Electracy

Description

From the Wikipedia:

"Electracy describes the kind of “literacy” or skill and facility necessary to exploit the full communicative potential of new electronic media such as multimedia, hypermedia, social software, and virtual worlds. According to theorist Gregory Ulmer, electracy “is to digital media what literacy is to print.”[1] It encompasses the broader cultural, institutional, pedagogical, and ideological implications inherent in the transition from a culture of print literacy to a culture saturated with electronic media. “Electracy” is the term he gives to what is resulting from this major transition that our society is undergoing. The term is a portmanteau word, combining "electrical" with "literacy," to allude to one of the fundamental terms used by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida to name the relational spacing that enables and delimits any signification in any medium (which is to say that it operates in orality and literacy as much as in electracy). Usage parallels "literacy": a person may be literate or illiterate, electrate or anelectrate.

Electracy denotes a broad spectrum of research possibilities including the history and invention of writing and mnemonic practices, the epistemological and ontological changes resulting from such practices, the sociological and psychological implications of a networked culture, and the pedagogical implementation of practices derived from such explorations." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electracy)