Cyborg dreams: from ergodics to electracy

Abstract

This paper speculatively explores some of wider ramifications of introducing computer-based media into the academy, both as a teaching tool and as a type of media for study in its own right. It focuses on the experience of computer-induced liminal space and some of the psychological affects that result, including q-phasing and attention-deficit-type behaviour, and ponders what affect they have on learners. The paper postulates that use of this media may result in a new for of computer-based literacy, which Ulmer has called electracy. Such questions have broader implications for concepts of humanity and culture which the paper points towards.

Visual literacy and learning: finding some online territories for the slow learner

“…The traditional opposition of text as perceived (learned) and image as received has blurred, today we often see pictorial icons with illegible text, a crossover instigated in and by contemporary culture. An example of this occurrence is the “technotext” Lexia to Perplexia (Memmott, as mentioned in Weight's (2004) paper).…”