Eric Hobsbawm, perhaps the preeminent historian writing in English about the 19th and 20th centuries, previewed his encyclopedic account of the last 100 years with descriptions of the organizationally, collectively, and individually brutalizing effects of the intense round of wars, revolutions, and economic fluctuations that were the hallmark of that period. But for him to conclude that "the most striking characteristic of the end of the twentieth century" was not the civilian body count, but rather the lag between, on the one hand, the technological and communicational features of the globalized world, and on the other, the practices, skills, and dispositions of institutions, is extraordinary--a telling conclusion for educators in general, with especially glaring implications, we will argue, for literacy educators.