Infrastructure Manifest (v. 1.0)—Ashley Caranto Morford—Chapter 14—“Resisting BYOI (Bring Your Own Infrastructure) in Digital Humanities Learning Spaces”
Infrastructure Type Descriptiona

Control point for access to or useb

For example, identify the owner, regulator, manager, etc. as appropriate

Open Source, Open Access, or Public Resource/Utilityc Proprietaryc How heavily used?d Reliabilityd Satisfaction for Userd Ethical concerns (known or possible) Comments

Land infrastructure

For example, properties ceded, unceded, public, private, etc.

Include only principal land infrastructures.

I wrote this chapter while living as an uninvited occupant and settler across various colonially occupied Indigenous lands. I wrote the bulk of this chapter from a rented apartment in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homelands currently colonially called Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and I revised this chapter from a rented apartment in the Shoshone territory currently colonially called Ogden, Utah. Dhanashree Thora’s “Colonial Topographies of Internet Infrastructure” (2019), with its focus on the abundance of Global South territories “enabling the interlinking of the rest of the world” (261), can help to remind us of the abundance of Indigenous lands and waters—of the life forces that are teeming within Indigenous territories. It is crucial to contend with the ongoing issue that this abundance is constantly exploited by capitalist colonial powers. Indigenous lands and waters throughout the world continue to be extracted from and depleted by Big Tech and through the running of digital systems and infrastructures that have helped to make the writing of this chapter possible. Not Applicable Not Applicable Ethical concerns are not secondary considerations when it comes to digital infrastructures. They must be at the heart and at the center, always. Thus, we have sought to embed and make transparent ethical concerns within the very descriptions we have written in this manifest. Please read our chapter through this lens and with this understanding as well.

Materials infrastructure

For example, notable common or rare extracted or other materials used in research, production, and communication.

Break down by notable materials used in devices or tools if appropriate.

The materials that power so many of our digital technologies, from laptops to smart phones, are violently extracted from lands, places, and communities continuously most structurally harmed by colonialism and capitalism. These lands and places include Congo, and the ongoing genocide occurring in Congo is entangled in the materials infrastructure of the very digital technologies that we relied on in the process of writing this chapter together. Not Applicable Not Applicable

Energy infrastructure

For example, principal energy sources and infrastructure used in research, production, and communication

  • Internet service provider: Xfinity
  • Cell phone provider: Mint Mobile
  • Electricity:
    • PECO and
    • Rocky Mountain Power
Not Applicable Not Applicable

Transportation infrastructure

For example, private or public transportation needed for daily or research trips

Not Applicable Not Applicable

Architectural infrastructure

For example, buildings, labs, rooms

Not Applicable Not Applicable

Civic, community, national, or regional infrastructure

For example, provided by cities, communities, governments, etc.

Not Applicable Not Applicable

Institutional infrastructure

For example, equipment, services, and “overhead” or “indirect cost recovery” items for grants to universities

Not Applicable Not Applicable

Labor infrastructure

For example, type and amount of labor from collaborators, staff, research assistants; include any attributes that seem important, such as unrecognized, unpaid, low-paid, outsourced, or other attributes of labor

The labor infrastructure scaffolding this chapter involved a collaborative, consistent, and committed labor of care, especially as I and my co-authors connected from various lands, including sovereign Indigenous lands, using digital infrastructures built on and through Indigenous lands—and equally, as we scheduled our co-writing, asynchronous writing, and co-editing work on a weekly basis whilst also navigating precarious careers.

In researching for this chapter, we did not have any research assistants nor did we as co-authors seek any external copyediting support. However, the tools and software we used in the process of co-writing this piece are powered and built through extraction from land and water, often located in Indigenous territories and the Global South, and the folks who provide integral labor in running these infrastructures are often working under immensely precarious and coercive conditions.

Not Applicable Not Applicable

Research-content infrastructure

For example, physical libraries and archives, online research materials, shadow libraries, etc.

  • Personally owned books, both physical and digital
  • A Pedagogy of the Digitally Oppressed Collective repository of pdf files in Cloud storage
  • Readings and PDFs from the online library database of my alma mater University of Toronto
  • Relevant open access articles shared publicly on X/Twitter
  • Search engines, namely Google and Google Scholar
Not Applicable Not Applicable

Tools infrastructure

For example, principal analog tools and digital tools, scripts, or protocols used for research, writing, communication, production (excluding high-performance computing, for which see below)

Analog tools included

  • a spiral bound notebook handmade by Drama MaMa Bookshop in Baltimore,
  • pens and pencils,
  • a wooden table and chair, and a metal laptop stand.

Computer based tools included

  • my personal laptop (a MacBook Air),
  • my personal smart phone (a Samsung Galaxy S9+),
  • the Google Docs word processor,
  • the interactive hypertext tool Twine,
  • and the communication tools of
    • Gmail (both institutional and personal) and
    • Discord for co-author discussion and correspondence.
Not Applicable Not Applicable

Networked Platforms infrastructure

For example, major networked or cloud platforms used for research, storage, analysis, sharing, communication, publication—Google Drive, Dropbox, AWS, etc. (excluding high-performance computing, for which see below)

  • The primary means of storage amongst myself and my co-authors was a shared Google Drive, which I accessed across shifting institutional accounts and my personal account.
  • We also used the networked communication platform Discord as a key means of correspondence.
Not Applicable Not Applicable

High-performance computing infrastructure

Here defined expansively to include the use not just of supercomputers and computer clusters or grids but any high-performance computing infrastructure or special GPU and other processors exceeding the capabilities of an individual workstation, laptop, or server.

Not Applicable Not Applicable
Other infrastructure Infrastructure of Care—It would be worth taking into account the infrastructure of care into which the authors are embroidered into. My collaborators and I have talked about care labor in the previous section, but taking into account care infrastructures in which the authors belong could be something to consider. Much like the infrastructures listed above, this item would make threadbare the proximity to and capacity for caring, caregiving, and caretaking that the author network is responsibilized with. How do the infrastructure of care and its corresponding stack of care duties and responsibilites impact—and redefine—the performance metrics of a scholar? Not Applicable Not Applicable

This infrastructure manifest was completed by Ashley Caranto Morford and reports on Chapter 14, “Resisting BYOI (Bring Your Own Infrastructure) in Digital Humanities Learning Spaces.”