Digital Literacy and Post-Oral Culture?
I’m struck by an article I read this morning titled “Remove smartphones from the hands of under-18s and maybe they will grow up to be less dumb.” The title is probably an over-exaggeration, but maybe not much! The key point in the article that caught my eye is this quote: “My friends with teenagers complain their children have lost the power of speech . . . that they watch television while texting and commenting online, and spend hours just staring at tiny screens.” It made me wonder if in a digitally literate culture we run the danger of becoming a ‘post-oral’ culture in which no one speaks, we just type.(We don’t even write, which removes almost all of the ‘physically creative’ task of communication. Yes, I know that, too, is an over-exaggeration!) In many ways, that’s what we do in online courses. It wouldn’t surprise me if I never hear the voice of anyone in our class. How does that profoundly affect the way we interact?