Cut and paste as literacy

Dan Perkel, Copy and Paste Literacy: Literacy Practices in the Production of a MySpace Profile -- from the abstract:

The expressive power found in the creation of a MySpace profile concerns a technically simple but socially complex practice: the copying and pasting of code as a way to appropriate and reuse other people’s media products. However, the importance of copying and pasting code does not easily fit in the common conventions of reading and writing, consumption and production. By integrating theories of appropriation and reuse of media with theories of literacy, a new way of thinking about this practice emerges, seeing “participation” and “remix” as important concepts to describe the social and technical aspects of these new literacy practices.

I also found danah boyd's essay on MySpace, Facebook, and the class divide to be quite interesting; it is no surprise that I find Facebook much more consistent with my aesthetic and attention patterns than MySpace. (Nor is it particularly surprising that I think danah boyd should capitalize her name.)