In Selfe’s “Literacy and Technology Linked”, there are two definitions given for technological literacy.  The first is associated with the national project “Getting America’s Students Ready for the Twenty-first Century” and states: “Technological literacy involves computer skills and the ability to use computers and other technology to improve learning, productivity and performance” (Selfe p10).  The second definition has a greater scope and says, “a complex set of socially and culturally situated values, practices, and skills involved in operating linguistically within the context of electronic environments, including reading, writing, and communicating” (Selfe p11). 

I believe this second definition has more relevance because it links the idea of literacy to effective communication within the growing global culture that lives on the Internet.  These skills are becoming more necessary than in the past, as the Internet offers a more diverse audience and an ever-growing catalog of programs.  Selfe talks of the various categories of skills needed to be considered technologically literate, such as generating, researching and manipulating computer programs, organizing all types of information, using multimedia tools, and communicating via the Internet.

This literacy is constantly evolving because the technology is constantly improving and changing.  The idea that a computer is obsolete within a year suggests that every year, all of society is learning new terms and following new instructions just to keep current.  This is reminiscent of Nardi and O’Day’s Information Ecologies.  One of the important characteristics of ecology is coevolution.  “When ecologies are filled with people who learn and adapt and create”, they are said to coevolve (Nardi & O’Day p53).  A fully technologically literate person must possess the ability to adapt and evolve to stay involved in the ecology.

This larger sense of technological literacy refers back to a line in Bush’s “As We May Think”, where he states:

“Science has provided the swiftest communication between individuals; it has provided a record of ideas and has enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual”.

I believe this relates to the other two articles because Bush is talking about the way technology has opened up a new form of communicate that allows for the immediate exchange of ideas, which enhances the evolution of civilization over the individual.  Both of the articles talk about how technology has changed and improved man’s way in the world and the need to teach the language of technology to continue this improvement.  Do you think these changes improve society as a whole more, or the individual’s place in society more?