Written by: Michael Lithgow. Associate Professor, Athabasca University.
Abstract: What it means to be human, relevant and meaningful is no longer certain within emerging regimes where computational complexity and data analysis increasingly determine conditions of prosperity and authority. Preparing students for futures within this transforming landscape of emerging technologies and new patterns of social organization raises important issues of literacy, power and subjectivity alike. If the hailing mechanisms of the subject are largely modulated through digital and algorithmic protocols, what kinds of literacies might help expand individual and group influence over subject formation? Traditional approaches to digital literacy have tended to overlook techno-material aspects of network functionality, which risks diminishing the degree to which individuals and groups can extend influence over subject formation. This paper argues for an expanded approach to digital literacy that addresses the techno-material foundations and full range of computational protocols on which network societies depend. Learning to navigate and manipulate the material-discursive apparatus in network societies can help individuals and groups apperceive assemblages of biopower while expanding possibilities for shaping subjectivities in datafied contexts.
Keywords: digital literacy, datafication, subjectivity, power