Stretching literacy:
LettersImagesTechnologyEconomicsReportsAccessCreativityYear in, year out
By making textual changes (font, bold, italics) to the text in “GOING INTO A DIFFERENT WORLD”, Chapter 3 of LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE, Gunther Kress demonstrates that the writer can make small electronic changes that subtly alter the “meaning of our written texts” (16), as I do above by stretching the word “literacy.” He writes, “... layout [i.e. bullet points], on the other hand … does change the deeper meanings of the text (ibid). He asserts that in the dissemination of information to the world, those with economic clout, thus access, thus power, can control the media. Power has been regulated by “authorities of the state, the church or the ‘party’. of ‘capital’, or of others (17). Technologies affect social change; they, therefore, also affect writing and literacy: “The uses and the forms of literacy have been tied into these structures [economies of mass-production, ‘mass’ institutions such as hospitals, police forces, the mass (conscription-based) army, schools, railways, and, of course, the institutions of mass communication, the publishing industry in general, books, newspapers and, later, radio and terrestrial television) ... and still remain tied into their new configurations” (18).
The words/ideas that recur significantly in Kress’s chapter are access and economy. At times I feel like he is suggesting that the distributor of information, regardless of the media, is dispersing it equally to a homogeneous socioeconomic audience. Yet, it seems obvious in the chapter, that economy rules; thus, access is limited by the power of the media. The fact is that not everyone has equal access.
The ubiquitous screen, to which he refers, does not exist for every person or household. Some students in my classes (and their parents) do not have internet, Direct TV, Dish, or Xfinity. They do not receive global images or information the same way those who have access do. For them, print and image are the same: they don’t exist. In those homes, literacy is secondary to day to day survival. Formal literacy exists only in the classroom; whereas, those with more economic clout, are bombarded by the old and the new literacy around the clock. Those who live in the presence of the shifting literacy in the ubiquitous screen will find that “Writing will more and more become organized and shaped by the logic of the image-space of the screen. This is one inescapable effect of the potentials of the screen, and the technology of the new media” (20).
From Kress’s chapter, I deduce that literacy is, indeed, being stretched and shaped by
-- letters (alphabetic)
-- images
-- technology
-- economy
-- reports
-- access
-- creativity
-- year in, and year out
In other words, literacy is always shifting, and those with access due to economy are those with power. In short, I think what I'm trying to say, after reading Kress, is that economy RULES.
