By Guy Merchant.

We live in a world in which Artificial Intelligence, digital IDs, drones and driverless cars seem set to shape our future. It is a time of unprecedented technological innovation in which digital communication infuses and inflects much of our day-to-day social activity and interaction. In this post-digital context there is a pressing need for reflection and critical practice. Re-thinking Digital Literacy considers what it means to live in this post-digital world, and addresses both the social and material dimensions of new forms of communication, co-operation and conflict. In this book I use accounts of digital practices in everyday contexts to develop a sociomaterial perspective on new literacy practices and to explore the opportunities and challenges of new ways of being with technology.

This new work shows how screen-based communication now plays a key role in work and leisure, in education and entertainment and how it is being used for a wide range of official, unofficial, formal and non-formal purposes. Although it hasn’t completely replaced older forms of literacy, digital technology has radically changed how we create, compose and combine written text, still and moving image, and audio content. At the same time, rapid connectivity has led to new forms of publication and distribution, uniting and dividing us in new ways. I believe that rethinking and redefining digital literacy is vital if we are to look critically at the impacts and complexities of digital communication. It’s not just that the ways in which we relate to each other have changed, the ecology of communication includes new concentrations of power – power that is invested in data mining, digital surveillance, and the emergence of a platform economy – the hidden work of human and non-human agents.

I argue that the study of digital literacy must not only address the appearance of hardware – of gadgets and devices – but also the ‘hidden materiality’ of silicon chips, electric pulses and wireless signals. Rethinking Digital Literacy uses this as way into a critical consideration of the cost of digital literacy by addressing the effects of high consumer demand in contexts of economic inequity, the human cost of exploitative labour in the technology industry, and the devastating environmental cost of extracting and processing rare minerals and other ‘necessary’ raw materials. Ethical frameworks need to be developed in order to take account of intentions and actions that are more than human in scope, the  social and environmental impacts of the rise new technologies as well as the continuing importance of being safe and responsible online.

Rethinking Digital Literacy argues that literacy is now undeniably more than human, that the scale and spread of digital technology has irrevocably changed literacy, and that the take-up and use of new technologies of communication raises important ethico-political issues. It considers what literacy education might look like in post-digital times and raises provocative questions for policymakers and practitioners. It’s now nearly 30 years since the idea of digital literacy was first articulated. The world has radically changed since then. This book aims to chart those changes and their implications, and to underline current opportunities and concerns – to identify a way forward for digital literacy.

This article was written by Guy Merchant, Emeritus Professor of Literacy & Education at Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University. He specialises in research into digital literacy and the inter-relations between children and young people, and new technologies of communication. He is widely published in international journals and is a founding editor of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy.

Rethinking Digital Literacy is available to pre-order in Hardback and eBook formats.

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