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Living in a Meta World

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Metaliteracy for the metamodern world

How lucky I have been to serve as a librarian and “literacy specialist” during the time when literacy was turned upside down. (Well, there were a few bumpy moments when I didn’t really feel lucky!) I got to witness it personally and globally. I remember a day in the school library, when I had the strangest sensation (somewhere in the early days after the turn of the century) that the floor of the library was shaking. I realized I was experiencing the shift from primarily print materials to digital ones at the close of the Gutenberg Parentheses.

My search for ways to adapt and teach literacy in our postmodern and metamodern times led me to metaliteracy, a term coined by Mackey and Jacobson that provides a structure for the acquisition, production, and sharing of knowledge in collaborative online communities. I have used several other literacy terms (such as transliteracy) over the past few years, but metaliteracy seems to perfectly match our digital-based literacy environment.

I took a break from blogging to write a book on the topic of metaliteracy that should be published this year. My research has led me to the intersection of literacy and our philosophical moment in time– metamodernism. Of course, this proposed name has not yet become widely accepted since it is impossible to understand an era or a place in history at the time it is being lived. Yet, the sense of feeling that times have changed and that postmodernism is over surrounds us all.

Thomas P. Mackey and Trudi E. Jacobson.  Metaliteracy: Reinventing Information Literacy to Empower Learners. Chicago: Neal-Schuman/ALA Editions and London; Facet, 2014. 

The Toppling Hierarchy of Information

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Web 2.o (perhaps an over-used term but a rapidly expanding source of shared information) may include user-generated content, social media, wikinomics, folksonomies and open source software.  For centuries, scholars have treasured the great works created by the most brilliant minds.  Expert authority has been regarded with great esteem by the wise elders. Now that the hierarchy of information has toppled, is respect for human ideas, creativity, and wisdom still valued?

Today, we see a trend toward “information wants to be free.” Note the link to cyberpunks and that idea that hackers are liberators of information which should never be isolated or controlled by a single ideology.  Don’t mistake my intent here to insult hackers or cyberpunks.  Some of the individuals I follow in my personal leraning network may fall into that category!

The core philosophical standards of my training as a librarian have encouraged me to balance intellectual freedom with intellectual property.  I hear many people call the Internet the “world’s biggest library” and use the term “Google” as both librarian and search strategy.  Many individuals are unaware of the cost of high quality information in academic databases.  Convenient sources, accessed immediately, are first choice.  Giving credit to the source of information retrieved online is an idea that is archaic in some circles.  Respect for intellectual property is the concern of stuffy old academics from the dark ages.  A science teacher can use a youtube video created by a 6th grader to teach magnetism, so who needs an expert?

Why I do I care?  Why am I taking the time to write this blog?

Standing among the rubble, having witnessed the toppling of the hierarchy of information, my concern is that human beings will no longer have a quest for deep understanding.  I think I am beginning to understand The Shallows by Nicholas Carr.

Who am I to write about this?  I am no authority!  I am an example of the problem I address, adding to the “sea of chaos” by writing a user-generated blog.  Spouting off my meager ramblings for the world to read (knowing that the likelihood is extremely small because the average time spent on a webpage according Nicholas Carr is only 18 seconds), I often feel unqualified to share my thoughts online.  I remind myself that I should be willing to serve as a “brave guinnea pig” in this new era because there is no going back to life before the net.

The only redeeming value I can see in this post, is that fact that I am revising a draft that I started two years ago ( August 2009).  I saw my unfinished post titled “The Toppling Hierarchy of Information” and was compelled to revise.  Oh, the power of that word- revision (to see again).

Free Blog (at a price)

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So it turns out edublogs now allows “contentlink” ads to appear within my free educational blog.  I have investigated the possibility of ridding my blog of these annoying ads.  Now I read that in order to have an “ad-free” blog, I must pay an annual subscription.  It is difficult for a reader to distinguish my intentional links from these random advertisements.  I suppose this is another example of constantly changing technology.  As an educator, one can spend many hours learning a new technology tool which ends up becoming useless, unnecessary, or suddenly obsolete.  There is still one benefit, however, because each new learning experience provides skills that make the next one just a bit easier.

The secret to digital happiness is getting comfortable with change.