ABSTRACT
A mismatch exists between understandings of media and information literacy as reactive to existing information sources in order to assess them and of people’s enactments of media and information literacy in relation to social practices involving digital intermediaries that have consequences for their future information encounters and those of others. Chapter 4 argues that media and information literacy needs to be both future-oriented and historically aware; however, the latter aspect is usually assigned more significance. This chapter describes media and information literacy as a moving target, which connects to different timescales. In particular, we draw attention to a negative dynamic emerging from how media and information literacy instruction and policymaking today often focus on mastering digital skills that are frequently already out of date in relation to the specific technology available. This is necessitated by the dominant paradigm of technological progress, continuous acceleration, and economic growth characterised most pertinently perhaps by the phenomenon of planned obsolescence. This dynamic is also manifest in how different generations are pitted against each other in various ways based on deficiencies, regarding competencies, access, or needs. Conceptualising media and information literacy as an anticipatory practice helps us to articulate how acting information literate also involves anticipating future information flows and includes opportunities for understanding how present and past intra-actions shape future information. The chapter’s main points are summarised and described in terms of a temporal paradox.
