76-100M
Sauer
12/6/96
Shifting Towards a Universal Literacy
through the Internet
New definitions of literacy never cease to arise. In fact, literacy seems to change constantly. The continuous need for new definitions of literacy comes from the fact that literacy is constantly affected by our society, economy and politics (Wick 107-12). Probably one of the most profound change to current society is the incorporation of computers to homes and offices. Not only has it changed the way writers compose pieces of writing, it has shifted the spaces in which language is acquired and practiced, adjusting to the emerging technologies (Costanzo 21). As computers are used as another tool for global communication, such as the Internet, a need for literacy change becomes more widespread and the world becomes even more challenging and competitive. This giant explosion of usage on the Internet has not only affected businesses and companies, it has gone into our homes, schools, and government and seen by our neighbors and children. Hundreds of thousands of new users from families and homes connect to the Internet each day, with the number of computer servers providing information increase by the thousands (Krol). Many people are no longer communicating in only small isolated communities. The computer and the Internet has allowed elementary school students to chat with a teacher in Iran, or exchange pictures with another student in Norway, with a simple phone line. With this increase in global communication, trade and competition, it becomes necessary to develop a trend to shift toward a universal literacy. By universal literacy, I mean the current literacy standardized and expanded globally for effective communication in the world.
In this paper, I will show how the widespread influence of the Internet affects how we read and write, creating new discourses that assumes a level of literacy far different from the conventional. I will discuss how literacy must adapt in response to these new changes, how schools should place greater importance on foreign languages, world history and world culture and less importance on local and nationally specific facts.
Started as a government project in the 1960s, the Internet has expanded into a global network of computers from around the world. The introduction of the World Wide Web, which started in 1991 at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, allows the easy sharing of text, graphics, sound and video on the Internet (Krol). The World Wide Web also allows documents to be linked together through hypertext, essentially creating one giant book on the Internet that includes more information than any library. With a $1000 computer plus modem, a user can gain access to a limitless library of information, from the complete works of Shakespeare to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to Supreme Court decisions, all at the touch of a few keys or maneuver of the mouse. Now there are over 100,000. World Wide Web servers with information transmitted on the Internet measured in terabytes-trillions of characters, or equivalent to millions of 500-page books (Bruce 6).
In addition to the World Wide Web is the Internet Relay Chat (IRC). IRC is a multi-user synchronous communication facility that is available all over the world to people with access to the Internet (Reid5). Lines of text typed into the computer are broadcast in an IRC "channel" for users participating in the channel to see. Other similar chat programs that emerged recently, such as Microsoft's Netmeeting and Netscape's CoolTalk, allow users to synchronously broadcast images and sound in addition to plain text, and allow parties participating in the "chat" to draw on a common "whiteboard." The new chat programs have gone beyond even the conventional telephone by allowing "tele-collaborative" work. IRC type programs can serve as an excellent forum for consultations between workers on different points of the globe, everything from programming to translation to authorial collaboration (Reid 5). With technologies such as the World Wide Web, IRC and E-mail, the mode of communication and the way in which we acquire information becomes dramatically different from the conventional form of communicating through printed text and memos or even the telephone. Not only does the method in which we communicate change, the subjects w communicate with also change. No longer are we bounded by physical distance and time or etiquette in tone of voice or body language. The user will be judged by the pure content of the text. In the following, I will show examples of the change in language and culture in communicating through the World Wide Web and Internet Relay Chat.
Major changes have already occurred in the English language, due mainly to the inevitable change in school practices. "This is because the meaning of school practices can never be separated from the social life around those practices. Ideas that once were at the periphery of educated discourse are now at the center, not by anyone's choice, not by a desire for inclusiveness, not to prepare students for a changing world, but because the world itself is not the same" (Bruce 6). Schools must train and prepare students with the necessary skills to be successful in the world. If the world requires interaction with people throughout the globe using the Internet, then schools will inevitably change their curriculum to match the prerequisite for becoming successful in the society. No longer can schools ignore studies of world history and culture. Soon, these requirements are no longer prerequisites for becoming successful but prerequisites to be able to operate within society. The change in school curriculum or education effectively alters the language and thus we must redefine literacy.
If this new universal literacy requires effective communication to parties around the world, then no doubt a general and wider global range of materials such as the study of foreign languages and world history will better facilitate the communication than studying a narrow and strictly Western Anglo-Saxon material. Thus, Hirsch's argument for requiring a literate person to learn a predetermined set of facts does not serve well for today's global communication through the Internet. Using an allusion of a historical figure such as Jeb Stuat to a business associate in Japan would probably confuse the matter more than make the conversation efficient. A common ground for which to communicate with any kind of efficiency is indeed necessary. However, schools should stress on generalizing not specializing on facts-that is, generalizing the fact to a point common to most people in the world. For example, it is much more beneficial to study more of the beginnings of early civilizations than to concentrate sole on Greek and Roman civilizations. In other words, a more well rounded educational curriculum is necessary to adapt to the changing society in the world. Finally, although the lack of a common solid background of knowledge reduce the "efficiency" that can be otherwise achieved, the speed and ease at which information is exchanged through the Internet makes the issue of efficiency irrelevant. With the invention of the telephone, we no longer have to talk in an abbreviated telegraphic form over long distance.
The Internet has allowed individual families and persons to tap into the world, retrieve information, and respond directly and immediately. Text and images can change interactively depending on the user's response. Likewise, the language we use on the Internet is being changed depending on the sum of all the communications through the Net. The change, however, will happen at a global scale, shifting the language toward a universal language, understood and spoken by the mainstream of the society. This shift in the language will inadvertently shift the curriculum in schools which in turn shift the educational discourses. Thus, literacy is no longer the study of local facts but learning global facts and mastering the universal language by which one can communicate with the world.
Works Cited
Bruce, Bertam C. "Twenty-First Century Literacy. Technical Report o. 624." ERIC DOCUMENT #ED391149, 1995.
Hirsch, E.D. from Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Pp. 1-32.
Krol, Ed. The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 1992.
Lockard, Joe. "Resisting Cyber-English." Bad Subjects, 24, Feb 1996.
Reid, Elizabeth M. Electropolis: Communication and Community on Internet Relay chat. Honors Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1991. <http://www.ee.mu.oz.au/papers/emr/electropolis.html>
Wick, Tom. "The Pursuit of Universal Literacy." Journal of Communication, v 30:1. Philadelphia, PA, 1980.