What is literacy? It can be thought of in a number of different ways, of course. But I would like to consider it for a moment in two distinct ways. One: as a matter of knowing what; and two: as a matter of knowing how.
That is a bit glib, perhaps, but this is a blog, not a dissertation, and besides, the glib can be more entertaining, which is to say engaging, precisely because it is more open for interpretation, analysis, and critical deconstruction. It’s more inviting, in that respect. Surface representation, and immediate language/discourse play, allows for deeper investigation (at least it does here, where I invite it).
So, digital literacy, like any literacy, can also then be thought about as one: a matter of what; and two: a matter of how. I believe that the prevailing quotidian orientation to literacy in general, and digital literacy specifically, is predominantly as one: a matter of what. Digital literacy in this respect is comprehended as available information in digital format (and most significantly as being accessible as such online).
But it can also be understood as a competency. Which is to say as a comprehensive understanding of the digital itself (i.e., as an industry, a practice, a mandate, a procedure, an entity, an archival system, etc.). There is, I warrant, some sense of this built into the common place understanding of digital literacy.
I believe that there is less immediate awareness of digital literacy as two: a matter of how. Which is to say, there is less attention paid to digital literacy as a knowledge of method. What, I might ask, is peculiar about the way of digital comprehension? Comprehension of a text, as a matter of literacy (i.e., what the text means, in a sense that includes, for instance, semantics, poetics, and cultural signifiers), is not so peculiar to the medium that presents the text that it diverges significantly from one to the next (whether it be a text online or within book or magazine in your hand, so to speak). But textual literacy, visual literacy, TV literacy, movie literacy, musical literacy, video-game literacy, all are subject to distinct analyses concerning how any person’s competency with respect to them reads back (so to speak) into their understanding of the world (i.e., society) and their relationship to it. This is the sense I mean by digital literacy as a method.
It is through comprehension, development, competency, acuity and skill with regard to the ability to reproduce, play with, communicate, control, etc., the world (arena, social space, you could even say “playground”) while being in it that one’s literacy with respect to the digital language (i.e., digital culture) becomes evident. There, I made a slippery, although not necessary inaccurate correspondence: digital literacy = comprehension and competency with respect to digital culture.
It begs the question, thus, what is digital culture (as well as, what is cultural literacy)? To which I would begin to reply by saying that I would not suggest that there is a digital culture, as such, but rather that there are digital cultures. Which is to say that cultures formulate themselves in some way in relationship to what is being called here so far without any explicitly inscribed parameters “digital.”
So, the real question I ought to be addressing at this point is, what is (the) digital (or, what is digitality)? It is a moot question, though, of course, for beyond the denotative sense of the word (which isn’t of much use, since I am considering a cultural entity, not simply a semantic one), the term is only cogently connoted within the conscribes of social usage. To put it in a Gertrude Stein like manner: digital is what is digital and disagree always. Which is to say that because it is a matter of cultural usage, it is always contentious and always being defined and redefined according to group interests and practices.
And the social plasticity of “digital” in this regard, is precisely what is informing a basic digital literacy as a know how, rather than a know what, and it is where it is most interesting, I believe, particularly for agents and organizations of literacy development and advocacy. You can talk about digital literacy as variously informed mandates limiting and delimiting digital archives and managing their availability and accessibility. But you can also talk about how the conception of digital culture as a comprehensive competency (i.e., a literacy) informs practical relationships with the world (with society, local and global, familiar and strange) that thereby (are) change(ing) that world (through language/social relations).
Just the beginning of some thoughts on the matter.
(note: the piece i link to at the top is tangentially related to this one)
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