As societies move to more complex oral language, extended storiesbecome possible. Later, early writing means that more ideas canbe retained in permanent forms. At each stage (see Literacy transformations,above), new technologies afford new possibilities for communicationand knowledge representation, making possible history as a field,formal schooling, the mercantile system, and many other changes.The technologies at each stage-devices, artifacts, methods ofreproduction, distribution systems, and so on-evolve along withthe changing conceptions of literacy and its role in social practices.In this way, the evolution of literacy is demarcated by a seriesof changes that are neither simply social, nor technical, butsociotechnical.

What can we say about the latest set of sociotechnical changes?Some would argue that we are about to embark on a communal journeyinto cyberspace, a worldin which traditional conceptions of text will give way to virtualreality theater; that it will be a world where relations amongpeople will be enhanced through their mediation by computers,and where global democracy will flourish as writers share theirevery thought through the universal hypertext. We could add thatthis cyberspace will mean prosperity for all as machines takeover mundane work and embedded systemstransform every object in our environment into intelligent companions.

Others counter that these changes will create a rigid class systemas they reward the symbolic analyst elite and relegate everyoneelse to serving roles, or that relations between people will bereplaced by relations with machines. But perhaps, as others claim,none of this is true; the cyberworld is merely another commercialblitz devised to make us purchase electronic gadgets and shopforever in a digital mall. Is the information age bringing, asDickens (humwww.ucsc.edu/dickens/index.html) might say,the "best of times" or is it bringing the "worstof times," or must we conclude from all the hyperbole thatit is "so far like the present period" that we can donothing but speak of it in contradictory superlatives?

It seems clear that technological changes neither determine norare determined by social relations. What happens with new technologiesdepends in large part on how we interpret and respond to them,how we appropriate them into daily practices, and how we alterthem to fit our needs. As a result we often overestimate the magnitudeof changes in the near future. We expect transformations and findonly "more of the same."

But as we become blasé about the latest gadgets, we findourselves engaging in new practices made possible by the new technologies.These new ways of communicating, of relating to one another, andof accomplishing our daily lives create possibilities that gobeyond what even the designers of the new technologies envisage.It is this yet to be designed world that we seek to understand.

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• The Internet now has more than 30 million hosts.See Network Wizards at www.nw.com
• Traffic on the Internet has been doubling every 100 days.See The Emerging Digital Economy at www.ecommerce.gov
• 73% of white high school and college students in the UnitedStates have access to a home computer; only 32% of black studentsdo. See Bridging the Digital Divide at www.2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/papers.html

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"[C]omputers are, inevitably, culturally relative objects;unlike rocks and whales, they cannot be said to exist withoutpeople who possess culture, in which to recognize and use them.This is an important realization, because it brings us back tothe mysterious thing called 'meaning' after technocentrism hasthreatened to banish it" (p. 23, Jaron Lanier, "MovingBeyond Muzak," Harper's, 296 (1774), 22-24,March 1998).

"Thus email is notthe same one social practice and conception of giving and receivingmeanings via digital text. Like 'literacy,' 'email' is an umbrellaterm for a diverse and ever growing array of technological literacies"(p. 146, Colin Lankshear, Changing Literacies, Buckingham,UK: Open University Press). (See also Professional Materials,Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, September 1998,p. 68.)

"Technology is making life easier and more convenient andenjoyable, and many of us healthier, wealthier, and wiser. Butit is also affecting work, family, and the economy in unpredictableways, introducing new forms of tension and distraction, and posingnew threats to the cohesion of physical communities" ( www.technorealism.org).

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Over 60% of the citizens and 70% of the local businesses of Blacksburg,Virginia, USA, use the Internet on a regular basis. This is aresult of a collaboration between the town, Virginia Tech, andBell Atlantic to create one of the first electronic villages atwww.bev.net.

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Organizations

Some organizations based in the U.S. concerned with adolescentand adult literacy:

• International Reading Association, www.reading.org
• Literacy Volunteers of America, archon.educ.kent.edu/LVA/
• The National Council of Teachers of English, www.ncte.org
• National Center on Adult Literacy, www.literacyonline.org

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Cyberspace: as coined by science fiction writer WilliamGibson, a computer network in which users mentally traverse largedata matrices; now commonly used to describe the Internet.

E-mail: a service that allows users to send and receivemessages via computer and network; many services now support styledtext, graphics, audio, or video.

Embedded systems: computer processors that work in appliances,cars, telephones, lights, and other devices; they are often invisibleto the user (www.embedded.com)and mean that nearly everyone is becoming a user of computer technologies,even without realizing it.

Host: a computer connected to the Internet with a registeredname, such as www.reading.org.

Hypertext: a text in which "hot links" allowthe reader to move to another text; these texts can be sounds,images, and video, as well as familiar printed texts. Hypertextblurs the line between author and reader, as each collaboratesin the construction of the text to be read. It is the format forWorld Wide Web resources.

Internet: the global communications network that supportsthe World Wide Web and, increasingly, voice and video communications.

Sociotechnical analysis: an approach to the study of humanactivity that explicitly accounts for both social practices andthe influence of material objects, such as artifacts, tools, andcommunications media.

Virtual reality: a system that gives the user the illusionof viewing or participating in a 3-D artificial world; currentsystems include 360-degree, 3-D visualization, surround sound,and even physical touch effects (haptic sensations).

World Wide Web (WWW) : an Internet service based on hypertextlinks to organize and connect to Internet resources; as the Webbegins to incorporate e-mail, telephone, recorded music and movies,radio, and television, it appears poised to become the all-encompassingcommunications media framework.

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