[transliteracies]

According to UNESCO, in the world today there are about 1 billion non-literate adults.
This 1 billion is approximately 26 percent of the world's adult population.
Women make up two-thirds of all non-literates.
98 percent of all non-literates live in developing countries.
In the least developed countries, the overall illiteracy rate is 49 percent.
52 percent of all non-literates live in India and China.
Africa as a continent has a literacy rate of less than 60 percent.

Right. So what are we doing about this? Well for one UNESCO has launched a Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) while others are developing country/province specific initiatives. In other words the world has recognised the extreme importance of being able to read and write. Literacy is an indispensable prerequisite to gain access to information about health, environment, education and employment.

ENTER TECHNOLOGY. With almost everything existing online (banks, clothing, food, shelter - buying and letting, friends, family,etc...) one must be technologically literate. Without this new literacy there is no access to this world. In Professor Sue Thomas's talk today at DMU she discussed the (alarming for some) speed at which web technology is progressing. Unfortunately, although technologies are converging at breakneck pace, research about them has not followed suit. Universities and some (can we say most?) academics seem to "fear" the progress of the internet. Perhaps they are worried that what is available is not academic...but that of course is the case for print as well. Good researchers recognise academic sources whether they exist online or offline. Perhaps the problem with the web (at least the new web, web 2.0) are the myriad of connections which abound. So universities retreat into what Thomas calls "gated communities;" communities where academics might feel protected from the wilderness but isn't collaboration and aren't connections central to any strong research? The question becomes how to "manage" the information (overload) which exists in the ether. There are all sorts of platforms and tagging devices but I think it comes down to each person being aware of what they want (subjective view, social view, academic view) and looking for sources which provide that.

If universities don't get involved now we'll have what Epic depicts - an internet where there is no "truth" to be found as newspapers have gone "offline" in protest and blogs become the news and, on top of it, each "news" story is tailored to each individual reader so the question of what really happened becomes impossible to answer. With universities not afraid to add to the "stone soup" of power and potential that is inherent in such a connective tissue the key words for information management will become "filtering," "ordering," and "delivering." In one word: we all need to be transliterate.