Past, present, future

Relationships between literacy, media and technology are often construed in terms of the new: new times, new directions, new pedagogies, new literacies. This chapter problematises the linear march through time implied through this volume’s sub-title ‘past, present, future’. It begins by exploring the pervasiveness of the new in everyday life, locating this within neoliberal discourses and problematising the way ‘the new’ gets operationalised. It explores how ‘newness’ can neglect the situatedness of practices involving literacy, media and technology, and distract from possibilities that are more enduring, more nuanced or more ephemeral. It develops the orientation towards ‘enchantment’ explored in Chapter 14, arguing that such an orientation might be productive in thinking (or feeling) differently about how things are assembling and reassembling in current practice and considering what might be possible in education.