In this 'New Media Age' the screen has replaced the book as the dominant medium of communication. This dramatic change has made image, rather than writing, the center of communication. In this groundbreaking new book, Gunther Kress considers the effects of a revolution that has radically altered the relation between writing and the book. Taking into account social, economic, communicational and technological factors, Kress explores how these changes will affect the future of literacy.

1. The futures of literacy: modes, logics and affordances 2. Preface 3. Going into a different world 4. Literacy and multimodality: a theoretical framework 5. What is literacy?: resources of the mode of writing 6. A social theory of text: genre 7. Multimodality, multimedia and genre 8. Meaning and frames: punctuations of semiosis 9. Reading as semiosis: interpreting the world and ordering the world 10. Some items for an agenda of further thinking

Gunther Kress is Professor of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK.