What is Multiliteracy?. Why be multiliterate?

It´s been a year since my first mulling over "What is Multiliteracy". (see: Multiliteracy in multiplicity). My concept of multiliteracy has not changed so much as has the responsability I feel in relation to it. So I will not so much answer the question of "what is multiliteracy" but concentrate more on "Why be multiliterate?"

From recognizing our name and responding, to working within the virtual reality of a word problem and calculating volume or distance - our means of reading the world takes an enormous leap. The Web is forcing us to make yet another such transition.

We are learning to understand the reality created through the web: analize the content, develop best practices, distinguish limitations and pitfalls. Not to philosophize exceedingly, but multiliteracy infringes on the way we read the world, and it reads us.

We as teachers need to truly be literate in the multiplicity of the world the web has created, be multiliterate, else we take our students on a haphazard journey with unknown consequence.