacy studies have expanded definitions of text, reading/viewing, and literacy itself. The inclusion of non-traditional media forms is essential, as texts beyond written words, images, or movement across a screen are becoming ever more prominent in media studies. Included in such non-print texts are interactive media forms like computer or video games that can be understood in similar, though distinct, terms as texts that are read by their users. This book examines how people are socially, culturally, and personally changing as a result of their reading of, or interaction with, these texts. This work explores the concept of ergodic ontogeny: the mental development resulting from interactive digital media play experiences causing change in personal identity.