ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we present three case studies with the hope that they help readers appreciate the importance of situating literacies of technology in specific cultural ecologies. These cases help us begin to see the connections between the acquisition of literacy, technological and otherwise, and the specific cultural, material, educational, and familial contexts that influence the acquisition and development of literacy. In foregrounding the significance of multiple contexts (historic, social, economic, educational, technological) for electronic literacy efforts, we hint at the many related factors that influence people’s adoption of computers as literacy tools and environments. As mentioned in the introduction, we refer to these related contexts as the cultural ecology of literacy and, with this metaphor, attempt to signal the complex web of social forces, historical events, economic patterns, material conditions, and cultural expectations within which both humans and computer technologies coexist.1
