Interactive Media for Sustainability

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. Chapter 1. Mediation

   Roy Bendor

   Abstract

   This chapter introduces the book’s aims, themes, and approach. Motivated by Marshall McLuhan’s observation that the speed of technological innovation condemns us to live “a way ahead of our thinking,” the chapter reviews previous attempts to articulate the entanglement of sustainability and technology, presents an initial definition of interactive media, and suggests a framework for understanding the specific ways in which interactivity serves as a form of mediation. The chapter concludes by outlining the book’s structure.

3. Chapter 2. Behavior

   Roy Bendor

   Abstract

   This chapter describes the design and use of interactive media aimed at closing the “attitude-behavior gap” by influencing the behaviors of their users. The chapter draws from contemporary work in cognitive science and behavioral psychology and surveys a wide variety of persuasive interactions with varying degrees of prescriptiveness—from “seducing” users to engaging them with what B.F. Skinner calls a “technology of behavior.” The image of sustainability that emerges from persuasive uses of interactive media is of a delicate balance between human and nonhuman interests, one that can only be restored by inculcating more sustainable, or less unsustainable, behaviors.

4. Chapter 3. Reason

   Roy Bendor

   Abstract

   This chapter focuses on the design and use of interactive media to scaffold their users’ understanding of sustainability. The chapter traces the influence of concepts developed in complex systems theory on the design of sustainability games and simulations, and asks about the implications of using computational assemblages to represent and act on socio-natural systems. The image of sustainability that emerges from these media and the synoptic interactions they provide is of a complex problem that could be solved, or at least managed, by applying scientific methods and reasoning.

5. Chapter 4. Experience

   Roy Bendor

   Abstract

   This chapter describes the design and use of immersive media to evoke resonant, emotionally stirring experiences of sustainability. The analysis draws from phenomenological conceptions of presence to illustrate how virtual reality (VR) games and interactive installations create situations that allow users to experience sustainability (and unsustainability) in embodied, affective ways. Through the perspective provided by the resonant interactions such media evoke, sustainability is seen as felt embeddedness, a field of interrelated phenomena that need to be brought closer to users’ everyday life.

6. Chapter 5. Imagination

   Roy Bendor

   Abstract

   This chapter focuses on interactive media that promote imaginative engagement with sustainability. By deploying what I call “worldmaking interactions,” the interactive media discussed in this chapter seek to cultivate their users’ capacity to imagine and pursue alternative social, scientific, and political configurations. Sustainability emerges from such media as an imaginary, a means by which deeply held beliefs about the world can be made visible and legible, can be evaluated and perhaps even transformed.

7. Chapter 6. Refractions

   Roy Bendor

   Abstract

   This chapter discusses sustainability first as a “contested concept” and then as a discursive field. Based on the accounts given in previous chapters, the four refracted meanings of sustainability are critically evaluated based on three elements: complexity, futurity, and agency. Complexity because sustainability involves a dense network of human and nonhuman actors, material and cultural imperatives whose interactions often lead to unanticipated, emergent consequences. Futurity because from its very beginning, sustainability sought to shift human temporal horizons, considerations, and responsibilities from the “here and now” to the future. And agency because sustainability implies that humans have the capacity to intervene and make the world a better place.

8. Backmatter