(Re) Contextualizing Computer Literacy: A Call for Multiliteracies and Systemic Change in Writing and Communication

In Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, Stuart Selber argues for a more robust framework by which to understand and articulate the dynamics of computer literacy. Insofar as existing computer literacy frameworks seem to offer rather narrow definitions of computer literacy as pertaining exclusively to the acquisition of technical skills, Selber attempts to answer the call of these decontextualized frameworks with more dedicated efforts to "account for local social forces and material conditions" (23). Selber's framework seeks to increase the prospects for more responsible and responsive iterations of computer literacy that explore the complex and dynamic interplay between matters of functional literacy, critical literacy, and rhetorical literacy. Ultimately, this complex and dynamic interplay begins to address the panoply of considerations that comprise theories of computer literacy by framing and juxtaposing representations of computers as tools, cultural artifacts, and hypertextual media, a move that potently and productively challenges the one-dimensional theories that have come to dominate debates and conversations about the use of computers.

Throughout Multiliteracies for a Digital Age, Selber emphasizes the ways in which instructors in writing and communication departments have neither been deferred to nor taken enough interest in expanding the scope of computer literacy in the ways he proposes with his multiliteracies framework. By arguing for more systemic changes in and around computer literacy, Selber acknowledges that advocacy must pass through a number of different layers of requirements in order to institute real change. Much like his arguments regarding the complex and dynamic interplay between matters of functional literacy, critical literacy, and rhetorical literacy, individual systemic requirements for change cannot be approached in isolation; rather, one ought to consider matters of technical, pedagogical, curricular, departmental, and institutional concerns simultaneously and in conversation with one another.

In my mind, Selber's arguments resonate with many of the other readings we have engaged with throughout the semester. By predicating his multiliteracies framework on efforts to challenge the manner in which existing iterations of computer literacy have remained decidedly decontextualized in nature, Selber rehearses many of the theories that comprise multimodality. In On Multimodality, Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes suggest that conceptualizations of mediated action and multimodal practices require deeper consideration into "specific sociocultural contexts" and "intricacies of location, access, ability, and ideology" in order to better understand the manner in which the mediational means employed by composers emerge and acquire meaning. Similarly, Jody Shipka's "mediated-action framework" in A Composition Made Whole pushes back against a sort of "highly decontextualized skills and drills, linear, single-mode approach to writing instruction," challenging instructors to develop approaches that "offer participants . . . a richer and more intricately textured understanding of how communicative practices are socially, historically, and technologically mediated." In many ways, multiliteracies and multimodality are linked by an impulse to see writing and communication as more than rote or formulaic attempts to express oneself, but, rather, richly-textured, dynamic, and nuanced ontological and epistemological processes, in which composers contribute to the existing wheelhouse, so to speak, of information and subjectivities.