What Defines Literacy?

As I was reading Hedges' "America the Illiterate", I became more and more perturbed by the fact that he kept referring to literacy from his own standards without a base definition to build upon. He based his arguments off of statistics that were seemingly skewed, and gave off the vibe that anyone without a college degree in writing and rhetoric is illiterate. The truth is, (Hedges, I'm looking at you), is that there is no standard definition of literacy. According to Scribner's article "Literacy in Three Metaphors", the loose definition of literacy has adapted over time to the social and communicative standards of todays world. This means in the next five years the definition will change again, and then again and again after that. Because the way people read and write in the current age is so vastly different than fifty years ago, the definition of literacy has changed vastly. And it's extremely loose. As Scribner stated, one could define literacy as the ability to indulge in an ancient text, yet another may say the standard is the ability to read and write at a sixth grade level. My point is that literacy comes at many different levels, and always has. The fact is that our generation writes more than any other generation before. It may not be epic texts meant to overturn civilizations, but constant Facebook updates and conversations through text and e-mail have made our generation incredibly adapt to kairos, or assessing our audience. This is a large part of writing, thus making us that much more literate. Even if the definition of literacy is changing, Hedges' and Carr can't deny that our generation is more exposed to it than a lot of generations before us. Now, this isn't going to say that we're better writers. Facebook posts and text messages certainly aren't essays, and they don't help develop the skills that long essays require. I would say that this is my biggest worry, is that even though we're writing more, the quality of our writing is becoming subpar. We still need to be able to write at a sufficient level, good enough for papers and thesis'. But hey, isn't that what this class is for?