Toward a new definition of literacy

Being generationally caught between two media cultures has the effect of questioning the values of both on a constant basis, sometimes to a perpetually confusing degree.

In my avocational life as a Web professional I show little hesitation in diving into the deep end of digital media, commerce and culture. Besides that, its exhilarating and cheap technology (such as free blogging software) makes it easy for anyone to explore their own intellectual and cultural interests as they see fit, in infinite ways.

But when I'm not at work, the lure of offline immersion is even greater. I've felt that pull this week as I wearied of the dizzying habits of some online acquaintances who live to Twitter, send instant messages and communicate with one another in an invented language of early adopters and innate geeks that will never be my first tongue.

Evenings I try to set aside for deep reading, for a more measured, deliberate intellectual stimulation. Lately those topics have revolved around the nature of literacy, books and literature and how the digital age is already influencing them all.

Unhappily, so much of the material I've come across is firmly in one camp or another -- either bemoaning the digital onslaught, or triumphing its arrival and bidding good riddance to what it's about to replace.

A good example of the former is from Christine Rosen of The New Atlantis magazine, who wrings her hands about the intellectual development of a younger generation given to grabbing clumps of information by quick-clicking on keyboards. She offers up a verdict on the fate of reading that if realized does indeed bode badly for the culture:

"Despite the attention once paid to the so-called digital divide, the real gap isn’t between households with computers and households without them; it is the one developing between, on the one hand, households where parents teach their children the old-fashioned skill of reading and instill in them a love of books, and, on the other hand, households where parents don’t. As Griswold and her colleagues suggested, it remains an open question whether the new 'reading class' will 'have both power and prestige associated with an increasingly rare form of cultural capital,' or whether the pursuit of reading will become merely 'an increasingly arcane hobby.' ”

But she also spends far too much time dismissing outright any benefits of digital literacy, and a different -- but not better or worse -- way of developing the mind. The richness and depth of linking, of offering context, outside sources and a range of views to a work -- typically, in a blog post -- are not examined at all. Rosen is obsessed with the scourge of "screen reading," which to her is simply inferior to the printed word.

I can't imagine ever finding much value in reading books electronically, since I'm an inveterate highlighter and scribbler in the margins. The Kindle will never cut it for me. There is no tactile pleasure in that. But as for possibly publishing a book, I'm not so viscerally opposed to going the online route. The quandary is that I would be asking readers to do something I don't see myself doing.

And I do think Rosen makes another valid point when she writes:

"If reading has a history, it might also have an end. It is far too soon to tell when that end might come, and how the shift from print literacy to digital literacy will transform the 'reading brain' and the culture that has so long supported it. Echoes will linger, as they do today from the distant past: audio books are merely a more individualistic and technologically sophisticated version of the old practice of reading aloud. But we are coming to see the book as a hindrance, a retrograde technology that doesn’t suit the times. Its inanimacy now renders it less compelling than the eye-catching screen. It doesn’t actively do anything for us. In our eagerness to upgrade or replace the book, we try to make reading easier, more convenient, more entertaining—forgetting that reading is also supposed to encourage us to challenge ourselves and to search for deeper meaning."

Digital triumphalists proclaim that a print-oriented culture rooted in books offers only one-way, often arrogant communication, leaving the reader frozen out. To suggest that books need to die in their present form so they can be somehow "reinvented" is simply philistine. That's not what books are. Why not just admit to not being interested in reading them, or not having the patience to do so?

What we have here are adamant polemicists who have no interest in bridging the cultural gap. We live in a relentessly fast-paced, edgy society that is slowing down now only in the wake of a calamitous recession. This is the perfect time to reflect and soak in the still waters of timeless, long-form culture.

At the same time, print-oriented thinkers and artists have to grapple with the inexorable march of the Web. They must become digitally literate -- and yes, learn to understand the dynamics of "screen reading" -- if they want to influence the future of culture.

A very big part of me will always relish the joy of solitude. But to lambaste those who express themselves on MySpace as all being of a type -- and a generational one, primarily -- is to squander the opportunity to help shape how those young minds are formed. And to nourish all of us seeking to deepen our understanding of contemporary culture, in all its complexities.