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Being in the Moment
Author(s) -
Alvermann Donna E.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of adolescent and adult literacy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.73
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1936-2706
pISSN - 1081-3004
DOI - 10.1002/jaal.415
Subject(s) - the imaginary , shock (circulatory) , narrative , sociology , state (computer science) , subtitle , epistemology , media studies , aesthetics , pedagogy , psychology , psychoanalysis , literature , computer science , art , philosophy , algorithm , medicine , operating system
This commentary explores the implications of Douglas Rushkoff's Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now (2013) for teachers and the students they teach. In this, his most recent book, Rushkoff argues that in today's digital world all of us are adversely experiencing the effects of technology's capacity to make everything happen faster and to connect more of us to more information on a daily basis than ever before in the history of humankind. He contends that we have been thrust into an endless state of anxiety due to living in an eternal present (the now in Present Shock’ s subtitle). In addressing this assumption, the commentary focuses on three of Rushkoff's key ideas that pinpoint how present shock purportedly manifests itself in contemporary literacy practices: that is, through the collapse of traditional narratives, the perceived need to be in more than one place at the same time, and the tendency to engage in forced or imaginary connections.