Electracy: A Theoretical Framework for Interactive Media

Richard Smyth, Ph.D.VM606 – Emerson College21 January 2010

What is Electracy?

a neologism created by Greg Ulmer describing the skills necessary to exploit the full communicative potential of new media

“Electracy is to digital media what literacy is to print media”

draws attention to need for entirely new term that avoids etymological connection to literacy

Need for a “Native” Concept

Proliferation of “Literacies” digital literacy media literacy information literacy computer literacy procedural literacy

All based on old paradigm of “literacy” (littera “letter”)

Need for a “Native” Concept

“It is important to distinguish electracy from other terms, such as computer-based literacy, Internet literacy, digital literacy, electronic literacies, metamedia literacy, and even cyber-punk literacy. None of these other terms have the breadth electracy does as a concept, and none of them draw their ontology from electronic media exclusively.”

--James Inman. “Electracy for the Ages: Collaboration with the Past and Future.”

Apparatus Theory

an apparatus is a “social machine” that maps the intersection among communications and mnemonic

technologies institutional practices employing these

technologies subject formation (i.e. conceptions of

selfhood) resulting from such intersections

Apparatus = Major Epochs

I. Orality: 40,000 BCE – present

II. Alphabetic Literacy: 5,000 BCE – present

III. Print Literacy: 1447 CE - present

IV. Electracy: 1830 - present

Time Line

lphaetic

Literacy750 BCE

Printing Press1447 CE

Peter Ramus1515-1572

1820

1901

1927

1984

Grammatology

study of “the history and theory of writing” uses the history of literacy as an analogy to

our own moment also uses comparisons with the transition

from orality to literacy to organize inquiry into the transition from literacy to electracy (Electronic Monuments xxiii)

“Literacy shows us by analogy what we are looking for, but it does not give us the answer.” (Internet Invention 29)

Some of Ulmer’s analogies

“What selfhood was to the Greeks, branding is to us.”

“Playing one’s avatar is for electracy what writing an essay is to literacy”

“Electracy does for the affective body what literacy did for the cogitative mind”

- Ulmer. “The Genealogy of Electracy.”

Some more analogies

“School is to literacy as the internet is to electracy” (29)

“Performance may be to electracy what definition was to literacy” (38)

“A literate person reasons on paper (text); an electrate person feels online (felt)” (145)

-- Ulmer. Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy

Analogical Heuretics (1st Example)

concepts : literacy :: x : electracy

x = “decepts” (for example)

literacy makes conceptual thinking possible

electracy makes “deceptual thinking” possible (?)

“Deceptual Thinking”?

“Deceptual Thinking”?

“In sum, MUDs blur the boundaries between self and game, self and role, self and simulation. One player says, ‘You are what you pretend to be. . .you are what you play.’”

--Sherry Turkle. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. p. 192.

“Deceptual Thinking”?

“The changing nature of identity in digital civilization is manifested here in the theme of impersonation. . .”

--Gregory Ulmer. Internet Invention. pp. 7-8.

Inventing New Thinking

“Electracy is not against literacy but is the means to assist our society in adding a new dimension to our language capabilities. This project. . . proposes that our discipline also has primary responsibility for inventing the practices of reasoning and communi-cating in ways native to new media.”

--Jeff Rice. The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and NewMedia. p. xi.

Analogical Heuretics (2nd example)

definition : literacy :: infinition : electracy

if definition is the act of making clear…then infinition is the act of making unclear…

(http://electrateprofessor.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/infinition-thinking-fractal/)

Thinking-Fractal?

Then infinition is the creation of unclear or “fuzzy” boundaries

If definition is the creation of clear boundaries. . .

animated gif from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_snowflake

Transitional Moments Fear

“. . .this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. . . . they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”

-- Plato. Phaedrus.

Transitional Moments Fear

“[Beowulf] anticipates the advent of an intruding technology that promises to undercut the psychological foundations of an entire way of life.”

“[Beowulf exposes] the effect that the fruits of this technology [of literacy] have on a community structured by the personal immediacy of verbal exchange in a principally oral culture” (329).

-- Michael Near. "Anticipating Alienation: Beowulf and the Invasion of Literacy."

Transitional Moments Fear

“As a cognitive neuroscientist and scholar of reading, I am particularly concerned with the plight of the reading brain as it encounters this technologically rich society . . . the reading brain is slowly becoming endangered - the unforeseen consequences of the transition to a digital epoch that is affecting every aspect of our lives. . .”

-- Maryanne Wolf. “Learning to Think in a Digital World.”

“Transitions like the one from print to electronic media do not take place without rippling or, more likely, reweaving the entire social and cultural web. The tendencies outlined above are already at work. We don't need to look far to find their effects. . . . our educational systems are in decline; our students are less and less able to read and comprehend their required texts, and their aptitude scores have leveled off well below those of previous generations.”

--Sven Birkerts. The Gutenberg Elegies.

Transitional Moments Fear

Electracy: Invitation to Invention

“The difficulty of studying our own moment is that we are immersed in it, and everything is in flux.”

--Greg Ulmer. “The Grammatology of the Future.” p. 139.

References

Birkerts, Sven. The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Viewed 1/21/2010. http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/ books/nn/bdbirk.htm.

Near, Michael. "Anticipating Alienation: Beowulf and the Invasion of Literacy." PMLA 108.2 (March 1993): 320-332.

Plato. Phaedrus. Viewed 1/20/2010. http://classics.mit.edu/Plato /phaedrus.html.

Rice, Jeff. The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and NewMedia. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2007.

Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

References

Ulmer, Gregory L. “The Genealogy of Electracy.” Reconstruction 9.2 (2009).Viewed 1/20/2010. http://reconstruction.eserver.org/092/ulmer.shtml.

---. “The Grammatology of the Future.” Deconstructing Derrida: Tasks for the New Humanities. Eds. Peter Pericles Trifonas and Michael A. Peters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

---. Electronic Monuments. Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota P, 2005.

---. Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy. New York: Longman Press, 2003.

Wolf, Maryanne. “Learning to Think in a Digital World.” Boston Globe (5 Sept 2007). Viewed 1/20/2010. http://www.boston.com/news/globe /editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/05/learning_to_think_in_a_digital_world/.