To Be Literate in the Twenty-First Century
What it means to be literate has changed over time on a societal level and throughout the lives of individuals, but what does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? Is it simply to be able to understand linear, print texts, such as a book or a scholarly article, or is there more to literacy in the twenty-first century than that? Is it the ability for one to understand the plethora of symbols used in the twenty-first century: linear texts, diagrams, pictures, websites, etc.? To be literate in the twenty-first century is to be able to understand the affordances of technology and being able to use the texts, including multimodal, of technology to participate in affinity spaces.
The affordances of an object are “the qualities or properties of an object that define its possible uses or make clear how it can or should be used” (“Affordances”). The affordances of an object are often talked about with the colloquialism, “form follows function”. So, overall, what is the function of technology? The overall function of technology is to improve productivity and efficiency; this may be a more efficient time relaxing or working, but, either way, it is to improve efficiency. What technology makes more efficient is decided by the user. Within technology, however, there is a discrepancy in the affordances. In websites, “the affordances are often constrained or enabled by the site’s architecture” (Warner, 22). Some websites might allow the user a high degree of malleability, such as blogs, while other sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, do not allow very much malleability; also, some sites encourage a dialogic interaction, like most social media sites, while other sites encourage monologic interaction, like a major news site (Warner). The affordances affect how the technology is used and what is made efficient through the technology by the user. Understanding these affordances enable the user to more effectively increase productivity and efficiency. Understanding the affordances of technology is one of a few things that make a person literate in the twenty-first century.
The next key to literacy in the twenty-first century is understanding the multimodal texts of technology. Multimodality is a theory of communicating through many media: aural, visual, linearly textual, etc. (Alvermann and Wilson). The readiness, commonality, and diversity of multimodal texts have increased in the twenty-first century, and understanding these texts is an essential part of being literate in the twenty-first century. The following is a multimodal text — multimodal in the sense that it is a mixture of visual and linear print text — that speaks about the positives of infographics through an infographic, it itself being a multimodal text:
(“Infographics”)
The text provides many forms of visuals that are accompanied by print text to give the full understanding that the text. The most prominent being the eye in the center that is being used to convey the central point of the text, that being to persuade of the importance of visuals in passing along understanding. Further, there is a web in the bottom left to show the effects that infographics have in the social media sphere, a stopwatch beside to get the user to think about time and how infographics load nearly just as quickly as traditional text, a car beside that to get the reader to remember the increase in traffic fact (“Infographic”). This also gets the user thinking because it is a form of pun, a play on the word “traffic”. There are numerous more ways that the visuals and traditional, linear texts work together in this infographic to give as much understanding to the reader as possible: a pie chart to show percentages, a divided piece of paper representing the percentage given in the traditional, linear text beside it (“Infographic”).
The final key to literacy in the twenty-first century is understanding affinity spaces. Affinity spaces are places on the internet where people are free to talk about a subject that interests them. There are affinity spaces for books, board games, television programs, movies, music genres, etc. If you can name it, there is an affinity space for it. Many of these spaces are on a site that titles itself as “the front page of the internet”. This site is Reddit. This site has well over a million, affinity spaces that it calls “subreddits”. Some of these places are unhealthy places to be, but others are very informative and healthy affinity spaces; the healthy ones, however, have monitors that make sure it stays healthy, something that the lesser subreddits cannot afford (Finn). If you want to know more about the workings of Reddit, here is a good introductory video. Warning: it is a little PG-13.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU7dhH15CgE
The big positive about affinity spaces is the fact that the people that are there are interested in a subject. It’s not like the common classroom, where people just know the subject because they are required to do so; the people in the affinity space know the subject because they want to know the subject, be it the Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, George Orwell, politics, science, etc. (Curwood).
The first component to be literate in the twenty-first century is understanding the affordances of technology, knowing the best use of the hardware and software to maximize the productivity and efficiency of the task that is wished to be accomplished by the user. The second is to be able to understand the various multimodal texts that are used through technology to accurately and concisely transfer understanding from one user to another. The final is to be able to rightly use the first two in online affinity spaces. Therefore, to be literate in the twenty-first century is to be able to understand the affordances of technology and being able to use the texts, including multimodal, of technology to participate in affinity spaces.
Affordance. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/affordance
Alvermann, D. E. and Wilson, A. A. (2011). Comprehension Strategy Instruction for Multimodal Texts in Science. Theory Into Practice, 50(2), 116–124.
Curwood, J. S. (2013). The Hunger Games: Literature, Literacy, and Online Affinity Spaces. Language Arts, 90(6) 417–27.
Fenn, M. (2015, December 11). The top 200 subreddits, categorized. Retrieved September 21, 2018, from https://www.dailydot.com/news/reddit-top-200-subreddits-categorized/
Infographics — The Benefits of Their Use Online. (n.d.). Retrieved September 22, 2018, from https://visual.ly/community/infographic/technology/infographics-benefits-their-use-online
Warner, J. (2017). Adolescents’ New Literacies with and through Mobile Phones. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.
