The New Literacy

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The dom­i­nance of tele­vi­sion as our dom­i­nant form of pub­lic dis­course has been seen by many media the­o­rists as ush­er­ing in a second-​wave of oral cul­ture. The evo­lu­tion is often described as Orality–Literacy and then Second Orality (or Post-​Literacy). #

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The inter­net (I’ll be using this here as an umbrella term that cov­ers the major­ity of the internet’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nolo­gies, pri­mar­ily dri­ven by the web, but also includ­ing email) is often lumped in as an exten­sion of tele­vi­sion because screens are gen­er­ally what we use to access it and because you can play games, watch videos and look at pic­tures. #

This is a fun­da­men­tal mis­un­der­stand­ing of what we do when we com­mu­ni­cate online. If tele­vi­sion rep­re­sents a shift to a new kind of Oral cul­ture, the inter­net rep­re­sents a new kind of Literacy. #

Sure, there’s video. Sure, there are games. Sure, there’s flickr. But at it’s root, the web is a text-​based medium. How do you wind up at video clips and pic­tures? Words give us the con­text. #

Of course, this is a New Literacy, and the words on the screen have learned new tricks that alter their behav­iour and how we relate to them. Hyperlinks are like foot­notes on steroids, allow­ing us to grab the ref­er­ence and read it instantly. We can embed visual and inter­ac­tive exam­ples and mod­els, search for ter­mi­nol­ogy, copy and paste and respond to authors at speeds that are truly remark­able. #

This has ram­i­fi­ca­tions for other media too. When print rose to dom­i­nance, speeches turned into rea­soned prose and when tele­vi­sion took its place, emo­tion began to rule the day. And now, as the New Literacy takes root, we’re start­ing to see some­thing else entirely. And if you’re a pro­fes­sional com­mu­ni­ca­tor, it’s time to take note. #

If you want an idea of what this New Literacy has in store for us, take a look at the blog as a for­mat. It is the fun­da­men­tally nat­ural form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the web. The prin­ci­ples that make for a good blog are becom­ing the prin­ci­ples that make for good com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the inter­ac­tive age. #

Some see online dis­course as shal­low, brief snip­pets of thoughts strung together with links that con­stantly take you to other brief snip­pets of thoughts. Paragraphs hyper­linked to other para­graphs from topic to topic to topic. #

But what if you take all those hyper­links and look at them side­ways? I don’t see some­thing shal­low at all. I see a new kind of depth. #