I am totally out of my element in this class. Whereas my electrical engineering degrees are usually an asset when it comes to digital literacy, I find they are a significant weakness when it comes to discussing digital literacy. I also, apparently, use the internet exclusively in visitor mode so it seems I don’t have anything to say about resident mode.

A direct copy paste of the definition of “literacy”: competence or knowledge in a specified area. In my opinion, the best way to address deficiencies, perceived or real, in digital literacy is trial and error; the exact method we use all day, every day in coding/programming. The great opportunity of the digital world is failure is essentially free (minus the time invested) and feedback on a failure is instant. (Its not like driving a car where, if you crash it, you can’t try again.) For example, when we discuss research into digital identities and how that may inform our creation of a digital identity, my knee jerk response is to say “just make some identity, experiment with it, and then modify accordingly”.

I started using the internet in the mid 90’s where everybody “knew that everyone’s online persona was a lie.” We used mIRC and ICQ to exchange files with people online. The obvious, unspoken agreement was that everybody was anonymous and wanted to remain anonymous. I suppose we knew eachother’s IP addresses but that was it.

I never had a myspace page, I have a facebook page that my wife set up for me ~ 13 years ago that I’ve never posted on. I also haven’t logged in in ~ 3 years. I have a half finished LinkedIn account that I should really upload a picture to.

Currently, I often use Chrome in anonymous mode so that my search results don’t get “optimized” for me which I sometimes find useful but mostly just find annoying. Overall, I don’t think I’m a big privacy advocate; there’s certainly a lot more I could do to protect my privacy online. I just find a well curated online presence unnecessary and think the annoyances outweigh the utility. My University is really pushing on me to finish my linkedin profile though so maybe I’ll change my mind once it’s up and running.

Anyway, over all, I simply have no idea what to say in class when we discuss these issues. I was already having trouble when it came to digital literacy and now I’m struggling even more with this resident vs. visitor mode topic. I think the obvious approach is to err on the side of visitor. Perhaps I’m just too old for some of these concepts but the correlation between age and literacy has been debunked by the visitor/resident crowd.