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03/06/2004 Archived Entry: "selber"

I'm reading Stuart Selber's Multiliteracies for the Digital Age. Selber's book is interesting in its breakdown of different kinds of technology literacy, but there is still a great deal missing. What strikes me as a significant lack is how he focuses technology literacy around the computer. This kind of reasoning situates computer literacy (for want of a better phrase) around owning a computer. Thus, arguments get bogged down on issues of race, class, gender, access, etc. All are important. But - the rhetorical and "literate" effects of technology extend beyond computer ownership. Whether or not I own or use a computer, my understanding of how to acquire and produce knowledge is still affected by technology. This is a huge point of Ulmer's electracy and my spin off celbritacy. We are affected by the rhetoric of celebrity (or cool) whether we use computers or not. Digital reproduction makes this form of literacy possible. Selber doesn't pick up on any of this, and missing from his argument are those theorists whose ideas are tied to how we make meaning in an electronic world, but who did not work with computers - like Benjamin. And missing are folks who problematize technology-based literacy like McLuhan and Ulmer.

In fact, if we are going to write about and engage with technology and literacy, we have to stop using hte word literacy. Literacy is tied to print. The ability to make meaning now includes more than print. Celebrity, cool, whatever, sampling, and much more are all a part of the new digital apparatus. When we use the word literacy, we are still engaging with what Ted Nelson called the "paperdigm." Composition studies, literacy studies, education, all have to disengage from the paperdigm and think about technology not just as the machine but the logic and ideology also within the apparatus.

So - I have to question the "multiliteracies" in Selber's title. The kinds of computer usage he describes are still print based - as far as I can see. I 'm reminded of a recent thread on Techrhet regarding technology narratives. Asking students to write narratives of their first technology usage is not a computer -based form of rhetorical instruction. The narrative - I first used a computer when I was 10 - is still print based. Narrative can take other non-print forms (see Barthes, Ulmer) but not in this assignment. Cyborgography is my attempt to defamiliarize his kind of print based narrative.