Digital literacy - again?

When I first started thinking about the impact of new technologies on language, any idea of what might or might not be referred to as digital literacy was not really on my mind. I was convinced, however, that these technologies would change the face of written communication in a fundamental way. This was in the late '90s - and, as I studied the ways in which teenagers were beginning to innovate with the resources that were rapidly evolving, it seemed to me that we might soon have to think about literacy in new ways. A short piece, published in 2007 called 'Writing the future in the digital age', captures my thinking at the time. And in this piece I did use those two words 'digital literacy' and began to engage with the debate about what it might mean for how we talk about writing and reading - as well as the broader semiotic landscape. What were the implications for education in particular? There was plenty of opinion, both radical and conservative back then and in that sense nothing much has changed. But I noticed, as time went on, that a lot of effort was being spent on trying to pin down the term - particularly by those who wanted to influence policy and practice in schools. Instead, what interested me was the direct experience of children and young people and the ways in which new communication played out in a rapidly changing social, cultural and linguistic milieu. My linguistic training had led me to an understanding that whilst spoken language changed quite quickly - over the course of a lifetime - written language, being more strictly codified, was much slower to change. But here, new written forms were popping up all over the place, with novel conventions of address, abbreviation, new methods of distribution and - because of rapid connectivity - new ways of relating to one another. To call it a revolution in writing seemed too bold, but it was certainly a time of rapid change. I'm now of the opinion that a good argument could be made for calling digital literacy a revolution in writing and I've made my peace with the term and all its multiple meanings. Revolution wasn't on my mind in my last book, 'Why Writing Still Matters', even though that work was concerned with describing and analysing the changing face of written communication. But when Edward Elgar asked me to write a book called 'Rethinking Digital Literacy' I gradually came round to that way of thinking. Because I really wanted go into all the different layers, and all the various implications of this shift in communication, it seemed economical to start using 'digital literacy' again and to try to get a grip on the sweeping changes that it's caught up in. In this new book I finally am suggesting that we're in the midst of a revolution in writing!