Foul Language for Drunken Sailors

I love classic literature. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace may be long, but the rambling philosophical thoughts of his protagonist Pierre Bezukhov, questioning the meaning of life, are well worth the effort. I am currently reading Anna Karenina; and the characters are vivid and real, although set in a time with moral standards far from today’s world. The rich language of books written years ago is not only beautiful but reminds me of the decline of decorum.

Books and movies today are filled constantly with the *F* word. Recently, at our virtual world science fiction literary study, we read-aloud a current sci-fi story and I was so uncomfortable because it was filled with curse words and foul language. (This has happened several times!) I found myself looking ahead at the upcoming paragraphs trying to find a good spot to “hand off” to the next reader because I dislike using foul language very much. In fact, a new colleague and friend (Kyoko) sent an instant message because she could sense my discomfort. Now- don’t go thinking I believe in censorship! No way! A librarian stands up for intellectual freedom! I simply have never used vulgarity as it is not my personal style. Yet I realize others may pull it off well in a spicy conversational way.

What’s the purpose of foul language anyway?

Life has a dark side. We all know ugliness, decay, lewdness and evil lurk in the darkness of our world. But must we seek it out, glorify it, or use it as flippant sarcasm? Has our culture become desensitized? Perhaps some words are meant to shock us. But when overused, they lose the value to shock. What used to be lewd, crude or profane has become commonplace among young people in public and on social media.

What’s a drunken sailor to do when 15 year old girls have stolen all his swear words?

Drunken Sailor PublicDomainVectors.org

There is a place for vulgarity and foul language. I’m sure of it. But it isn’t in my vocabulary. Somebody needs to stand up for the drunken sailors! The oscillation between purity-beauty-idealism and soiled-ugly-realism is but one of the many opposites we swing between in life: war and peace, light and dark, and so on. (This has always been true but awareness of it seems so metamodern.) Are we throwing out the beautiful ideal because we no longer believe it is possible? Oh, but it is. It truly is. I have been married to a prince for almost 50 years through many joys and sorrows and can attest to the reality of dreams coming true.

No more worries about reading those bad words out loud!

Last night, as I placed my bookmark in Anna Karenina (which is far from a sweet syrupy novel which I would find a waste of time), I kept thinking about my dread of reading foul language aloud! It reminded me of how I am repulsed by snakes and I would look away from the cover of the books in the reptile section when I was re-shelving them in the school library (where I was the librarian). This repulsion is not a fear but more of an extreme dislike. The “snake man” with a van full of reptiles came to school one day and I decided to overcome my “so- called fear” by shooting a video of them for our school news show. As I was walking along the school cafeteria tables, looking through the video camera at snakes coiled and wiggling, I felt rather nauseous. I went back to my library office to put away my video camera, I thought to myself, “You know– it is okay not to like snakes! I don’t really need to like them and I don’t really need to like snake man either!” I stayed away the next time he visited the school.

As I put my Tolstoy book on my bedside table last night, I thought, “You know what? It is okay not to want to read the *F* word out loud in the science fiction literary study!” Each time, we ask for volunteer readers and some choose to just sit and listen. So, next time… I will pre-read the story and if it is filled with drunken sailor words, I am going to simply say “I pass tonight”.

Meta-Death: Not Facebook Metaverse (Please)

Literacy in digital culture has been my passion for decades now. And the prefix META has played a big role in my research as I adopted the terms metaliteracy in our metamodern era. In addition, my colleagues have spent years learning best practices for teaching in the metaverse, yet Facebook is just now spotlighting that word and changing the company’s name to META!


Meta! Meta! Meta!

Suddenly the world is criticizing this prefix, probably because many people dislike Facebook but feel compelled to use it. Apparently, META means “dead” in Hebrew! Yet, Meta has Greek roots that often translate as “after, beyond, about or among”. For instance, metacognition concerns thinking about thinking. But let’s consider this idea of meta = death.

Metaliteracy and the Death of Print

I witnessed the close of the Gutenberg Parenthesis (the period when the book was king format of the information hierarchy for 500 years from about the 1500-2000 AD) during my career as a librarian. What a fascinating journey it was! It felt like the library floor was shifting beneath my feet and I jumped into digital culture to figure out how information could be navigated after the death of fixed media. Yes…the word death may fit with metaliteracy! Death of print as king (yet long live print) as well as “beyond print” or thinking “about literacy” after the impact of the Internet.

Of course, a book in print is still a viable format and many people still prefer print books to digital formats or ebooks. Perhaps print will survive long into our future (of course a librarian would hope). But most content today is born digital, creating the need to investigate archival of changing formats as they evolve and the hardware used to access them becomes obsolete.

Metamodernism and the Death of Dystopia

Postmodernism ushered in a period of irony and cynicism as grand narratives were broken down and truth became illusive. A new period is arising beyond postmodernism which may allow room for sincerity, hope, and a balance of tradition and innovation. Postmodern literature brought volumes of dystopian fiction which many found bleak and desolate (even though much of it was quite good and who doesn’t like a good zombie story?).

The name of our current philosophical moment is not yet set in stone, but many, like myself, are proponents of the term metamodernism. In my recent book, Metamodernism and Changing Literacy, I investigate the intersection of our era in time with the need to revisit literacy as it has been revolutionized.

