I’m all about words. And so is the web. If Marshall McLuhan was still around, he’d say this is no coincidence.A while back, I wrote an article about the role of McLuhan’s literacy legacy in his media theory. I argued that his identity as an English professor was not merely a pitstop on the way to media gurudom but the core of his intellectual operating system.From his forecast of the collective unconscious and his understanding of media as extensions of our sensory apparatus to the problem of narcosis and the emergence of a neo-tribalism, he saw the shape of things to come through his academic rear view mirror. For McLuhan, our play with words - arguably the cornerstone of human cognition - offered the most clues about how we organised the world in our own image. These insights are especially prescient in our current technological moment, which is all about the word.
Using your words
Social and participatory media have given words a new kind of primacy, specificity and power through metadata, tagging and aggregation. In fact, I’d argue that web2.0 offers a tantalizing invitation to be really, really articulate. But this opportunity may conceal another facet of the digital divide.
For example, literacy. Simply knowing what terms should apply (and how to spell them) is an issue for those who lack the prior knowledge of received codes and contexts required to participate in classification. On many occasions, I’ve talked with students who were confounded by the absence of content on a received figure or knowledge base only to discover that they had misspelled or lacked a particular key term. For them, it’s the difference between hours of fruitless searching and a direct hit. The requirement of prior knowledge, context and specialised language suggests a technological bias towards traditional literacies. This is unsurprising and consistent with McLuhan’s prediction that we will continue to replicate narrative and literate modes until we embrace the icon, symbol and ideogram (in place of the word).
The A B C of web2.0
In my view, the arrival of tagging and folksonomies has placed a renewed (and somewhat ironic) emphasis on the specificity - or, to use the more digital argot, “granularity” - of language to serve the new movement of collaborative classification or “folksonomies.” I think this is a good thing - just as I promote and celebrate multiple and emerging literacies (including gaming and graphic engagement). This shift opens up both possibilities - to create inclusive new words and languages, as well as challenges - to reinforce existing exclusive hierarchies of expertise.
If we are to promote collaborative classification and social media as a democratizing force, we must also invest in the provision of traditional literacy skills for those who may not otherwise take part. As a writer and educator, I embrace this as an opportunity to move away from catch phrases and smotherwords into a new era of specificity. It’s all about the word.
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