Literacy, Digital Literacy and Epistemic Practices: The Co-Evolution of Hybrid Minds and External Memory Systems

In many societies, artificial memory systems are essential resources for preserving information and developing knowledge. Such systems imply that information is documented outside the human body by means of graphic signs on material artifacts (texts, images). The concept of hybrid minds points to the manner in which human cognitive and communicative activities are dependent on, and integrated with, increasingly complex and powerful symbolic and material cultural tools. Users of such resources need to develop specific epistemic practices and literacy skills that are coordinated with the affordances of their tools. In the present article, some of the ways in which cultural tools and people’s literacy skills have codeveloped are discussed. It is argued that current external memory systems add powerful processing capacities and analytical functions to previous technologies. This implies that notions of learning and literacy skills are undergoing change as people adapt to, and reconfigure, the functionalities of recent digital tools.