Friday, February 6, 2009

The Media Equation by Byron Reeves & Clifford Nass

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Reeves and Nass attempt to prove the idea that media = real life (The Media Equation) in this book. They set up a bunch of experiments that go about showing how people treat various forms of media (computers, TV's, etc.) like the real life things they are attempting to emulate. They address many human behaviors such as manners, personality, emotion, social roles, and form. They provide very compelling studies on human behavior with media, many of which the results are counter-intuitive.

The underlining question that this book is trying to answer is a philosophical one, "If you treat something like real life does that make it real life?". Reeves and Nass say yes and they go about demonstrating how people treat media like real life. However, this proves nothing. It just shows how people treat media like real life. The authors do do some pretty thought provoking experiments with human behavior and media and it does give some very good insight into computer-human interaction, but it is not evidence to a philosophical question. Now I'm sure someone could put together some very compelling arguments for media = real life and it would be fun to discuss, but that's not what the book discussed. Which is good because then it wouldn't be a very good source for computer-human interaction. I just found it very difficult to read because I couldn't bring myself to stop disagreeing with the conclusions they were going for. Overall it's a good book to read for computer-human interaction and I would recommend it to someone but would be very torn with whether or not to warn them about the conclusions the book tries to make.
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5 comments:

  1. Brian SalatoFebruary 12, 2009 at 12:38 PM

    I think it is interesting to debate your point on what the authors were saying. Were they saying that we subconsciously see media and real life as the same thing, or were the saying we just have identical to both. By this I mean that in the deepest recesses of our mind, is media real life? The alternative is we respond the same just as if a train was coming at us, and something was falling towards us. In both situations we would move out of the way, but not confuse the two.

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  2. PatrickFebruary 12, 2009 at 8:15 PM

    I can sympathize with your frustration about the gab between their findings and their conclusions.

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  3. TylerFebruary 12, 2009 at 8:59 PM

    My impression was that the authors were just saying that in their view, everyone treats media as if it were real, even though they do know that it is not in fact real. They believe that the "old mind" subconsciously directs us to treat whatever moves as real.

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  4. Ben CarstenMarch 27, 2009 at 11:58 AM

    I do think that the book should be taken with a grain of salt. Also it became very long and predictable.

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  5. Josh MyersMarch 27, 2009 at 3:41 PM

    I did think some of their findings were interesting, but for the most part it seemed kind of obvious to me. If you see a movie most people do have a tendency to take it a bit more seriously that it should be. It is not real life, it is on a screen, but since it has aspects of life, thats what makes it feel real.

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