Slideshow for my Spectrums of DH Talk for McGill University. Presented on January 15, 2021. Abstract: In my talk I will offer an exploration of how the development, distribution, and access to digital technologies have replicated imperialist and colonialist practices of the past and have led to an unequal development of digital writing across the world. I will discuss how the development of electronic literature as a field has happened in privileged academic spaces with institutional resources, research investment, and prestige economies that favor wealthy countries and replicate imperialistic relationships with elit created and researched in the rest of the world. I will conclude by offering some ideas on how we can help decolonize and seek more equitable development of the field. For a video recording of the talk, visit: https://leonardoflores.net/blog/presentations-2/recent-lecture-technological-imperialism-and-digital-writing/

1. TECHNOLOGICAL
IMPERIALISM AND DIGITAL
WRITING
JANUARY 15, 2021
LEONARDO FLORES
@LEO_ELO_OLE

2. ABSTRACT
In my talk I will offer an exploration of how the development,
distribution, and access to digital technologies have replicated
imperialist and colonialist practices of the past and have led to an
unequal development of digital writing across the world. I will discuss
how the development of electronic literature as a field has happened in
privileged academic spaces with institutional resources, research
investment, and prestige economies that favor wealthy countries and
replicate imperialistic relationships with elit created and researched in
the rest of the world. I will conclude by offering some ideas on how we
can help decolonize and seek more equitable development of the field.

3. DIGITAL WRITING AND ELECTRONIC
LITERATURE
Digital writing takes advantage of the unique capabilities
of digital technologies, particularly:
• computation
• multimodality
• animation and 3D modeling
• interactivity
• networking
• digital culture
Electronic literature is artistic digital writing.

4. “
”
ANY HUMAN-BORN KNOWLEDGE (INCLUDING
COMPUTER SCIENCE) IS SUBJECT TO THE
CULTURAL LAW OF THE ARTIFACT (VYGOTSKY
1978, 1986). THIS LAW AFFIRMS THAT BOTH
MATERIAL AND COGNITIVE ARTIFACTS
PRODUCED BY HUMANS ARE SUBJECT TO THE
INFLUENCE OF ITS ENVIRONMENT, CULTURE,
AND THE SOCIAL HABITS OF THE INDIVIDUAL
AND GROUPS THAT DEVISE AND MAKE USE OF
THEM. THE ARTIFACT INFLUENCES AND AT
THE SAME TIME IS INFLUENCED BY ITS
CONTEXT; IN OTHER WORDS, TECHNOLOGY IS
ALWAYS A PART OF CULTURE, NOT A CAUSE
OR AN EFFECT OF IT (SLACK AND WISE
2005,4; 112).Fiormonte, Domenico. "Towards a cultural critique of the digital
humanities.." (2012)

5. DIGITAL COMPUTERS
• Computers developed by:
• Companies dedicated to power, electronics, and industrial machinery
(such as IBM, Bell Laboratories, Hewlett-Packard, Ferranti)
• Military applications during World War II (such as code breaking)
• Universities and research labs
• All of these were in the US, England, and Europe, with
companies having subsidiaries around the world.
• To create electronic literature required access to mainframe
computers.

6. MANCHESTER MARK I COMPUTER (1949)
Image credit: The University of Manchester
1998, 1999

7. “LOVE LETTERS” BY CHRISTOPHER
STRACHEY (1951)
Image from: Gabouri, Jacob “A Queer History of Computing,
Part 3”

8. JOSEPH WEIZENBAUM, “ELIZA” 1964-1966
• First chatterbot, developed at
MIT
• Named after Eliza Doolittle in
George Bernard Shaw’s play
Pygmalion (1913)
• Its DOCTOR script mimics a
Rogerian psychologist.
• It used teletype.
• Turing Test attempt.

9. “
”
IN THE FIELD OF THE HUMANITIES, THE
CREATION OF METHODOLOGIES AND
TECHNOLOGICAL STANDARDS IS NEVER
NEUTRAL WITH RESPECT TO LINGUISTIC
AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES.
Fiormonte, Domenico. "Digital Humanities from a global
perspective." (2014)

10. AMERICAN STANDARD CODE FOR
INFORMATION INTERCHANGE (ASCII)
• Developed 1960 by the
American Standards
Association.
• It contained 95 printable
characters.
• Other countries had to
adapt or develop new ASCII
standards to include non-
English letters.
• US ASCII dominated the
WWW until 2007, when
surpassed by UTF-8Image source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USASCII_code_chart.png

