Abstract

The reflection proposed here starts from the massive diffusion on the Web of forms of writing – and consequently of reading – that couple words and images according to new practices of syncretic communication, studied so far mainly in relation to specific and delimited forms of textuality. With digital technologies, the phenomenon is so widespread that it invites one to interpret it as a true “extended writingµ, as such capable of being learnt, internalized and performed, as well as evolving along lines of development that are only partly foreseeable although referable to communicative practices that tend to make pertinent the same modes of expression. The digital technology that supports it, for its part, has proved particularly suited to placing this competence on a scale that assumes the nature and dimensions of a second literacy exposed to cultural consequences similar to those ascribable to linear writing and movable type printing