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Electracy is a theory by Gregory Ulmer that describes the kind of skills and facility necessary to exploit the full communicative potential of new electronic media such as multimedia, hypermedia, social software, and virtual worlds. According to Ulmer, electracy “is to digital media what literacy is to print.”〔Ulmer, G. L. (2003). ''Internet Invention: From Literacy to Electracy''. New York: Longman.〕 It encompasses the broader cultural, institutional, pedagogical, and ideological implications inherent in the transition from a culture of print literacy to a culture saturated with electronic media. “Electracy” is the term he gives to what is resulting from this major transition that our society is undergoing. The term is a portmanteau word, combining "electrical" with "literacy," to allude to one of the fundamental terms used by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida to name the relational spacing that enables and delimits any signification in any medium. Electracy denotes a broad spectrum of research possibilities including the history and invention of writing and mnemonic practices, the epistemological and ontological changes resulting from such practices, the sociological and psychological implications of a networked culture, and the pedagogical implementation of practices derived from such explorations. Ulmer writes of electracy:
Ulmer’s work benefits from considering other historical moments of radical technological change (such as the profound changes resulting from the inventions of the alphabet, writing, and the printing press), and thus his work is grammatological insofar as it derives and extrapolates a methodology from the history of writing and mnemonic practices. His career can be encapsulated as an attempt to invent a rhetoric for electronic media. Ulmer introduced ''electracy'' in ''Teletheory'' (1989), and it began to be noted in the scholarship as early as 1997.〔Porter, David. ''Internet Culture''. New York: Routledge, 1997.〕 It has been regarded as among the "most prominent" contemporary designations〔Inman, James. A. ''Computers and Writing: The Cyborg Era''. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004.〕 for what Walter J. Ong once described as a "secondary orality" that will eventually supplant print literacy〔Ong, Walter J. ''Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word''. London: Metheun, 1982.〕 As James Inman writes, "It is important to distinguish ''electracy'' from other terms, such as computer-based literacy, Internet literacy, digital literacy, electronic literacies, metamedia literacy, and even cyber-punk literacy. None of these other terms have the breadth electracy does as a concept, and none of them draw their ontology from electronic media exclusively".〔Inman, James A. "Electracy for the Ages: Collaboration with the Past and Future." ''Electronic Collaboration in the Humanities: Issues and Options''. Ed. James A. Inman, Cheryl Reed, and Peter Sands. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003. p. 52〕 Some scholars have viewed the ''electracy'' paradigm, along with other "apparatus theories" such as Ong's, with skepticism, arguing that they are "essentialist" or "determinist."〔See, for example, Inman's cautionary statement on page 161 of ''Computers and Writing: The Cyborg Era'' and a response essay by Stephen Tchudi in ''Electronic Collaboration in the Humanities'', pp. 79–88.〕 == Electracy and pedagogy == Ulmer’s work has implications for the practice of education as well. Co-author of a textbook for freshman English courses,〔Scholes, R., Comley, N. & Ulmer, G.L. (1994). ''Text Book: An Introduction to Literary Language 2nd Edition''. New York: St. Martin's Press.〕 Ulmer develops undergraduate and graduate level courses which incorporate his theories and invite students into the process of inventing new practices and genres.〔See, for example, student work posted at http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~gulmer/s01/sevans2/, http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~gulmer/course/mystory1.html, and http://www.anabiosispress.org/rsmyth/writings/diss/index.html.〕 Alan Clinton, in a review of ''Internet Invention'', writes that “Ulmer’s pedagogy ultimately levels the playing field between student and teacher” Academic Lisa Gye also recognizes the pedagogical implications of Ulmer’s work:
Electracy as an educational aim has been recognized by scholars in several fields, including English composition and rhetoric,〔See Inman and also Leander,Kevin, and Paul Prior, "Speaking and Writing: How Talk and Text Interact in Situated Practices," What Writing Does and How It Does It: An Introduction to Analyzing Texts and Textual Practices, ed. Charles Bazerman and Paul Prior, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004)〕 literary and media criticism,〔O'Gorman, Marcel. E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and the Humanities. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.〕 digital media and art, and architecture〔Mitrasinovic, Miodrag, Total Landscape, Theme Parks, Public Space, Aldershot, England, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2006; Muecke, Mikesch W. ''Gottfried Semper in Zurich: An Intersection of Theory and Practice''. Ames, IA: Culicidae Architectural Press, 2005.〕 Mikesch Muecke explains that "Gregory Ulmer's ideas on ''electracy'' provide … a model for a new pedagogy where learning is closer to invention than verification"〔Muecke, p. 4〕 Ulmer himself writes:
Ulmer's educational methods fit into a broader paradigm shift in pedagogical theory and practice known as constructivism. He discusses the relationship between pedagogy and electracy at length in an interview with Sung-Do Kim published in 2005.〔Kim, Sung-Do. "The Grammatology of the Future" (An Interview with Gregory Ulmer). ''Deconstructing Derrida: Tasks for the New Humanities''. Ed. Peter Pericles Trifonas and Michael A. Peters. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005. 137–64.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Electracy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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