Personal Brain

With just six days to go before the proposal is due, and battling a particularly pesky cold virus, I needed to start getting my thoughts organized to begin to write. I also knew that there were multiple angles from which to pursue this, and putting my ideas down would help with that. As I was conducting a search for some kind of book chapter outline (hopefully something generic, yet with an academic flavor) I ran across this software called TheBrain, or Personal Brain, a mindmapping software that offered a free download, so I decided to try it. Within 30 minutes, I had a rather complicated map developed, and was beginning to see multiple connections amongst the many aspects of "Becoming Multi-literate." One of the thoughts that has emerged from this exercise is that much of what we do one the Web requires proficiency in what we call basics of literacy, or reading and writing fluency, for without being able to read and write well, much of what we do on the web will not have much impact, on either our ability to learn, or to communicate, since so much of the Web is text-based. But I wonder, will that soon to change? Are we beginning to experience a more visually and audially oriented Web, what with an increasing reliance on interface and graphics to convey meaning? Visual and audial literacy may be the first emergent literacies for young children (what child in the US cannot recognize the McDonald's arches from an early age, or sing the "itsy-bitsy spider?), thought of as pre-reading skills, but then largely dismissed after one has learned to read for meaning. Are the new literacy merely a scaffolding support for reading comprehension as one transitions from a beginning to fluent reader, or can visual information convey complex and sophisticated narratives that stand alone as fully-articulated systems of meaning? And are these visual and audial narratives culturally independent, or are we bound in some way to the indigenous narratives of the social milieu we come from? Can these new literacies transcend culture and become a way to convey meaning cross-culturally? One of my colleagues investigates the world of hip-hop dance and music as a means for facilitating global-awareness in the areas of environmental ecology, social justice, and culture. Certainly hip-hop, which grew out of the street poetry and roots music of the rap musicians in the urban African-American communities, is considered highly culturally dependent. However, in it's spread through popular media, in film, music, and games, hip-hop has drawn people together from diverse backgrounds in every corner of the globe. Each culture is sure to project their own narratives onto the structure of the hip-hop beat, and will create new meanings pertinent to their social and political issues, but the main idea will be carried further by the disseminative nature of the Web (think YouTube and Google video) and influence others in worlds quite different from the original. Will the Web, by it's nature, change the way we think of learning and communication?