Changing World of Literacy

In Scribner’s article about the ever-changing definition of literacy, she brings to light the idea that new definitions of literacy are presented as society changes and develops. She describes literacy using three metaphors demonstrating that in different social contexts, literacy is adapted to a new definition. As technology continues to develop in our world the question remains, will technology enhance or take away from our overall literacy? This is a theme brought up in essentially all the articles we have discussed thus far. Scribner proposes that technology essentially “requires a mastery of symbol systems” and that because of this “ literacy may be increased for some and reduced for others, accentuating the present uneven, primarily class-based distribution of literacy functions” (Scribner 11). But the question remains does mastery of these “symbol systems” used to extract information that is readily available to us count as literacy? It is becoming clearer to me her point, the definition of literacy is never constant.

This point is also presented in Clive Thompson’s article on New Literacy. In this article he proposes that literacy is in fact increasing in the new age of technology. People are mastering the ability of “adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across” (Thompson 1). That although our writing on the Internet mostly consists of snippets from our daily lives, people in the pre-Internet era rarely wrote anything if their job didn’t require them to.

It is undeniable that because of the development of new technology literacy is changing. However, the implications of this are disputed. Scribner points out that there is a “great divide in intellectual abilities” between the classes in each society and with the development of technology I think this “divide” will only become greater (Scribner 14). While books become more digitalized and the Internet becomes more of a necessity for education, access to these tools could become more limited for people in lower classes within a society. In higher educational settings the same literacy rates and critical thinking capacities will be required yet these are not settings in which all people in society find themselves in. As technology changes it will certainly be interesting to see how literacy is adapted in the new era and how it transforms.