11. ASCII ART
Ken Knowlton and Leon Harmon (Bell Labs) “Studies in Perception I”
(1966)

12. “CORRECAMINOS” BY EDUARDO DARINO (1965-
66)
Video from: Antología Lit(e)Lat,
Volume 1

13. WORD PROCESSING
IBM MT72 magnetic tape typewriter Jesús Arellano, El canto del gallo. (1966)

14. UNICODE
• Unicode 13.0 has 143,859
characters.
• Piringer’s “Unicode” shows
49,571 characters, 1/frame, 25
frames/second, and lasts
33:17.
• Includes 154 modern and
historic scripts, multiple
symbol sets, and emoji.
• The standard is maintained by
the Unicode Consortium, a
nonprofit based in Silicon
Valley, California.
Video: Jörg Piringer “Unicode”
(2012)

15. “
”
ITS [UNICODE] BOARD OF DIRECTORS IS
CURRENTLY COMPOSED OF TWO FROM
GOOGLE, TWO FROM MICROSOFT, ONE FROM
APPLE, ONE FROM JUSTSYSTEMS, ONE FROM
IBM AND ONE FROM OCLC7. THE EXECUTIVE
OFFICE IS NOT MUCH DIFFERENT: THE
PRESIDENT HAS BEEN A GOOGLE ENGINEER
SINCE 2006 AND, APART FROM A COUPLE OF
EXCEPTIONS COMING FROM THE ACADEMIC
OR RESEARCH WORLDS, NO PUBLIC
INSTITUTION IS REPRESENTED (63)
UNICODE IS AN INDUSTRIAL STANDARD
CONTROLLED BY THE INDUSTRY (64)
Fiormonte, Domenico. "Towards a cultural critique of the digital

16. EMOTICONS
• Emoticons first appeared in 1972 in the PLATO (Programmed
Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) system, developed by
University of Illinois in 1960 and deploying terminals world
wide by the late 1970s.
• Scott Fahlman wrote the first ASCII emoticons, :-) and :-( in
1982.
• Japanese kaomoji developed in 1986 in Japan, using the
Katakana character set. Examples: (*^‿^*) and 凸( ` ﾛ ´ )凸

17. EMOJI (ORIGINS)
Shigetaga Kurita “Emoji” (1998-1999)

18. EMOJI (CONTEMPORARY)
Image source: Unicode Consortium, Full Emoji List, v13

19. EMOJI (COMMON USAGE)
Image source: University of Michigan, (2014)

20. @TINYPROTESTS AND @PROTESTITAS BY
LEONARDO FLORES

21. NETWORKING: ARPANET IN 1969
Source: Timothy B. Lee “40 Maps that Explain the Internet”

22. NETWORKING: ARPANET IN 1970
Source: Timothy B. Lee “40 Maps that Explain the Internet”

23. NETWORKING: ARPANET IN 1973
Source: Timothy B. Lee “40 Maps that Explain the Internet”

24. PARRY ENCOUNTERS THE DOCTOR (1973)

25. NETWORKING: ARPANET BECOMES
INTERNET (1984)
Source: Timothy B. Lee “40 Maps that Explain the Internet”

26. NETWORKING: USENET AROUND EARTH
(1993)
Source: Timothy B. Lee “40 Maps that Explain the Internet”

27. NETWORKING: INTERNET USAGE BY POPULATION
(2015)
Internet users in 2015 as a percentage of a country's population Source: International Telecommun

28. GROWTH OF INTERNET USAGE
Image credit: Max Roser. Our World in Data (2017)

29. GROWTH OF INTERNET USAGE (DETAIL)
Image credit: Max Roser. Our World in Data (2017)

30. INTERNET.ORG
Screen capture from internet.org

31. INTERNET.ORG
Screen capture from internet.org

32. BIG TECH AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES
Image source: Paris Marx, “Kicking Big Tech: Is it Possible? And worth the Hassle?”

