Summary:
Haas discusses two questions pertaining to technology: 1) how material tools shape mental processes and 2) how these material tools relate to culture. To answer the first question, she discusses how changing writing materials affects the writer in profound ways, making changes to his visual, spatial, temporal and tactile relationships with the text. The means by which the text is formed and/or viewed changes our relationship with its creation and the way it is viewed. She addresses the second question by discussing the effects of past textual mediums on the new. For example, the computer is embedded with endless symbols that originate in other text technologies, such as the pages, icons, and more. This, however, is not relevant across all cultures, so technology that is specialized for Western culture is avoided in other culturally diverse situations.
In Material Literacy, the author gives many examples of what would seem to be useless and poorly designed webpages, often created by teens. However, he argues that literacy is not based on text alone, but incorporates words and images alike. He believes literacy is material and multimedia-based, and has always been that way. Images are not a reflection of a lack of literacy, but the result of the ease of access to the internet.
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Comment:
I found it interesting that there are so many relationships among textual mediums, when you think about it. Everything had some kind of predecessor, and the effects of those never really seem to diminish.
Question:
If the lack of well-worded text online does not show a decrease in literacy, then what would? Is our immediacy based lifestyle contributing to a more image based literacy?
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