Fluency! and Literacy! and Webcomics?! Oh my!

While reading 'Literacy and Computer Literacy: analyzing the NRC's Being Fluent with Information Technology' (Kate Williams) I couldn't help but think of this particular page of a webcomic called The Dawn Chapel that I had come across earlier today:

First, because that article is slightly tough to read just because it is so dry and boring that I started to look at it and just go 'derp'. Second, is that in an abstract way it represents some of the theses elaborated upon during the article. Literacy is Social: "..characterizes this..that literacy can be understood only in the context of the social practices in which it is acquired and used." (p7 Williams). The 'derp' which can be best understood as the refuse that shuttles its way around Tumblr, Facebook, and other social networks sites that are those lists such as 'firsts', 'the last time you', and those 'teenagerpost#' images. The literacy involved in these interactions is much different than interactions in a scientific community, although this comic does indirectly link them, albeit probably unknowingly. "Bridging different literacies is desirable" (p10 Williams). This theses is exemplified in the simple fact that both a 'social' literacy and 'scientific' literacy are being combined. Several of the other literacy theses can also be applied either loosely or more directly. Really, any comic could be connected them, but this particular page of this particular comic was 'sciency' and the reading immediately made me think of it.

After reading the article, it kinda bothered me that they were using the terms 'information technology fluency' and 'computer literacy' interchangeably. It seemed to me that this went against what they were trying to do. (Which I thought was to illustrate why literacy was not an incorrect term and that fluency did not cover it). Perhaps I misinterpreted the article but I felt that it was counterproductive to their argument and that they should have declared them to not be interchangeable. It seemed to me that the entire article was explaining why literacy and not fluency was the correct idea and using them interchangeably destroys the reliability of this. This conflict of understanding made the article far more confusing than anything else.


(p.s. on an unrelated note, this comic page contains a kitten and counts as my kitten image)