At its most simple, digital English is codex on steroids. Digital English transforms the codex by disembodying, re-embodying, and re-purposing knowledge into multiple accessible forms. It is a hyper-branch of the English discipline that correlates with the transformations of the “current” technology. This includes both technological accessibility and internet trends during the time of its application. “Current” becomes even more relative within digital English, because of its continuous transformations and reformulations. This constant reinvention invokes in its pedagogy an equally and eternally transformative one.
My initial thoughts with digital English include the linguistic side of its entity. There is an entire lexicon that belongs to digital English. Whether it be general knowledge of techy jargon (<embed clever technological hypertext here>), conversational English (BRB), or locational terms (my iBlog post vs. my Facebook post), language also follows the transformative and innovative properties of digital English in how we dictate meaning for a variety of purposes.
Michaela, absolutely. I find it interesting though that Digital English preferences the most recent versus the best or most relevant information. Pedagogically, this makes things very interesting because students may not learn how to read beyond the most recent information.
As you mentioned about language, it is fascinating how our language has transformed as we have become more involved in technology. While this can become problematic when students are unable to communicate effectively for an entire essay, it does present interesting analogies to what happened when print culture came out of oral culture. Clearly, language must change and adapt in order to survive, so the question then becomes, is it changing for the better? Or does it even matter?
Regarding your final thought (“…is it changing for the better? Or does it even matter?”) I believe that I can say, at the risk of sounding like I’m shaking a cane and telling kids to get off my lawn, that the linguistic patterns brought forth by the proliferation of technology are changing for the worse. While most are familiar with “basic internet lingo” found across message boards and text messages worldwide (“brb, lol, lmao” and emoticons “:) 😛 xD”) there exists not only a dramatically different digital linguistic world (that of leetspeak) and along with it, an entire culture based upon message boards. “Leetspeak,” for example, mixes keyboard features to create what is essentially incomprehensible dialogue: “Mt3m pwn5 j00 n00b 1337.” A ridiculous response like this actually translates to “my blog is better than yours,” believe it or not. How this acts upon readers and those to whom they respond is something I cannot comment on without a lot of qualitative research, but, in my own personal opinion, such a radical shift (while generating some new ideas like alternative spelling) also destroys a multitude of English’s classic features, like cadence, meter, and the so-called “beauty” of language.