Grappling with literacy ... What is it exactly?

At first ponderance of this word literacy, I thought the definition was quite simple - literacy is being able to read, didn't we learn that a long time ago? But, as I read Lankshear and Noble's piece as well as Richardson's chapter on the use of photographs as literacy through Flickr, this idea became much more complicated. To say that Lanshear and Noble's idea that literacy is "always and everywhere," is quite confusing, at least in my opinion. Isn't literacy the ability to be able to glean information from some form of text and then use that information to inform a decision? So then that would mean that being literate extends far beyond the reach of textbooks, poetry, prose, journalism, and other written genres. Literacy, if it indeed as Lankshear and Noble proclaim, comes in all shapes and sizes and forms and modalities. In order to access the innumerable pages of information and pictures about a particular subject, one must be literate in using the computer, pulling up the correct website, finding the proper location of the information on the website and then accessing the information that one sought out to find in the fist place. I think that literacy in this sense is quite overwhelming because it implies that The bounds of literacy are nonexistent and there is no chance for us to master this thing called literacy. However, on the other hand there is a sense of excitement that there are multiple literacies possible. The way I see it, literacy becomes akin to a linguist. This person has a mother tongue but is able to communicate and be 'literate' in a sense in multiple other languages. The same can be said for our students today. This code switching of sorts between academic jargon in classrooms, the casual dialect in conversations with friends, the abbreviated texting language, the acronyms used in video games and social networking sites are all forms of languages that our students are speaking, albeit not necessarily always verbally. I think that Patrick brings up an interesting point in saying that he is unsure if these new literacies, "are 1) of much importance and 2) will even be around in some years (imagine if you'd been a teacher in 2008 and used Second Life in the classroom!) from the traditional definition, which is (rightfully so) tied to reading and writing and language.". While I do feel some resistance to accepting these new literacies as important and able to withstand the test of time, I feel as though we must be willing to at least consider the possibility of these new literacies as being legitimate and important because they are the very languge through which the people of the world are communicating with one another. In negating the importance and/or legitimacy and importance Of Internet based media, I feel as though we are, in a way, negating the social identities through which our student identify themselves. I'm not saying I completely feel as though we have to accept these Internet media literacies wholeheartedly, but I do feel as though we need to give them a chance to prove their worth the same way, I am sure reading and writing, at some point had to prove its worth. Literacies will alway be developed and reinvented and redefined, but I think what holds true for each stage of this process is there must be some willingness to give it a shot, to figure out if literacy is confined solely to the bounds of readin, writing, and language in the traditional sense.