Tag: metamodernism

Meta-Death: Not Facebook Metaverse (Please)

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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!

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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.

Digital Citizens need Metaliteracy

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Digital Citizenship has become my passion over the past few years. Watching the world’s obsession with digital devices and constant connectivity has been fascinating as it coincided with the toppling of the information hierarchy. I still use the word library even though library schools are now called schools of information science. When I visited with some University of Washington iSchool students a few years ago, a young male student asked about my background. I told him I was a librarian and he smiled and said, “How quaint!” I smiled back thinking there is just something about the word library I don’t want to give up.

Of course, I know we carry our libraries in our pockets now! We are globally networked prosumers– both consuming and producing content on digital apps through virtual communities. This change was revolutionary and I am thankful to have witnessed it as a librarian at the turn of the century. I often remember a moment when I stood in my school library and felt the change that was happening. Early one morning, before the students and teachers arrived, I stood looking at the library shelves and tables thinking, “What will become of all this?” It felt as if the floor was shaking because I knew the library was rapidly about to change…. and it did. The library became a “digital hub” and a makerspace filled with laptops and devices, interactive whiteboards and Skype sessions with authors.

These changes brought my passion for digital citizenship to the forefront and, as a writing trainer with a love for literature, emphasized the need to explore how literacy was changing. When I found Mackey and Jacobson’s (2011) term metaliteracy, I instantly knew it was important. Recently, I wrote a guest blog post on the Metaliteracy.org site.

My interest in digital citizenship and changing literacy has intersected with our current philosophical era, in part due to that revolutionary moment I felt in my school library. I sensed that nothing would ever be the same. Yet, I still have such love for the core values of librarianship. I felt this oscillation between a respect for tradition and acceptance of revolutionary changes for the past decade.

A new term, which I discovered while investigating postmodernism, hit me like a bolt of lightning. Just when I began to understand postmodernism, I learned that it is over! We are living in a new era which has yet to be named. One of the terms for our current philosophical moment is metamodernism (Vermeulen and van Den Akker, 2010).

Collaborating with these scholars illustrates metaliteracy in the sense of networking across distance to access, produce and share information. The foundation for my book, Metamodernism and Changing Literacy, is the merge of two theoretical frameworks: the philosophical framework of metamodernism and the information science framework of metaliteracy.

What’s in a name? “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Was Shakespeare right? Perhaps it doesn’t matter what you call it because we all sense that our lives have changed along with the information revolution. Yet, agreeing on common terms helps us better understand and communicate our ideas. Giving credit to our sources still matters and realizing that we must be responsible for digital citizenship has become critical. I have great appreciation for colleagues (Mackey and Jacobson, Vermeulen and van Den Akker) for offering new nomenclature that advocates digital citizenship for us all.

Mackey, T., & Jacobson, T. (2011). “Reframing information literacy as a metaliteracy”, C&RL News 72: 62-78.

Hill, V. J. Metamodernism and Changing Literacy: Emerging Research and Opportunities. (2020) Hershey, PA: IGI Global, 1-283.

Vermeulen, T. & Van den Akker, R. (2010). Notes on metamodernism. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2, 1-14.

Glimpses of Metamodern Times

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The Community Virtual Library is sharing podcasts, so I am taking the opportunity to share a bit about my book Metamodernism and Changing Literacy. Short audio clips can present various topics about how literacy has changing (and is changing) for all of us. Here’s a quick little introduction…

Metamodernism is a term which I believe captures our cultural moment and helps us understand how literacy has changed. Dr. Gregg Henriques addressed the question “What is Metamodernism?” in his recent blog post in Psychology Today. The journey toward understanding digital culture is complex and fascinating. Stay tuned for more little glimpses into metamodernism through the “lens of literacy” (metaliteracy) with podcasts available on Spotify or other apps.

Not Your Grandad’s Literacy

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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.

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. 

Meta Dreams

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My dream is a continual question for meaning. What it means to be alive….the awe of it. That has always been my dream and why I chose to be a librarian. (We are on a dream collecting quest.) My dream is a constant journey, a spiral, just like life. Seasons come around again and again and every year they’re the same yet different. Old- yet new. My dream of meaning is a collection of oxymorons that illustrate the tensions of opposites. We live in a world of them. I dream in poetry but balance my mind by writing research.

What does life mean? Human culture has attempted to answer that philosophical question through different lenses of perception over the centuries. The Post Modern Era is over and we have yet to agree on the term for the cultural moment in which we live. Post Postmodernism sounds redundant. Some, myself included, prefer metamodernism.

Digital life is spent in the “about”: sharing life on social media, creating memes and living in digital spaces. Literacy has become metaliteracy. The metaverse exists but can’t be defined by any location on any particular server.