Literacy 2.0

Fifth grade marked my first exposure to computers. Growing up in an inherently poor area of the South and especially in an area where technology is reserved only for your television and gaming systems, no one owned a computer yet. We wrote letters to each other, continued to mail our bills via "snail mail", and took pictures using 35 mm film cameras. "Digital" had not found its way into our vocabulary. The only space we knew of was outer space. Cyberspace did not exist. Our televisions weren't even very far from what had originally been created in the 60s. We still had to adjust the "rabbit ears" to pick up local channels. HBO, MTV, and CNN were only letters in the alphabet at this time. But it did not take long for technology to be swept up in a whirlwind and carried beyond outer space bringing us Microsoft software and operating systems. Ironically, I moved to a different school system my 6th grade year and once in high school I learned to type properly on typewriters or word processors was the fancy name for the electric typewriters, but they were still typewriters. I hated them after growing so accustomed to computers, but loved the clickety-clack of the buttons as my fingers hit them and the loud, piercing report of the little letter hammers striking the roller bar.

I really took to computers quickly. I was one of only a few students who could operate one properly and understood how they operated (to a degree). I have always possessed a highly mechanical mind and can break down just about anything because everything humans create is a based upon existing principles. Everything in life is like a huge puzzle. It is just a matter of understanding how things are connected or linked and how they function together. Just to give you an idea of how I taught myself anything--I remember stealing the toaster from the kitchen counter as a kid (probably 7 or 8ish) and running off to my bedroom closet and taking it apart. No one noticed the M.I.A. toaster for some time, but finally my dad found me hiding in the closet crying because I could not get it back together. That moment started a long and not always prosperous relationship with mechanical things. :)

I can remember my first computer. I had to help roof my step-uncle's house and in exchange he gave me his Tandy with Windows 3.11.

It was the bomb! I could play solitaire and write papers for school. Good-bye pens and paper! Hallelujah!  I didn't have internet access for many years though. I used that computer to learn how it operated. I figured out how to defrag it, delete files from the hard drive, and how all of its parts worked together. No one taught me anything. No one in my family knew how to use computers except me. Most of my knowledge came from trial and error. I knew how to "read" the different programs because the icons were basically buttons just like on an arcade game. The computer also had an on/off button just like any other machine.

I never realized, until now, that I was "reading" everything--signs, symbols, buttons, words, images, etc...just like a story book and making connections between those things. I was creating meaning through association. As I mentioned earlier, very few people owned computers in their home and the Internet was not popular yet so the type of socially constructed literacy that Lemke suggests wasn't in full-swing. I am not saying technology wasn't affected by society, I am saying society had not realized the potential of media literacy and technology at that time. Computers and gaming systems were just tools to be used and put back on the shelf once finished. Little did we know, Googling, texting, and Facebook were lurking around the corner.

Then Apple came along...

Think different is right! WTF? I had one of those Legally Blonde moments where you wake up and decide you are going to change your life right then and there (only I didn't want to be a lawyer). I walked into the Cleveland Daily Banner and made my way straight to the Assistant Editor's desk. He was a short, plump man wearing glasses with "coke bottle" lenses that made you cross-eyed when you looked at him. I can remember looking him in straight in the eyes (sheesh) and saying, "I want to write for you." He was stunned and silent for a moment. He looked me up and down, and I could tell he was thinking, "What the hell?" I had just left work and was clad in my finest mechanic's attire--long, green, hideous, men's shorts covered in grease, a ripped T-shirt that was closer to its second life as a grease rag than a piece of clothing, and a bright, red do-rag. I was absolutely the stunning vision of a female mechanic! He proceeded to ask me questions about my writing experience. I don't remember what I said, but he gave me an assignment that day to test my writing skills. I was able to visit their facility as often as I needed to use their Apple computers (they weren't referred to as Macs yet). I thought I was going to have an Office Space moment on one of those things. What happened to double-click? Wha--wha-what happened to delving deeply into file upon file upon file to locate something? OMG! I was loosing my mind. I never really got the hang of them, but I was persistent. At this point, Apple could shove "different" up their ass. I returned home to my Dell that spent more of its life in the computer hospital than on my desk.

Funny thing how life works. While Apple was polishing its well...Apple logo, I continued my journey through academia picking up tidbits here and there and staying somewhat up-to-date with technology leaving my family and friends in the dust. It wasn't until I entered UTC for the second time that I was exposed to the notion of socially constructed anything. Universities are hubs for diversity and culture where everyone comes together, learns from each other, and constructs new ideas. We were now Googling, texting, emailing, Facebooking, etc... furiously. These modes had replaced other more antiquated modes of communication sending society into a highly, visual, media addiction. This time someone did teach me how to use Macs and its subsequent technologies. Just like PCs, I picked it up quickly and became addicted too. I have always been a highly creative, right-brained individual, and I now had new tools to play with that only served to enhance my artistic needs. Artists can never be visually over-stimulated, but I found myself interpreting signs and symbols at lightning speeds. It was like feeding a junkie "super-crack." I never stopped once to consider how I learned to "read" them. Soon I was able to read web codes, HTMLs, and design graphics.

