Towards an Exploration and Understanding of Post Literacy

Abstract

This paper examines the nature and characteristics of a “post literacy” culture which would allow it to displace literacy (in the same fashion that literacy has effectively displaced orality). Post literacy is imagined in terms of the development of new tools as well as the evolution of humans and human capability.Cette étude examine la nature et les caractéristiques d’une culture "post-littératie" qui permettrait de déloger la littératie (de la même manière que la littératie a effectivement a supplanté les connaissances orales). La post-littératie est imaginée en fonction du développement de nouveaux outils, de même qu’en fonction de l'évolution humaine et des capacités humaines.

Post‐literacy and the library

“…As the explosion of handheld devices, including smart phones and some of the most widely known variations of e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle (Touch, Touch, Touch 3G, Fire), and its Barnes and Noble competition, the Nook (Simple Touch, Color, Tablet) continues, one would be led to believe that we have already reached a level of post-literacy where the printed book itself for many readers may be as historically insignificant as the clay tablet. Yet, when one considers the concept of post-literacy from the perspective of Michael Ridley, the CIO of Guelph University (Canada), he imagines that it, "is not a decline from literacy into some new dark age but rather the beginning of a transformational capacity as yet unimagined" (Ridley, 2011). So, is the practice itself merely changing or is reading actually being transformed through the electronic medium by which it is delivered?…”