Reading the World Wide Web: Critical Literacy for the New Century.

Critical literacy in the new century will draw on critical literacy as we have known it from centuries past. It will continue to draw on the basic cognitive mechanisms that make the feat of literacy possible at all. These mechanisms include both essential mental abilities like identification and categorization, processes we use for literacy as well as other kinds of intellectual tasks. The linguistic capabilities humans have, abilities to use syntax and redundancy, will also continue to be important. These mechanisms allow us to work with the distinctive features of letters, words, sentences, and texts to get meaning from print in reading and put meaning into print in writing. The distinctive features make it possible for humans to reach the summit of linguistic achievement, critical literacy. The ability to analyze, synthesize and evaluate are increasingly important in dealing with the Internet. There, the additional mechanisms of bricolage and juxtaposition and the additional features of image, sound, movement and link challenge human literate capacity. Understanding the mechanisms and features of critical literacy expose this amazing human feat, whether print or electronic.