The Metaverse and the Death of a Single Reality

The hype over Facebook’s name change may bring the term “the metaverse” into popular culture, but it has been around since Neal Stephenson coined it way back in 1992 when he wrote Snow Crash. Facebook proports to give everyone a voice and connect them across the globe, which suggests that the company’s vision of virtual reality will build upon those connections. Jaron Lanier (often touted as the Father of Virtual Reality) opposes social media in his book Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now and the idea of Facebook creating a VR world seems the antithesis of his philosophical view of a metaverse.

The Metaverse (with a capital M as an interoperable space connecting all virtual worlds) has not evolved, but the many metaverse-esque virtual worlds that I have visited for education are a far cry from what I imagine FB is developing. Space for cartoonish avatars playing social games and dancing around has little educational value and there are many high quality virtual spaces in which one can share a sense of presence for high quality immersive learning. No doubt, multiple realities are on the horizon and my passion for digital citizenship expands alongside them.

What does this jump into metamodernism mean for us? Much of our way of life is different now, perhaps dead to us! Some people say privacy is dead. A “shared culture” of music and media with our own generation may be dead as we each create and curate our own personal dashboard. A new way of living has emerged and we are personally responsible to make it healthy, happy and ethical.

Death is a part of the circle of life and plays a role in the cycle of information and libraries. If META means dead in Hebrew, we are given yet another connotation for our philosophical time, our evolving communication tools, and the way we will live in the future. As winter brings the death to our natural world, spring burst forth anew and we oscillate among the opposites we encounter on this planet. That’s about as metamodern as it gets.

Yikes! Metaliteracy Needed Now: Young, Old and In-Between!

My recent article in College and Research Libraries News shares the importance of embedding metaliteracy in higher education but, if you really think about it, metaliteracy is for all of us from tiny tots to the elderly. Have you seen little ones accessing fun games and videos (hopefully somewhat educational) on their parents mobile devices? My four year old grandson recently picked up a wrapper from a kids’ treat and said, “Look there’s a QR code. Let’s see what it does on your phone!” His parents are aware of the importance of limiting screen time and provide him with lots of outdoor activities, but there is no escaping digital culture. Yes, literacy has changed and even the youngest among us juggles multiple formats of information as he becomes a prosumer– both consuming and producing digital content.

Augmented Reality apps are available now for toddlers!

ApplyDu for kids

Elderly Folks have Metaliteracy Needs

Working with elderly people in the library, I am reminded that we all have personal literacy needs. An 85 year old grandmother may want to learn ZOOM or Facetime to connect with family. Choosing which application and which device for communication is part of metaliteracy and the apps keep changing. One elderly woman asked for help setting up her new smart phone and it was her first time using a touch screen device. “Is it me or is this phone really confusing and difficult?” she asked. Learning to swipe up, down and side to side or to gently tap instead of push the screen frustrated her but her phone company told her that the flip phone she had was obsolete and sent her a new model. We have met several times in the library to help her get more comfortable. Metaliteracy includes constant changes in the way we communicate and adapting to changes in digital tools can be uniquely personal for each of us.

Metamodern Students “walk through” Instructional Design

Metaliteracy can be taught in any setting including a virtual world! To help a class of students in Dublin understand their own need for metaliteracy, I “sat on top” of my slides as the students walked through them (which is way less boring than listening to a lecture). Utilizing new digital tools may be fascinating but it requires understanding that metaliteracy is a personal responsibility. Parents, educators, and people of all ages need to think about their changing literacy skills and having conversations about it makes for a good start on becoming metaliterate.

Plunge into My VR Office – One Mind-bending Click Away!

Virtual reality apps have exploded.  Frame.io is a web-based VR platform created by Virbela which is currently in Beta and will be released next year. In addition, augmented reality (AR) has been around for years but is staged to take off in mainstream media for many uses.  We live and work in multiple realities and we juggle multiple communication tools which certainly require metaliteracy.  Click here to visit my VR office Frame.io/valibrarian or (if you have a device nearby) just use a smart camera to access with this QR code.

Note: the default setting is an open microphone.  I need to tell the Frame.io creators that this might be a privacy issue.  I had the tab open on my browser and then left to do work on other tabs.  A couple hours later, I heard a colleague saying, “Hi Val!  Are you there?”  I could not figure out where the voice was coming from until I clicked over to the Frame.io tab. Yikes! That felt weird.

The images in the VR office have links to resources about metaliteracy in metamodern culture, so click away as you wander through both 2D and 3D objects. Metaliteracy is a term, coined by Tom Mackey and Trudi Jacobson, that encompasses the way we juggle many communication tools every day including social media, email, text messages, app notifications, evaluation of online information and much more. If you come visit, you will create an avatar and be able to chat in voice. 

One wall shares a link to the Community Virtual Library Frame.io space, which also is just one click away! My office hours in Second Life at the Community Virtual Library are currently 1-2pm Pacific Time. I will “plunge” into FrameVR and be around if anyone wants to visit. Of course, if you are reading this ten years from now, we may meet elsewhere. Perhaps on Mars!

Not Your Grandad’s Literacy

This week I presented an overview of my new book Metamodernism and Changing Literacy: Emerging Research and Opportunities for the Virtual World Education Round Table. Educators (and those interested in virtual learning environments) attended as I walked through the 9 book chapters to share an overview.

Walking through the presentation (as avatars) demonstrated new literacy in action! The book merges our philosophical moment with the need for critical thinking about our own literacy. Participants brought thoughtful discussion about the changes in digital culture and how we need to address them at a personal as well as global level.