The Post-Digital Moment of E-Lit? The Shift in the Cultural Appreciation of Digital Technology in the Electronic Literature Collection Vol.

Event details Date: Thursday, August 13, 2026 Time: 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM Location: Zoom - Online Type: Lecture / Workshop Audience: Alumni,Faculty,Prospective Students,Public,Staff,Students About this event 143381000250 Zoom Link: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/94702765212 The previous five volumes of the Electronic Literature Collection are highly regarded in the field as snapshots revealing the state of digital literary creation at the time each of the four existing volumes: 2006, 2011, 2016, 2022. Edited by a team including Dan Cox, Élika Ortega, Dani Spinosa, and Zach Whalen, Volume 5 is currently in preparation and slated to be published in 2027. While still preliminary, the selection process has unveiled a series of recurrent tropes such as the tediousness of digital platforms (i.e. captchas, “I’m not a bot” puzzles, doomscrolling), a nostalgic look to interfaces of the past, disinformation and the rightwing political entanglements of technology, and the concern for human expression. These tropes speak, Ortega argues, not just of the state of digital literary creation in 2026, but also and critically of the shift in the cultural appreciation of digital technologies that have taken place during and in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic and the release of LLM chatbot interfaces. Considering that electronic literature creators have historically tended to be enthusiasts of digital technologies, the amplified criticality and, even, souring to the current technological landscape evident in these tropes is suggestive of a deep cultural shift in the understanding of technology, its benefits, limits, and dangers. A nostalgic look to historically recent, but technologically obsolete pasts complement the disillusionment with the current status quo. Moreover, this shift also suggests a heightened politicized engagement in electronic literature that many have considered lacking in the field. In... Official event details: https://events.berkeley.edu/live/events/324751-the-post-digital-moment-of-e-lit-the-shift-in-the-cul