Modern Definition of Literacy

the increasing multiplicity and integration of significant modes of meaning-making, where the textual is also related to the visual, the audio, the spatial, the behavioral, and so on ... particularly important in the mass media, multimedia, and in an electronic hypermedia. (New London Group, 1996, p. 64)

 It is Impossible to Keep Up with New Knowledge

No man's model of reality is a purely personal product. While some of his images are based on firsthand observation, an increasing proportion of them today are based on messages beamed to us by the mass media and the people around us. Thus the degree of accuracy in his model to some extent reflects the general level of knowledge in society. And as experience and scientific research pump more refined and accurate knowledge into society, new concepts, new ways of thinking, supersede, contradict...

 Twitter, Celebrity, Asymmetric and Symmetric Social Conne...

Asymmetric attention is the key to another important concept, celebrity. Being famous means that a lot of people pay attention to you--after all, by definition it is famous people who appear on the cover of magazines, which are purchased because lots of people want to know what's happening with their favorite celebrities. But the celebrity doesn't, for the the most part, pay any attention to the fans (at least, not individually). Asymmetric attention ties in Twitter allows people like Oprah W...