Silicon Literacies

This is a collection of essays written by leading academics from a range of disciplines. They consider the implications of work produced on a keyboard, transmitted via computer networks, and visible by the user on screen.

The main argument is that being computer literate now requires us to be familiar with all sorts of communication systems - visual icons, multimedia, hypertext, new navigation systems, and desktop metaphors. The first essay is an account of the complex bidding and reputation systems at the eBay auction site, where economic success is closely monitored by feedback between vendor and purchaser.



Next, Chris Abbott reflects on the increasing use of the visual language of symbols and icons - and the effect of this on education in schools. Then there is the now almost obligatory piece on computer games, arguing for the complex variety of visual and conceptual literacies required to play them. This section reports some positive results on an experiment incorporating 'Magic and Mayhem' into the curriculum of Australian schools.

Mark Warschauer discusses the problems of English as the 'default language' of the Internet, and recent attempts to revive local languages and cultural identity in Hawaii, Egypt, and Singapore.

There's an interesting contribution on the nature of hypertext linking and its influence on the concepts the user forms during navigation. It's a shame this piece doesn't take into account the new opportunities for multi-dimensional linking made possible by X-Pointer and X-Path in XML technology.

George P. Landow (of Victorian Web fame) describes the lack of institutional support given to his experiments in hypertext for humanities at Brown University (USA). This makes for depressing but very instructive reading - an example of a large organisation claiming international credit for something it did not actually support.

The benefits of taking a Masters degree in Business Administration via online distance learning are the occasion for some interesting reflections on pedagogic methods, including the observation that the most ubiquitous in higher education - the lecture - is two thousand years old.

An article by Ron Burnett on understanding visual language raises the problem that film and TV are often analysed as if they were the same thing as written text - when they are clearly not. Unfortunately he does not provide a solution to this problem, despite several invocations of the work of Roland Barthes.

The collection ends with a piece which argues quite persuasively that full literacy in a multimedia age involves a wide range of skills beyond those of simply reading and writing, and that computer literacy in education introduces the need for "multiple literacies ....needed to access, interpret, criticise, and participate in the emergent new forms of culture and society".

This compilation will appeal to teachers working in IT, educational theorists, students and teachers of media studies, and anyone interested in the educational implications of The New Media Age.