Digital Reality: The Body and Digital Technologies

About the Author Melanie Chan is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication Cultures at Leeds Beckett University, UK. She has written numerous articles and essays on virtual reality, mobile media, and digital culture. Product Description As contemporary scholars, journalists, and commentators have indicated, mobile digital devices promote a constant shift of attention between the world around us and the stimulations afforded by screen-based interfaces. Investigating these uniquely contemporary hybrid interactions, Melanie Chan posits that while digital technologies are part of a long and historic trajectory, they nonetheless may instigate new forms of corporeal practices and experiences. How might continuous engagement with mobile devices and associated software impact our perception of sensory embodied experience? Drawing upon existing scholarship around mobile media and new media, Digital Reality explores digital technologies as phenomena (observable items such as such as smart-phones, handsets, consoles, head-mounted displays and goggles) in the light of theories of reality and corporeality. In so doing, the book highlights the qualitative dimensions of our sense of aliveness, movement, and interaction within a range of environments (virtual, real, or hybrid). Ultimately, the book illuminates how our sense of shared, objective reality changes due to hybrid forms of reality. Review “'Digital reality' is a provocative combination of words, for all sorts of reasons. In this book, Melanie Chan gives a compelling argument for why these words, when placed together, seem less challenging than in the past. She convincingly argues that old ideas about the distinction between 'offlline' and 'online' worlds and experiences no longer hold, as sensory experiences and bodies have increasingly melded with digital technologies.” ―Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor in the Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Sydney, Australia“The lines between the digital and physical have become increasingly blurred over the last two decades, and that blurring will continue as we adopt more and more advanced forms of mobile technology. Chan's Digital Reality addresses our new forms of hybridity in interesting, insightful ways. Chan combines mobile media research with traditional philosophy to shed light on our mobile practices. This book is an important contribution to how we understand contemporary shifts in embodiment and mobile practice.” ―Jordan Frith, Pearce Professor of Professional Communication, Clemson University, USA