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Are We Illiterate Essay

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Are We Illiterate Literacy throughout history has been defined and redefined nearly as rapidly as new generations emerge. As we tread into the twenty first century, our generation moves to redefine literacy once again. However, unlike generations past, we are taking literacy and rapidly spanning it over new mediums that had been, until recently, unavailable. Advances in technology within the past twenty years have been so immense that the human race has literally packed up centuries of research, data, history and other information and moved it into the digital world, spawning a new necessity to have a general working knowledge of computing technologies. Mainstream society as a whole has concluded and accepted that in the twenty first …show more content…

Since it’s conception in 1962 at MIT and eventual growth through the late 60’s and 70’s2 the internet has grown literally by leaps and bounds. This sudden access to nearly infinite amounts of information has caused society to move towards a more convenient, more abundant source of media to express one’s self with. However, due to it’s rapid growth in popularity, several large populations have been left behind. Even those who did achieve a certain level of competency when dealing with computer applications may find that within as little as one year their knowledge has become superseded, outdated by newer evolving technologies.

Thusly, computers and their software have brought an almost burdensome issue along with their immense usefulness: the issue of becoming obsolete. In the past, becoming literate meant, for the most part, that one would remain literate for the rest of one’s natural life (sparing any severe mental trauma). However, becoming literate in the use of computer application software does not ensure that one will remain so for very long. Even the most simplistic of applications, take the word processor for example, have evolved beyond recognition within the past several years. This further complicates our definition of literacy as it introduces the element of time into the very threads of the definition. No longer can one be assured that their literacy will remain intact in this rapidly

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