33. “
”
“GOOGLE’S ENVIABLE POSITION AS THE
MONOPOLY LEADER IN THE PROVISION OF
INFORMATION HAS ALLOWED ITS
ORGANIZATION OF INFORMATION AND
CUSTOMIZATION TO BE DRIVEN BY ITS
ECONOMIC IMPERATIVES AND HAS
INFLUENCED BROAD SWATHS OF SOCIETY TO
SEE IT AS THE CREATOR AND KEEPER OF
INFORMATION CULTURE ONLINE, WHICH I AM
ARGUING IS ANOTHER FORM OF AMERICAN
IMPERIALISM THAT MANIFESTS ITSELF AS A
“GATEKEEPER” ON THE WEB.
Safiya Umoja Noble. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines
Reinforce Racism. (2018)

34. ELITERATURE’S GROWTH AS A FIELD:
SELECTED CONFERENCE SERIES
• ACM – Hypertext and Hypermedia Conferences: yearly
1989 to present
• SLSA (Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts) yearly
1995-present
• DAC (Digital Arts and Culture) conferences: bi-yearly
1998-2009
• E-Poetry: bi-yearly 2001-2015
• ELO: 2002, 2007, 2008, 2010, yearly 2012 to present

35. ELECTRONIC LITERATURE COLLECTION, VOLUME
1 (2006)

36. ELECTRONIC LITERATURE COLLECTION, VOLUME
2 (2011)

37. ELECTRONIC LITERATURE COLLECTION, VOLUME
3 (2016)

38. ELMCIP ANTHOLOGY OF EUROPEAN ELECTRONIC
LITERATURE (2013)

39. CELL (CONSORTIUM ON ELECTRONIC
LITERATURE)

40. LIT(E)LAT: RED DE LITERATURA
ELECTRÓNICA LATINOAMERICANA

41. ANTOLOGÍA LIT(E)LAT, VOLUMEN 1 (2020)
ANTOLOGIA.LITELAT.NET

42. CENTRO DE CULTURA DIGITAL: E-LITERATURA
editorial.centroculturadigital.mx/eliteratura

43. BROKEN ENGLISH
brokenenglish.lol

44. ATLAS: LITERATURA DIGITAL BRASILEIRA
atlasldigital.wordpress.com

45. CARTOGRAFÍA DE LITERATURA DIGITAL EN AMÉRICA
LATINA
Coming soon (May 2021)

46. ELECTRONIC LITERATURE AND ITS
GENERATIONS

47. SOCIAL ADOPTION OF ELECTRONIC
LITERATURE
Stages:
1.Approach
2.Discovery
3.Exploration
4.Adoption
Obstacles:
• Delayed or limited access to
technology
• Steep technical learning curve
• Lack of socioeconomic privilege
• Lack of community, isolation
• Undeveloped markets, limited
monetization
• Magnitude of paradigm shift
from print to digital

48. CASE STUDY: MY ORIGIN STORY
• Used Apple IIe at SESO and UPRM
(1985). Learned Basic and Pascal.
Used Gopher
• Played Zork, MUDS, Interative
fiction.
• Had MS DOS PC & Atari 2600 at
home.
• Wrote MA Thesis in Mac Computer
Classroom at BGSU (1994)
• Learned HTML and discovered
eliterature at UMD (1999)

49. GENERATIONAL, POSTWEB, DECOLONIAL E-
LIT
• Kathi Inman Berens - “Third Generation Electronic Literature
and Artisanal Interfaces: Resistance in the Materials” (2019)
• Alex Saum Pascual - ”Is Third Generation Literature Postweb
Literature? And Why Should We Care?” (2020)
• Janez Strehovec – “Smart Technology Instead of Blood and Soil”
(2020)
• Nacher, Anna. “Gardening E-literature (or, how to effectively
plant the seeds for future investigations on electronic
literature)” (2020)
• Kathi Inman Berens – “’Decolonize’ E-Literature? On Weeding

50. • Ikeda, Ryan. “Excavating Logics of White Supremacy in
Electronic Literature: Antiracism as Infrastructural Critique”
Electronic Book Review. 01/03/2021.
• Kozak, Claudia. Experimental Electronic Literature from the
Souths. A Political Contribution to Critical and Creative Digital

51. “
”
“DECOLONIAL E-LIT/DH”. ON THE ONE HAND,
THIS MAY BE AN OPTION TO DEBATE THE
USUAL WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING E-LIT
GLOBAL HISTORY, THEORY, CRITIQUE AND
PRACTICE. ON THE OTHER HAND, IT MAY
ALSO CONTEST DIGITAL HUMANITIES
CONSIDERED PRIMARILY IN TERMS OF A SET
OF GLOBAL TOOLS FOR DEALING WITH
CULTURAL ENTITIES IN THE FIELD OF
HUMANITIES. THE LATTER COMPRISES AN
INSTRUMENTAL BIAS WHICH RELIES ON AN
INSTRUMENTAL APPROACH TO TECHNOLOGY
AS ALLEGEDLY NEUTRAL, WITH FEW OR NONE
RELATION TO BROADER SOCIO-TECHNICAL
DIMENSIONS.
Claudia Kozak. “Experimental Electronic Literature from the Souths. A Political
Contribution to Critical and Creative Digital Humanities.” Electronic Book Review.
1/3/2021.