Looking back on my experiences with new media technology and literacy, Lemke is right. "Literacies are legion" (71). While each person contributes something to the construction process of media literacies,   people work together as a social unit and are constantly changing meaning based on current trends, cultural differences, and historical change. In turn, "[l]iteracies are transformed in the dynamics of these larger self-organizing systems, and we--our own human perceptions, identities, and possibilities--are transformed along with them" (71). Lemke makes a good point when he discusses how people make meaning: "...by contrasting types of categories of things, events, people, and signs" (80). As mentioned earlier, I made the connection between icons on the computer desktop to buttons on arcade games. I wish I could foretell the future of computer technology and its subsequent influence by media literacy and vice-versa; It is important to understand these connections and how we make meaning in order to better understand ourselves, the world we live in, and the future that lies before us.

Handa is da man-da!

I have often questioned the split between composition and rhetoric as they seem to go hand-in-hand. Survival of one without the other does not appear to be possible. Handa offers another issue as well and that is the struggle of visual to define the verbal. She suggests that due to the evolution of definitions of literacy and writing that there is need to continue redefining the foundations of English studies. However, according to Handa, one thing remains the same--elaborationism. This is "a set of cultural, pedagogical, and technical practices based on the idea that the formal composing and or reading process can produce more critical forms of consciousness" (15). She moves on to say, "As a fundamental assumption about the relation of language and thought, elaborationism represents a potential common thread that crosses not only the visual/verbal border, but also the boundaries that politically polarize and artificially stratify the discipline into curricular dichotomies of poetic and rhetoric, high and low, literature and composition" (15). While Handa takes her argument in a different direction, I like how she introduces the notion of all of these subjects sharing shelf space again. To clarify, I feel that the struggles between composition and rhetoric and communication and english are stubbornly maintained benefiting no one. I would like to see the day when these subjects mesh again to create well-rounded learning environments for those interested in Communication and English as a major. And to really dream big--it would be nice to see UTC build a space that allows for a peaceful coexistence of both departments allowing students to easily flow between the two gaining the knowledge they foresee is needed for their potential career. UTC would then find itself fulfilling Handa's hybrid of the visual and the verbal to assist in enhancing each to redefine literacy and writing.

I B Literate

Journaling links my reality to my subconscious however, over the years I have discovered that finding a way to release what is located on the dust-covered shelves in the deep recesses of my mind to be difficult. Instead the majority of my entries are filled with the boring BS of daily activities, who pissed me off that day, and the problems that continue to plague my psyche. Alcohol is the best solution, but is certainly nothing my liver and kidneys want to entertain for the long-term. So locating a much healthier way to release the creative hounds is top priority. But I am still left wondering why I am unable to squeeze the gigantic amounts of information and ideas busily swarming around in my head onto the tiny lines of my journal? Is it because I feel it is a waste of time? Do I believe that the creativity dying to be released is unimportant? Possibly. Is it fear of imperfection or lack of coherence? Most likely. Or do I suffer from a complete lack of inspiration? Oh writer's block at its finest.

Inspiration comes in many forms and tends to find me during my outdoor activities. Mountain biking is my preferred method as well as trail running, swimming, kayaking, snowboarding, and backpacking. My exposure to new places, people, and situations brings with it many new life lessons adding to my understanding of the world around me and in turn boosting my world literacy. But how does this affect my literacy? Keep reading and we will figure it out together.

Do you remember the movie White Squall? It is a tale of teenage boys who embark upon an educational journey on the open seas. The narrator of the story (one of the boys) carefully studies each of his shipmates as well as the captain and crew detailing their tragedies and successes over several months through the good, the bad, and the unthinkable. What is most remarkable about this narrator is his raw honesty and tangible perception. He weaves each thread of his life into the fabric that makes up the world around him to reveal a colorful pattern of tragedy, betrayal, success, failure, happiness, desire, and evil. I want my literacy and ability to translate my perception of my world to become tangible. I want my story to unfold honestly and brutally to reveal ideas and notions that challenge others and bend societal norms rather than simply scratch the surface with mundane daily occurrences.

