Blog #8

In the article “Material Literacy and Visual Design” by Lester Faigley, the conceptions of literacy and the differentiation between oral and literate cultures is expounded upon. Culture baggage is attached to the conception of literacy and how it is regarded by society either positively or negatively. However, the visual component of imagery within literacy is typically negatively associated with “ignorance, illiteracy, and deceit” in a way that depicts even popular image technology as a perpetuation of “dumb Art.” The author proposes that the argument that literacy has always been inclusive of varying media, but only now that computer capabilities and technologies are discovered are they able to be apparent within society. The author describes the “grand narrative of alphabetic literacy” and the supposed significance from the shift of the oral to literate culture. Faigley suggests that cultures freely borrow and adapt systems for information and storage when the need arises, thereby negating previously established theories. The utilization of the Internet may be “self referential” but has “material consequences,” given the example of the Zapatista struggle. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the various articles within the website and it definitely makes clear the misperceptions and negative connotations associated with varying forms of media other than the written word. This is critical particularly for the EWM major because the entire basis of our major is constituted by the varying modes of discourse and forms of media that can utilize writing and composition.