{"title":"Strategic illiteracies: the long game of technology refusal and disconnection","authors":"E. Plaut","doi":"10.1093/ct/qtac014","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n Disconnection and avoidance have been theorized various ways, e.g., by analyzing communicative and non-communicative affordances of devices and platforms; categorizing tactics and patterns of non-use; and through analogy with historical ways of seeking solitude and resisting technologies. This article, however, treats history not only as a source of analogies for momentary disconnections, but also as a timescale on which to understand slower undercurrents of resistance. I define “strategic illiteracies” as: purposeful, committed refusals to learn expected communication and technology skills, not only as individual people in specific moments, but also in communities over time. This concept connects technology refusal to historical lineages of resistance to linguistic and orthographic imperialism, analyzing examples including the Greek alphabet in antiquity, Chinese characters in Asia, and the Latin alphabet through European colonization. This new framework and genealogy of avoidance and technology refusal elucidates ways forward, slowly, for successive generations to reclaim their communicative futures.","PeriodicalId":4,"journal":{"name":"ACS Applied Energy Materials","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ACS Applied Energy Materials","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtac014","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"材料科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"CHEMISTRY, PHYSICAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
Disconnection and avoidance have been theorized various ways, e.g., by analyzing communicative and non-communicative affordances of devices and platforms; categorizing tactics and patterns of non-use; and through analogy with historical ways of seeking solitude and resisting technologies. This article, however, treats history not only as a source of analogies for momentary disconnections, but also as a timescale on which to understand slower undercurrents of resistance. I define “strategic illiteracies” as: purposeful, committed refusals to learn expected communication and technology skills, not only as individual people in specific moments, but also in communities over time. This concept connects technology refusal to historical lineages of resistance to linguistic and orthographic imperialism, analyzing examples including the Greek alphabet in antiquity, Chinese characters in Asia, and the Latin alphabet through European colonization. This new framework and genealogy of avoidance and technology refusal elucidates ways forward, slowly, for successive generations to reclaim their communicative futures.
期刊介绍:
ACS Applied Energy Materials is an interdisciplinary journal publishing original research covering all aspects of materials, engineering, chemistry, physics and biology relevant to energy conversion and storage. The journal is devoted to reports of new and original experimental and theoretical research of an applied nature that integrate knowledge in the areas of materials, engineering, physics, bioscience, and chemistry into important energy applications.