The very rules and barriers that keep us corralled and moving in the proper directions are the same barriers that prevent complete creative expression. In a sense I have the "caged bird" syndrome. When my physical body is unable to move about freely my mind goes on lock-down. This could explain my insatiable hunger for adventure. Only when the body is free is the mind truly free. The irony in my previous statement is that I find it more difficult to write in my journal, which is a portable object that can be taken anywhere, rather than sitting at my computer confined to my desk writing in my blog. Why is that? Simple--a journal's pages are restricting, confining, limiting the writer to specifically sized pages while the internet is limitless. The writer never has to stop to turn a page stalling an idea. Instead she is allowed to type at the rate at which the idea is flowing rather than being restricted to the sloth-like behavior of a writing utensil.

The final stumbling block is overcoming one's own fear of creative freedom. These days I find myself bouncing back and forth between my old, stuffy, "Ben Stein" monosyllabic writing style and the new, unbridled (oh that sounds dangerously like a chintzy romance novel), highly creative, without boundaries method. The old and new ways are battling it out and coming to terms with each other in an effort to find a balance.

After all this seemingly senseless babble, what in the hell does all of this have to do with literacy? Everything. Throughout my experiences I have discovered many varied methods for writing and expression which translates to my literacy and how I interpret the world and those in it. Bolter explains of the evolution of writing and technology, "When in the history of writing a new technology appears, it may supplement an established technology or replace it" (22). While I certainly admit technology has played a huge role in my literacy and interpretation of the world, I also must acknowledge an evolution in my own writing process and give "props" to the people and places responsible. A great number of the people responsible are my professors who have revealed ideas, people, histories, and technologies that I otherwise would have never discovered even with access to the all-knowing Internet. Bolter points to this, "No technology, not even the apparently autonomous computer, can ever function as a writing space in the absence of human writers and readers" (17). So it seems technology and humans are forever linked. I am sure the great rhetoricians of the ancient world stressed over the slow death of orality at the introduction of pen and parchment resulting in literacy. Just as pen had to make way for the printing press and so on. The evolution of writing and literacy plays a major role in shaping society and vice versa. How has it shaped me?

Returning to my previous statement concerning my need for creative freedom and the journey to locate the source of my inspiration, most recently my writing has taken a drastic turn taking me to new and exciting places. It is as if a switch has been flipped and suddenly all of the things I learned during my stint as an undergrad in the COMM Dept. have taken their first breath. But what sparked this newly found inspiration? Wait for it.... Wait for it.... Well, several things... most notably a recent internship with The Pulse, a local publication. I was exposed to not only writing, but photography, editing, and graphic design. During this time, I was allowed to utilize all of my COMM knowledge to locate photos and info using resources like Facebook and MySpace. My first assignment was a cover article on an outdoor festival which was right up my alley. I was allowed to take photos and assist in the graphic design process for the publication. The combination of all of these elements has shown me a whole new way of viewing technology combined with creativity combined with an academic writing style (I thought I would never use).

Let's rewind for a bit and take a look at those on my on-going "props" list that I would recite on Oprah if ever interviewed. Here goes...

To my 8th grade English teacher,
Thank you for placing me in Honors English courses in high school. I would have never done so on my own and my parents were too busy surviving to even notice my abilities. You started me on my current path and if it weren't for you I would not have met all of the people coming up next.

Dear Doc Atkins,
Thank you for reading my business paper and asking me, "What are you an idiot? You need to be doing something English-related!" and forcing me to drop business as a major.

Dear Moira Tingle,
Thank you for sitting me down in the cafeteria at UTC as a blossoming freshman in Composition II and explaining the importance of my writing ability. You supplied me with books to assist me in my development from your personal collection (of which I still own).

Dearest Dr. Rushing (and the rest of the COMM Dept @ UTC),
I truly cannot thank you enough for the knowledge you have given me and the abilities you have strengthened. You helped me develop an inherent artistic ability of which I had carefully stashed in the belief it would not prove lucrative. Thank you for pissing me off and forcing me to learn in your absence. That is how I learn best--give me the directions and step away. For that I will always be thankful. Finally, thank you for simply taking time out of your life to sit down with me and follow up on my life status and keep me moving forward.

To all of the Grad professors in the ENGL Dept.,
Due to a dwindling economy, I was forced to choose between the military or grad school. I was not happy about my forced decision and thought I would be forced to learn stuff I would never use in the real world. Boy was I wrong! I don't have the words to express my gratitude at the knowledge you have ever so graciously bestowed upon me. When I thought my words would fall on deaf ears--they did not. When I thought I would not pull through--I did. When I thought I would never make the connections between the overwhelming amount of information--I did...thanks to all of you. You have taken me from my little world and introduced me to THE world and for that I will be eternally grateful.

So as you can see my literacy has been shaped by many, many people along with some technology. I do not see how I could have done or continue to do it without both, but if I had to trade one for the other I would choose the people over the technology any day.