I do think we are witnessing the decline of text alone modes of representation. Alpha-numeric art, emogi’s and memes are examples of visual modes of expression in the digital age. I think the earlier a pupil begins using word processing to write the greater likelihood that pupil will be unable to easily communicate in cursive or script. This has me imagining a time when machines will have to interpret old documents with all the dependency on machines this implies. The ascendency of visual communications occurs as literacy is very high. Could this sudden shift toward visual-text modes of representation is a natural tangent of literate society? Or is this merely an emergence of a secondary digital literacy where images have complex meaning that is shared within a specific community?
I think one way of gauging the tension of meaning making and visual or textual is to observe the frequency and use of school libraries. What is the circulation like within a school library? Are students borrowing texts? What is the ratio of text-based novels and resources vs graphic novels and other visual based materials? The answers to these questions could illuminate the tension between the modes of representation in local school communities. I know that in the rural school I worked at the library was closed off to students and there was no school librarian. The shocking reality that students did not seem to view the absence of the learning space as important. No one advocated for the reopening of the library but when I re-open the room and made it a learning space, there were many students who appreciated having this resource available to them. Unfortunately, the number of books borrowed did not change and more students were happy to use their own tech-tools or the limited computers available in the library.
Bolter describes hypertext as “discrete units—pages, paragraphs, graphics—and the links between them”. (Bolter, 2001, p. 29) The links between the discrete units is the quintessential aspect of this multimodal medium. Kress portends that “reading as taking meaning and making meaning from many sources of information, from many different sign-systems, will become the new normal”. (Kress, 2005, p. 17) The “many sources of information” and the “many different sign-systems” are easily observed in a hypertext world wide web or as common knowledge.
I am skeptical that we are seeing the remediation of print for digital experiences. Will digital technologies completely subsume text, I think not in my lifetime; there are still too many people who long for the nostalgia of the printed word. I think text will always have to be a part of medium for knowledge and comprehension. Visual modes of representation may ascend to great heights but I do not think digital imagery will replace words as thoughts for images as ideas.
Sources:
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Kress, G. (2005). Gains and Losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, 5-22.
