According to Wikipedia, electracy 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”.
Electracy, a word invented by the self-proclaimed ‘neopest’, is to digital technology what literacy is to print. ‘Neopest’, another word invented by Ulmer, refers to a person who invents words needlessly. He is only half serious because the subtext, or perhaps in his case, overtext, of his writing is that we do indeed need a new vocabulary to express an emerging rhetorical genre. He believes that the invention of the internet gave birth to a new culture, distinct from oral and literate cultures.
Like Richard Smyth said, in many ways, then, Ulmer’s conception of electracy can be viewed as the new image of thought that Deleuze continually calls for throughout his career. Ulmer himself is Deleuzian insofar as he is a creator of concepts—“applied grammatology,” “teletheory,” the puncept, heuretics, and electracy, to name the most significant.
A student named Hanna Niinistö, from the University of Tampere, Department of Education in Helsinki Finland, did a study on this word, and explains the growth of the world. Here is a small sample of her essay: “Electrate learning can be seen in the continuum of Western educational history. In this respect it represents the latest achievement, or the second wave, of Western bildung, that is, the development and creation of media literacy’s and digital technology environments, whereas the first wave was more or less about basic literacy and educating citizenship.”
According to Jenny Weight, electracy is also a component of ergodic media. As ergodic media, computer games are programmed environments that require users to make choices. These choices have real effects upon the unfolding scenario and a feedback loop between game and user quickly emerges. Ergodic media require a level of electracy – literacy for and about a computer-mediated era – for users to be able to engage with them. Computer games (and all other media) are not only about their content. They are “about” an ability to comprehend the variety of material, symbolic and interactive relationships that enable individuals to engage meaningfully with them.
Electracy is also a new way of teaching. For the first time in the history of schooling, the development of information and communication technologies (ICT) have created learning environments that have the potential to emancipate students from a one-way knowledge provision from the teacher and the textbook. Electracy is a key term in analysing these developments and is something young people develop by growing up in a digital world, according to Ola Erstad.
For the first time in the history of schooling, the developments of information and communication technologies (ICT) have created learning environments that have the potential to emancipate students from a one-way knowledge provision from the teacher and the textbook. Electracy is a key term in analysing these developments and is something young people develop by growing up in a digital culture.
Bradley Dilger, a Western Illinois University student wrote that the highly visual nature of new media, and Mitchell’s concepts of “pictorial turn” and “imagetext,” suggest the concept of “image” will be at issue in electracy in numerous ways. In Internet Invention, Ulmer shows that “image” is not only a matter of the pictorial and visual, but a component of numerous artistic forms, alternately expressed as atmosphere, voice, or mood, with established methodologies in literacy (many associated with the development of poetic or figurative language). His assignments confront the development of imageoriented forms, based on the assertion that the strong visual component of electronic media will reinvigorate “image reason”—a conductive method of inference which complements the deduction and induction of literacy.
Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electracy
PINE, Lila, “What Does it Mean to Become Electrate?” https://mpm17fall2009friday.wordpress.com/
SMYTH Richard, Imaging place as imaging thought, “Deleuze, Electracy, and Second life”
WEIGHT, Jenny, “Cyborg dreams: from ergodics to electracy”
ERSTAD, Ola, YOUNG, “Electracy as empowerment: Student activities in learning environments using technology”
DILGER, Bradley, “Ease and Electracy”, http://faculty.wiu.edu/CB-Dilger/texts/e4e-final.pdf
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