Having just seen Mark Warshauer's abstract, I think I will post one of my own. Unlike his, mine is not a finished paper, so any feedback or help is appreciated. Also, please note new email address and affiliation. There's no title yet. Abstract: Postcolonial thinkers have long differed in their stance towards "imperialist" literary forms. Ngugi wa Thiongo and Salman Rushdie represent two opposed positions in this debate, with Thiongo asserting the indispensibility of native languages in the creation of an "authentic" postcolonial literature and Rushdie claiming that the "language of the departed imperialists" can and has been successfully repurposed for postcolonial writers. Indeed, Rushdie claims that "English has become an Indian language. Its colonial origins mean that, like Urdu and unlike all other Indian languages, it has no regional base, but in all other ways it has emphatically come to stay." Rushdie's position has elicited much controversy among postcolonial writers. His assertion that the best writing to come out of India has been in English, the language of the colonizer, has infuriated many, firstly because it seems self-promoting (Rushdie's own writing is in English) and secondly because it seems to deny the importance of an authentically Indian voice. The mediation between English literary forms and language use and native ones arouses uneasiness among scholars who wish to assert the independence of formerly colonized cultures. While these concerns seem somewhat removed from questions of new media, the fear that the adoption of an "imperializing" media form and language may replicate old colonial power relations is still very much in evidence now. This paper will assess the extent to which new media forms have "come to stay" in the context of postcolonial culture, and the challenge to notions of cultural authenticity that accompany that arrival. In light of current debates regarding the best ways to close the digital divide, it may be that, at least to media critics sympathetic to Ngugi's views such as Ziauddin Sardar, the question is moot since the divide works to preserve native cultures from colonizing media incursions from the West. Indeed, for them the salient question may be how best to widen this divide. I intend to begin this paper by a review of the debate regarding language appropriation in the context of postcolonia literature and theory because these ideas have been in play in that arena for several years. I then intend to retrofit them onto the case of new media, paying careful attention to instances where it is profitable and strategic to apply them as well as instances in which they do not map well.