d-literacy

Funny that everything is e-prefixed except literacy. I like d-literacy; reminds me of delinquency, deliberate (a), deliberate (v), delight, delicious and you can take this where you want to to finish. Musicality!

Another big topic. Lets assume traditional literacy (t-literacy) is reading and writing. Abstract: the ability to consume & construct the dominant text form of the print period.

D-literacy will in fact have the same abstract, but suspect that the dominant text form of the future (present) will not be long strings of words printed on paper. We might look at it in terms of the tools that are used to create it (but note that literacy is not necessarily about tools as one might hire a scribe to write while one dictates - text construction is still taking place. Mind you, if the scribe is responsible for imposing the features of the written text on the dictator's oral text, it might be possible to question literacy. Still, lets not overcomplicate at the beginning).What tools?

We still need words (probably, I admit the possibility of debate). We now have images & sound, as readily manipulable as words to those who have mastered the tools. Smell, taste and touch haven't been digitised yet, although touch might be coming. Movement in space seems limited to images of movement in space, on a 2 dimensional screen. Holography is beloved of science fiction & can't be to far away. Then we will have projected 3D images without funny glasses. It will still be an image, but it will have to engage with space differently.

Anyway, I'm gong to pause here and postulate d-literacy as t-literacy combined with v(ideo)-literacy and a(udio)-literacy. A-literacy & v-literacy are well established fields (they even give Oscars in them) but already the learning curve for d-lit looks pretty bloody long. I'm guessing it will be additive on t-lit. Complicating matters considerably though, is that each of these x-lits has an extant grammar, but is there a grammar that combines them - in other words, will the grammar for d-lit be the sum of the grammars of its component parts, or will it require its own, yet to be devised, grammar?

How long will it take to teach such a complex construct? Will those who master it have significant greater access to economic and political power as a result?

Currently these kinds of texts are primarily art texts. We attempt to widely foster some kind of receptive d-lit via a kind of expanded critical thinking.

Poufff. Run out of steam, but there is so much more to say.