But I end up coming back to this simple stuff because I can’t shake the feeling that digital literacy needs to start with the mirror and head-checks before it gets to automotive repair or controlled skids. Because it is these simple behaviors, applied as habits and enforced as norms, that have the power to change the web as we know it, to break our cycle of reaction and recognition, and ultimately to get even our deeper investigations off to a better start.
I find it interesting that despite having coined the phrase “abstinence-only web education” in 2009 to describe scholars’ response to solely rely on library materials rather than the Internet to avoid misinformation --- and despite having worked with Ward Cunningham, the American programmer who developed the first wiki in 1994 – Caulfield instead chose to develop a grassroots response that challenged the abstinence-only web education mainstream belief by creating the Digital Polarization Initiative to improve web literacy skills for college age undergraduates, i.e. the next generation of scholars and members of mainstream culture who could then be well versed fact checking online information before disseminating it across the web.