Do New Media Detain Literacy or create New Literacy?

I have been very critical with New Media in the past in the way they affect tween and teenage literacy and communication capabilities. The limited way in which tools like Twitter, Facebook, and SMS support inter-human communication and the way in which young audiences respond to those limitations by adopting an abbreviated, cryptic and highly ambiguous code as language seems frightening. Especially, when this code then also makes it into the traditional written language: A few months back I received a pile of thank you letters from my son's class for a Show&Tell I had given. To my surprise, the letters of these then 7-graders was full of orthographic and grammatical errors. Moreover, many of the orthographic mistakes the students made were clearly related to the way they communicate if aforementioned New Media, 'bcause', 'wat', and 'yu' just being a few of them.

However, maybe I am thinking to narrow-mindedly? Clive Thompson on the New Literacy references Andrea Lunsford, a Stanford University professors, who is studying this phenomenon and is actually postulating that the New Media makes children write more, more voluntarily and for an existing audience instead of the teacher alone. All of these findings are clearly positive trends that might in the long term improve children's cognitive, communication and problem-solving abilities.

If this is the case then does the language really matter as long as everybody agrees on it?

Or is there a limit to the depth of thinking and articulation that the New Media language imposes on us, which is only suited for news casting but not critical analysis and opinionated discussions?

I guess, only time will show. In the meantime, I am going the safe way, exposing my children to New Media tools while encouraging and supporting them in enjoying old media such as books and dinner table conversations.

Cross Reality: When Sensors Meet Virtual Reality

Reality is time bound, costly, sometimes dangerous. Virtual Worlds could theoretically be a safer more effective 'playground' to experiment with costly and potentially dangerous objects and situations, meet and collaborate without travel, or just socialize in an anonymous way. However, Virtual Worlds are are still lacking the the real use due to a lack of real-world connectivity, a lack of ability to tie real-world events (and thus data) to the Virtual experiences. Cross-reality is holding the promise to overcome those shortcomings. Using a variety of sensors, media feeds and and input modalities, the Virtual Worlds is becoming a true platform for telepresence applications, an alternate interface to synchronous collaborative applications in cyberspace: Cross Reality: When Sensors Meet Virtual Reality.

Being all eyes ...

We knew already that cameras are getting smaller and smaller and cheaper and cheaper. It was, therefore, somewhat expected that eventually cameras would play a significant role in our culture. That there would be a time, where we could record everything that was going on around us - possibly skipping our mind in an instance - in order to play it back in the evening; for ourselves or others. Now, researchers at MIT went even further: A camera-like fabric, which would allow for surround-image capturing through your clothes: MIT develops camera-like fabric | Underexposed - CNET News. Combine this with recent developments in flexible display clothing (http://www.gizmag.com/go/3043/) and what do you get? ..... Cloaking! If the display on your back shows what the camera on your front sees, you become see-through. Can't wait. I was always a great proponent of transparency ...