presented by Ed Chang and Jentery Sayers, 10+31+2007

for research exposed! (general studies 391) at the UW

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What is technoliteracy anyway?

The definition of this term will vary from discipline to discipline, field to field. But for our purposes, as instructors of and PhD students in English at the University of Washington, we have composed this definition:

Technoliteracy is more than using technologies and understanding media. It entails
(re-)constructing and (re-)imagining them for democratic purposes. To critically engage technologies and media is not to control or master them, but to become aware of how they function and circulate, how we make meaning with them, and even how they make us vulnerable.

What especially matters is how, exactly, we mobilize this term in learning, research, and scholarship. That is, technoliteracy is more a set of lived practices than a series of sentences or words.

To unpack this definition, let's look to some examples, shall we?

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