In Whispers and Furtive Glances

Literacy

• Literacy: "a local act of self-construction within discourse" (Yagelski xiv)

"Taxonomy of Access"

• material access
• functional access
• experiential access
• critical access
• transformative access (Banks 40-46)

"Taxonomy of Access"

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Digital Divide

• "Whoever controls the terms of the debate controls the debate. . . . The metaphor of a great chasm--a divide--polarizes the issue as a matter of simply having, or not having, access to the Internet. From there, it is easy to categorize whole groups of people as 'haves' or 'have-nots.'" (Monroe 5)

Research Questions

• Can there be digital literacy without formalized digital access?
• To what extent have various populations in Cuba had material access to digital technologies?
• In what capacity have Cuban citizens been introduced to and/or given free reign to use digital technologies?

Lack of Infrastructure for Technology in Cuba

• The U.S. embargo
• The Cuban Economy
• The government's fear of information freedom (Press, "The State of the Internet in Cuba, January 2011")

Brief and Reductive Timeline

• January 1, 1959: President Fulgencio Batista flees Cuba amidst pressure from Cuban guerillas; Fidel Castro assumes power shortly thereafter
• October 19, 1960: Commercial, Economic, and Financial Embargo imposed by United States on Cuba in the wake of the Cold War and the Cuban MIssile Crisis

Brief and Reductive Timeline

• November 9, 1989: The Berlin Wall Falls
• June 28, 1991: The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) agrees to disband
• July 1, 1991: Warsaw Pact rendered extinct
• December 25, 1991: Former U.S.S.R. dissolved; Cold War ends

Brief and Reductive Timeline

• 1989: The "Special Period of Time and Peace" begins in Cuba
• October 23, 1992: Cuban Democracy Act (the "Torricelli Law") passed in the United States
• March 12, 1996: Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996 (Helms–Burton Act) passed in the United States

Brief and Reductive Timeline

• April 1991: Cuban government approves e-mail connection between Cuba and Canada
• June 1996: Cuban government passes Decree-Law 209 ("Access from the Republic of Cuba to the Global Computer Network"), which guarded against prospective threats to "moral principles" and national security

Brief and Reductive Timeline

• September 1996: Cuba establishes its first persistent IP connection to the Internet

Structural Limitations to Telecommunications

• surveillance
• access
• network and hardware limitations

Surveillance

• users generally required to provide name, address, and/or passport information before using public computers
• Internet activity restricted to Cuban servers, networks, and domains (.cu)
• content filtering for user activity that is detrimental to the Cuban government

Access

• use and content generation was generally restricted to political leaders, senior officials, intellectuals, academics, doctors, government researchers, and journalists (Voeux, "Going Online in Cuba: Internet Under Surveillance")
• offered two distinctly-priced options for Internet access: 1) "International" ("free" and personalized Web searches] and 2) "National" (restricted to e-mail alone)

Network and Hardware Limitations

• Internet users had dial-up modems, so international connectivity limited to slow, low-capacity links and application
• previously forbidden to purchase computer equipment without permission from authorities

Ambient Rhetoric and Digital Technologies

• "[N]ew and often digital technologies are increasingly enmeshed with our everyday environment. Computer and telecommunications technologies are not only converging but also permeating the carpentry of the world. . . . Information is not just externalized; it vitalizes our built environs and the objects therein, making them 'smart,' capable of action." (Rickert 1)

leapfrogging: the notion that areas that have not developed "stable" or "up-to-date" technological and economic infrastructures might rapidly move themselves forward through the adoption of contemporary systems without going through a series of intermediary steps of development.

Cuban (H)ac(k)tivism

• sharing, renting, and stealing Internet passcodes from "eligible" and "qualified" Internet users
• building computers from parts purchased or traded for in the Cuban black market
• accessing, generating, and hosting content in alternative servers, networks, and domains

Cuban (H)ac(k)tivism

• accessing, exchanging, and sharing otherwise-inaccessible and illegal content with thumb drives and other data storage devices

Research Questions (Again)

• Though severely hampered and restricted by overwhelming government control and surveillance as well as debilitating hardware and network limitations, how might we begin to consider Cuban digital literacies as unique and profound rhetorical and social performances of identity and (h)ac(k)tivism?

Making an Argument

• the sort of "ambient access" that many Cubans assume by virtue of their proximity to and their relative immersion in debates and restrictions around digital technologies implies a unique and profound set of digital literacies, digital literacies that are not hampered or delegitimized with the absence of material access, but, rather, strengthened and multi-facteted

Why DH?

• lenticular logic
• collaboration
• hard and soft infrastructure
• end-users
• cultural context
• ambient sociality
• public writing
• a perpetual making

Methodology

• collaboration as opposed to unilateral making
• insistence on qualitative research and increased attention to cultural context
• perspective as a first-generation Cuban American and a heritage learner
• the "brown-on-brown research" taboo (de la Luz Reyes & Halcon)

What's at Stake?

• "The key question, about technological response to a need, is less a question about the need itself than about its place in an existing social formation." (Williams 13)

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The Beginning