The rise of new technologies is shaking up the way people interact with digital media and information. The recent and widespread release of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and applications sparked a lot of questions about their impact on users and the societies in which they live. Such potential changes need to be put into a historical perspective: with each technological innovation came hopes and fears related to their putative effects on society, often through the lens of techno determinism.From mass media to the information age, to digital transmedia, to generative AI, the world contemplated the dawn of the information society and the democratization of access to knowledge, the advent of citizen participation for all, or the potential of persistent virtual worlds (the “metaverse”), transhumanism and augmented reality. At the same time, as many concerns have grown across social discourses on media, information, and technology: from screen passivity and addictions to media violence and pornogra phy, from online sexual predators and cyberbullying to fake news and conspiracy theories, from infobesity to generalized data surveillance and the collapse of our democratic societies in the post truth era, etc.At each of these stages, individuals and social groups have developed various forms of literacies to thrive in a world populated with these technologies and to mitigate their potential deleterious effects. With every significant technological innovation , a need to reassess the role of media information digital literacies arises and, with it , the temptation to reinvent them to “keep pace” with evolving technologies. With such reinvention comes the risk of changing the target, scattering the benefits of educational initiatives, and losing sight of the whole picture of what (new) literacies are and what they support.