52. RYAN IKEDA’S INFRASTRUCTURAL CRITIQUE
Topics he examines:
• ELMCIP Knowledge Base
• The ELO’s infrastructure:
• The Electronic Literature
Collection
• ELO Fellows program and
Amplifying Anti-Racism
Fellowship
• Decolonization discourse
• Elitism and avant garde
traditions
“My claim, then, is not
that electronic literature,
as a scholarly field or an
aesthetic project, is racist
or white supremacist nor
is it to call out individuals
or institutions; rather, it
is to expose how
structural racism and
white supremacy are built
into its infrastructure to

53. “
”
ELITISM IS A LOGIC BY WHICH THE AVANT-
GARDE DISTINGUISHES ITSELF FROM OTHER
CLASSES OF ARTISTS, GENERATING
HIERARCHIES OF ART, SUCH AS HIGH OR LOW,
ADVANCED OR DELAYED,
EXPERIMENTAL/INNOVATIVE OR NOT. THESE
HIERARCHIES ARE INFORMED BY A DEEPER,
WESTERN LOGIC OF WHITE SUPREMACY, THAT
QUICKLY RACIALIZES THE AESTHETIC
POSITIONS OF HIGH – LOW, ADVANCED –
DELAYED, FORMALLY ENGAGED – CONTENT-
DRIVEN INTO AESTHETIC OR ETHNIC
CATEGORIES.Ikeda, Ryan. “Excavating Logics of White Supremacy in Electronic
Literature: Antiracism as Infrastructural Critique” Electronic Book
Review. 01/03/2021.

54. “
”
FOR ELECTRONIC LITERATURE TO
OPERATIONALIZE ANTIRACISM IT MUST
CRITIQUE ITS INFRASTRUCTURE, REIMAGINE
ITS STRUCTURES, HOW LITERARY HISTORIES
CONSTITUTE THEIRS BY A LOGIC OF WHITE
SUPREMACY.
Ikeda, Ryan. “Excavating Logics of White Supremacy in Electronic
Literature: Antiracism as Infrastructural Critique” Electronic Book
Review. 01/03/2021.

55. WHY DON’T WE HAVE MORE DIVERSE E-LIT?
1. Historical and socioeconomic delays in access to digital
technologies.
2. The digital divide, beyond historical deployment.
3. Needing a certain level of privilege to care about
experimentalism and avant garde artistic movements.
4. Electronic literature, as a concept, excludes too much digital
writing and other related work.
5. Regional communities around the world are either just getting
started or we haven’t established contact yet.
6. Insufficient or inadequate EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion)
efforts from ELO leadership and community.

56. WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
Proposed Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Initiatives:
• Revising ELO Mission Statement to address social justice issues
• Diversify the Board of Directors and Literary Advisory Board and with BIPOC
voices
• Create ELP initiative targeted for new BIPOC & underrepresented publications
• Inviting BIPOC and underrepresented keynote speakers for future ELO
conferences
• Nominating work from BIPOC and underrepresented people for ELO Awards
and Collections
• Targeted events and competitions for BIPOC and underrepresented
populations to create elit.
• Land acknowledgement for our events and investing in displaced

57. “
”
WE COULD ENGAGE IN CREATIVE WORK
AND CRITICISM OF ABSENCE, CREATIVE
WORK AND CRITICISM OF EMERGENCIES
AND IN INTERCULTURAL TRANSLATIONS
IN ORDER TO BUILD DECOLONIAL E-
LIT/DH.
Claudia Kozak. “Experimental Electronic Literature from the Souths. A Political
Contribution to Critical and Creative Digital Humanities.” Electronic Book Review.
1/3/2021.

58. RECAP
• The history of digital technologies and their spread in the world
has imperialistic, neocolonial implications.
• Electronic literature and the digital humanities, as practices and
fields, are shaped by this history and participate and replicate
its structures.
• It is necessary to dismantle these hierarchies, decolonize the
field, and seek more equitable development of both DH and
electronic literature.

59. THANK YOU!
Leonardo Flores, PhD
Professor and Chair
Department of English
Appalachian State University
President
Electronic
Literature Organization
Steering Committee Member
Red Lit(e)Lat
Emai: leo@eliterature.org
Blog: leonardoflores.net
Twitter: @leo_elo_ole
Facebook:
facebook.com/leonardoflores