Erm…how to put this, Michael. There’s the Baby Jesus story as a fundamental narrative that itself may have come from some Egyptian myth or something but which got fashioned into its own, very long-running Greatest Story Ever Told. Then…there’s your reworking of it. Um. Ok. Then there’s O’Henry’s “Gift of the Magi.” Whatever the core narrative in all these “works of art,” they have their levels, eh? Their variances in quality. And that’s what literature and art is about. And you’re right, that without the cultural basis in the Great Books to start with, it’s not possible to really appreciate the derivative works. And yet millions of kids who weren’t taught the Bible in their family or their schools are getting the regugitating of these story lines in games, I suppose, and for that we’re supposed to be grateful, I guess.

Raph, I’m not sure “democratized” is exactly the right word; perhaps “popularized” might be more accurate. I suppose you mean that more access to more text to be pasted and manipulated in more ways = democracy. But infestations of viral memes don’t equal democracy as such, at least any notion of *liberal* democracy.

Writers have always appropriated all through history. Many writers throughout the ages took from the Bible or were influenced by the Biblical themes and narratives, as were artists — entire centuries go by where the major artists and writers are drawing mainly from the Bible.

Writers like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien drew from George McDonald’s fairy tales. And so on. You can always find something derivative of something else. The question is how much new and unique and aesthetic is forged in this process.

I’m troubled by all these new-fangled college departments I see where somebody is teaching digital arts and “the new literacies” — as if they now have a pass to be illiterate, or unencumbered by literary history, or in a state of constant celebration of “mash-ups”.

I remember spending a torturous 2 days trying to read many of the pieces that were pointed to as the ne plus ultra at the _always black library in Second Life, which prides itself as being new and digital and hip and all the rest. I read and read; none of it was any good that I could see, I mean, not even as good as a bad F. Scott Fitzgerald story. One can hope some of this stuff might age and be appreciated more in 50 years; after all,most writers of the past centuries having to churn out copy for pennies in serials and magazines and such were under terrible pressures, were considered hacks by their era, and only got immortalized later.

I’m wondering if the narratives you partake of, or which get forced upon you, in online games and virtual worlds, reduce or remove any need for linear, left-to-write writing as such. That is, you start making a different story which has elements of textual writing, game action, screenshots, IMs, etc. And that’s what they mean by the new literacy, I suppose, but that “new narrative” or “new literacy” are often merely reworked Biblical or Greek mythological stories. Often my kids will tell me about some game they are playing through with Link or something and I’ll say, oh, but that’s Captain Ahab, oh, but that’s the Cain & Abel story, oh, but that’s the idea of Medusa or Pandora’s box, etc.

When they had that thing called the National Novel Writing Month, I started writing a novel the old way. But it wasn’t working to capture the realities of the virtuality of Second Life. So instead, I started just making a thousand screenshots and capturing all chat, even the dumb chat of the scripted objects and the drop-down maintenance screens. I quickly amassed the 100,000 words needed for my novel. I then cut it a bit and submitted it, but gosh, that’s not writing, that’s type-writing. It had some really masterful moments of course but then I had a computer crash and lost most of it.

One interesting thing about any kind of literacy is the contrast between tools that are required for its basic competency vs. craftsmanship vs. genius. When you talk about language/writing literacy, we all understand that there is a great difference between understanding how to read at a “I can read just fine,” level — cultural literacy — and being able to read and write well enough to do a job where it is a main component; being a copywriter for an ad agency, a technical writer, an editor, etc. And then there is another quantum leap between that and being a great poet, novelist, song-writer, speech-writer, script-writer, etc. The basic *units* of the process are the same, the words of the language, but the tools used to put them together are vastly different.

When you talk, Ralph, about a literacy based on a more universally available and mashable repository of culture, it makes me think of the dictum that “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” And it makes me nervous and I’ll tell ya why. I teach students who often don’t seem to understand the (to me) vast chasm between: 1) search, find, copy, paste-text-into-essay-wholecloth; which I tend to call plagiarism, and; 2) search, find, read, digest, comment in essay w/ your own observation, which is the whole point. Again, the “units” of the two behaviors (Google, Ebsco, NetLibrary, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, type, print, mouse, etc.) are very similar. But the difference between the usage is the difference between being able to read a McDonald’s menu and being able to write a decent press release.

And there are other differences along the way, too. For example, the ability to judge and review sources and balance speed vs. reliability of information; to weigh opinion (which can be valuable) against “fact.” To understand that there can be more than one set of facts. To value multiple viewpoints and conflicts and dualities and pluralism. If you are going to let people eat at a buffet vs. preparing a meal for them course-by-course, they need to be taught buffet skills. Including restraint.

I’m all for a literacy that incorporates The Long Tail and the ability to pick-and-choose from more midgets and giants. But the skills we need to teach in order to be “literate” in that space are, I think, barely understood currently.

I agree that an important part of creativity is the ability to “quote” (borrow, remix, annotate, appropriate) other work. As Lessig suggests (in Free Culture), curtailing these opportunities by imposing strict copyright laws results in the stifling of creativity. Thus, the ‘open’ content movement is truly revolutionary as a response to copyright restrictions. However, it does not follow that these new practices will automatically or exclusively engender democracy, which is why I could not understand your (edited) comment about a literacy of appropriation amounting to a democratized literacy. What if what most people are appropriating and annotating are the products that limit their freedom in the first place? What does the freedom to remix pre-packed, establishment-sanctioned cultural products really mean to a democracy? In any event, I am still struggling with these questions, and I thank you for providing more food for thought.

I really agree with the idea that the democratization of the means of producing creative works will be a tide that raises all boats. I think there’s significant evidence of that already. I think what some people keyed on is the word ‘appropriation’, as though you were implying that we will speak only by quoting others. I think that’s patently false, and I didn’t take you to be implying that is was true.