Week 6 reading #1

My reaction to: COPY AND PASTE LITERACY? LITERACY PRACTICES IN THE
PRODUCTION OF A MYSPACE PROFILE by DAN PERKEL

This is an academic paper with the sole intent of making the use of sites, especially like MySpace, as a form of literacy. He draws on the opinions of experts in defining literacy and his own field research. He looks at the elements of literacy and then relates that to the creation and maintenance of a MySpace account. People interact, share, and create content: they are consumers and producers through a network of friends who all share, copy and paste content to create new hybrids.

I think that the author, Dan Perkel, has a point that I will not attempt to refute. However, I will challenge the value and significance of his paper. I don't really see this as a new form of literacy, though I would agree that it is literacy. People have been behaving this way for all time. It is the nature of man to copy and paste. People form identities, and self-expression, through relationships with other people. If you like an expression that another uses then you take it as your own, and no one accuses you of being a thief. When you take a little from here and some from there and mix it together you have a new product. What is new is that existing literacy is now expressed through a new medium: MySpace. I would also like to add two points, if I may. One, there is little skill and less rigor in using MySpace, so literacy is not nurtured and does not grow. Two, traditional literacy is still important and I would say more so. If students can't read, write, and communicate effectively then we have lost something. Society is loosing in literacy, we have lowered the rigor and expectations associated with literacy. The average kid today, with all the tools of expression, is at a loss for how to articulate who they are, what they want, and they have even less social and conflict resolution skills. If we are to move forward then we need not water down our children, we need to give them tools and expect them to be used.