Technology and Literacy

by Nicole | May 7, 2010 | Current Events, Education, Life, Past Blog, Writing

Technology is changing literacy. It is progressing, giving virtually anyone with access the tools they need to expand their own personal literacy. In our day and age, there are many opportunities to become more literate, and all the while advance with technology. How exactly is technology influencing change upon the face of literacy? The constantly changing nature of technology and the way it intertwines with the evolution of literacy is fascinating. From learning ways to communicate, read, and write, to staying up to date with the latest advances in technology by way of computers and the internet, we as humans have always strived to get to the next step. Starting with one of the more obviously evolved technologies, computers have changed many aspects of literacy.

Not too many years ago, when someone needed to do research, they spent most of their time in libraries, archives, and interviewing people face to face or over the telephone for information. Now, most information is made readily available by the click of a button. Online databases harbor many scholarly articles and journals for researchers to utilize, making their process much simpler and less time consuming. As of late, a newer way of researching has hit the internet, called hypertext. This new form has helped researchers look for the most relevant information for their topics, and be able to save time by not searching word-by-word through a document. Hypertext also gives the reader the opportunity to make decisions on which parts of information will be most helpful when writing a research-driven document.

Hypertext has the ability to change how we will write, read, teach, and how we consider written works. Nancy Patterson, the author of “Hypertext and the Changing Roles of Readers” reports that “hypertext users…can challenge text immediately, or as immediately as the reader can write a response and link that response to the author’s text.” (Patterson 76). Technology has helped in such a way that if someone does not agree with some research they found and have evidence to back it up, they can contact the author of the hypertext article with their findings. Also, it is beneficial in many ways (writers of computer manuals especially) and promises to be a technology advancement in academics – mainly scholarly journals, where students can easily maneuver between citations in a work to an author’s previous publications.

Searching hypertext documents makes research easy for readers to gather and organize information. Readers are relying on the writers to separate their topics to be “reader friendly” and hypertext really gives the reader all the control versus the writer being in control of what the reader chooses to take in. The reader can choose what links to follow, therefore choosing what they read instead of ‘wasting time’ on content that might not be relevant to their topic. Davida Charney, a professor of rhetoric and composition, also wrote how hypertext may be changing reading in her article The “Effect of Hypertext Through the Processes of Reading and Writing” that “readers traditionally rely on the writer to select topics, determine their sequence, and signal relations between them by employing conventional discourse cues” (Charney 94).  By relying on the writer to have well organized information makes the research process much simpler for readers to gather and organize their information according to relevance. It makes the process much easier to endure, but yet provides all the information in the most recent form.

There is a good and bad side to hypertext researching. Even though it is up to date and is a simpler way to conduct research, the fact that there can be issues of credibility with some documents is something one must consider. Internet websites like Wikipedia. Users from all over the world are invited to add their own edits to entries on the online encyclopedia. The idea behind this is to have a knowledge bank that has so much information for all to enjoy. This gives users the chance to edit sources they view on the website. Everyone can be a reader and a writer at the same time. With this comes the issue of fraudulent information and author credibility. Dennis Baron, a professor of English and Linguistics at the University of Illinois, writes “as more and more people turn to the World Wide Web for information, and as students begin relying on it for their research papers, verifying the reliability and authenticity of that information becomes increasingly important, as does revisiting it later to check quotations or gather more information” (Baron 82). I believe this concern for fraud meshes with academic documentation styles in quite a few ways, the highest concerns being how does one know what style is being cited correctly online? There are many citation machines available online for students and researchers to use, but how do we know if these are credible? People are safer using published books on documentation, and reputable sources online to ensure credibility of their documentation.

Baron also reviews various ways of deception and fraud that can be committed in the computer age, such as altering graphics and text available online. Other things that are computer related are currency fraud, where some will counterfeit money using a computer and high tech printer to reproduce money. Computers have brought so many changes to our society, and Baron also states that computers “offer new opportunities for producing and manipulating text…they also present new opportunities for fraud.” (71) Baron says that the computer is just the “latest step in a long line of writing technologies” (72) and that some of the biggest problems lie within authentication.

Despite the bad news of fraud floating around on the World Wide Web, the internet is a place where many people have found their writer within, and use the internet to become self published. Blogging and social networking websites are allowing people to write more than ever. Take for instance the free publishing tools WordPress and Blogger offer online. Publishing basics made easy through these free sites. Then here comes the bigger question: who has the time to blog? As of last year (2008), there were about 133 million blogs worldwide. Granted, some of these blogs are now idle and not updated, but nevertheless are still out in cyberspace for all to read. People worldwide are finding the internet to be a wonderful outlet to post their ideas, thoughts, rants, raves, and who-knows-what-else-comes-to-mind. Scott Rosenberg, the author of “Say Everything,” actually discusses many genres of blogging, including life blogging, in a live webcast from the Diane Rehm show (based out of Washington state). This term relates to those who blog strictly about their lives and what they are up to on a daily basis, and even including videos of their daily adventures. Sometimes it is easier for someone to talk to a camera than it is to sit down and write, and with the internet the way it is today, it makes it easy for everyone to blog. Talking about this subject with a colleague in the writing center, we both came to the conclusion that people are writing more than ever. Often, bloggers use social networking and social media sites to make connections with other writers. These sites are becoming more and more popular, giving users the freedom to publish whatever they choose to write.

Social networking has becoming one of the biggest fads to have hit the internet. Whether it is posting a “status update” on Facebook, publishing an entry on a personal blog, or a “tweet” through Twitter, people really are reading and writing more than ever. It seems the world is centered on this fascinating way of communicating – and why not? Educating people on the new forms of literacy is imperative to move forward in today’s world. It is all around us, Elizabeth Thoman and Tessa Jolls talk about how our culture is constantly being reshaped by the ever-changing forms of literacy. “From the clock radio that wakes up…until we fall asleep watching the late night talk show, we are exposed to hundreds – even thousands – of images and ideas from not only television but also websites, movies, talk radio, magazine covers, e-mail, video games, music…media no longer just shape our culture – they are our culture” (Thoman, Jolls 18).

We are constantly surrounded by things that have to do with literacy, and some do not realize that even watching television and playing video games can help people expand their own personal literacy. Video games are now being considered aids in literacy. Thoman and Jolls also discuss how video games “are actually quite intricate learning experiences that have a great deal to teach us about how learning and literacy are changing in the modern world” (Thoman, Jolls 21). I can agree with this fully – new games such as “Brain Age” and various other ‘pop-cap’ games focus on hand-eye coordination and reading directions to get you through to the next level. If people do not have basic literacy skills and wish to advance while playing their video games, it will seem impossible. With television, there are many shows on that are educational – even entire networks like the Discovery channel focus on educational programming. Nowadays, being literate doesn’t mean simply being able to read. It means to understand new mediums of technology; books, movies, television, billboard advertising, and the list could go on for days.

The internet provides the most up to date everything – research, news, blogs, ‘updates,’ weather, and even various modern tools for education. The internet and technology associated with computers is changing the way the world works, without a doubt. Keeping people in the know for changes in technology will only help our society advance. It is undeniable that literacy has been and will continue to be a changing force in our lives, especially when thinking about it from a technological perspective.

(photo credit: Rosenblum TV.com)