A Wittgensteinian approach to communication in the mode of information

As we move into the age of information electronic writing has become an important technology for both writing and learning. However the extension from printed text to electronic text in the new mode of information has not been sufficiently problematised, especially in education. Electronic text is often treated as an extension of, or as being merely similar to, printed text. This paper, based upon the writings of Wittgenstein on language, challenges this assumption and raises a number of issues with which educationalists need to grapple. Those that are the concern of this paper are: the move from knowledge to information; the nature of electronic languages in (Wittgensteinian) forms of life; the authority of the author; and the ways in which subjects or selves may become constituted in the mode of information.