interest, or passion". Technology, specifically blogs, can be a way to build learning communities and help students learn to write authentically for and respond to various audiences by making their writing public. On the virtual playing field, knowledge and talent matter more than degrees and professional memberships, so these spaces offer students a new learning environment and space to collaborate on the production and distribution of knowledge. Aligning with the notion of "affinity space", composition scholars have coined the term "cultural ecology" to examine the complex social and cultural contexts that shape the development of technological literacy. Drawing from the literacy narratives of two participants, Hawisher, Selfe, Moraski, and Pearson theorized five themes emergent from the cultural ecology of literacy, namely the "cultural, material, educational, and familial contexts" that shape and are shaped by literacy development. The five themes of cultural ecology emphasize that technological literacy goes through life spans, that literacy provides the medium for people to exert their agency, that literacy occurs and develops both within and outside of school contexts, that the conditions of access influence people's literacy development, and that literacy practices and values transmit via family units. Kristine Blair pointed to the positive impacts of cultural conflicts in constructing online discourses and political discussions, while at the same time warning that students may not transform exposure to the conflicts. Also looming behind the issue of culture in computer and writing is the digital divide. Cynthia Selfe showed that unequal access to technological literacy is situated in unequal social, cultural, economic, and political situations. As Selfe wrote, "computers continue to be distributed along the related axes of race and socioeconomic status and this distribution continues to ongoing patterns of racism and to the continuation of poverty." To address the digital divide, Selfe called upon educators and compositionists to rethink computer literacy as a political act that requires paying critical attention to inequality issues and acting politically in specific disciplinary contexts. See also Conference on College Composition and Communication Digital rhetoric Multimodality Media theory of composition Composition studies References Computing and society Digital humanities Composition (language) Writing