Tech disconnect redux or TKO?

This afternoon, I just happened to be reading the letters to the editor in the Smithsonian (June 2011), and came upon this one:

Letter to the editor at Smithsonian (June 2011)

You can see the original article, Turn On, Log In, Wise Up if you like–it got a lot of negative commets online. Hello, world–did you forget the last editorial in the Smithsonian is a joke, often silly, sentimental, odd? It’s not always but it often is.

“Tech Disconnect” reminds me a lot of the things we’ve reading about the literacy crisis in our summer class–oooh it’s so scary that Johnny can read or write–but as wacmrsl just pointed out in a blog post, the more writing we do, the better we get at it. And I think this is about any literacy practices we engage in: blog, phone, academic paper, journal article, book, poem, speech. The more we do the better we become–or can become. And in fact, the general rule is that if you do something stupid while in texting or on the web, the bigger the consequences: lose a job, blow up a relationship, hurt someone’s feelings, get famous (for all the wrong reasons). But in the case of the digital, the words (or video or photo) don’t dissipate into thin air, either, they go viral. Hence the possible infamy, and hence the sense that folks who take communication seriously, are taking literacy seriously, all literacies.

I also quibble with the fear-inducing “As electric gadgets become more intrusive, will all human socialization cease?” No. I think the “electric gadgets” can make us more social–we build a network we carry with us. It’s comforting to not lose friends or family when I’m somewhere other than with them. I loathe some aspects of being turned on, logged in, and wised up, but I am glad I am.

I wanted to call this letter writer a Luddite, but then I started to rethink what I really might mean by that because of an article I read on Luddites (same magazine) this last March. (The Smithsonian is one of my favorites.) I have even called myself a Luddite or suggested I had tendencies in that direction–meaning I didn’t keep up with all the latest, hippest technology. But I would have been far off the mark. All that serves as a reminder that writing on the web is so powerful because I can talk about a letter to an editor from a June issue of a magazine, then also reference an article from March–and send you right where you can find each of these things to make up your own mind. You don’t need to get the Smithsonian anymore in your snail mail box, nor do you need to go to a library to look up these two articles. Right here, right now.

If the web 2.0 ain’t supporting literacy learning, and I mean lots of different kinds of literacies, why, I reckon I deserve to lose this argument on a technical knock out (TKO).