Having sat through many similar types of media events over the past 25 years, it felt like a pretty run-of-the-mill event. And that normalcy left me uneasy.
How Liminalism Became the Defining Aesthetic of Our Time
This crowd-curated digital movement is one of the most pertinent and explicit reactions to our particular slice of dystopian late capitalism.
Utopian media studies: Introduction
This introduction to the special issue ‘Utopian Media Studies’ sketches a framework for how media studies can become a site of utopian praxis, research and experimentation. It first addresses three apprehensions media scholars might have about the notion of utopian media studies and its appeal to a loaded concept like ‘utopia’. The introduction then outlines five sensibilities to explicate the nature and significance of this special issue’s contribution to the field: a utopian media studies must adopt an ecological approach to media; recognize and be invigorated by limits; work toward the technological liberation of time; connect imagination with practice; and emphasize and enable conditions for transmitting hope. Lastly, the introduction considers Ruth Levitas’s distinction between utopia’s archaeological, ontological, and architectural mode to map some of the concrete ways in which existing media studies research is doing utopian work that aligns with these sensibilities. In connecting work that operates in these modes with the various contributions to this special issue, the introduction reveals the utopian currents that already run through media studies as a discipline and opens up new conceptual and methodological approaches to studying and modeling digital utopias.
Utopian media studies: Introduction
This introduction to the special issue ‘Utopian Media Studies’ sketches a framework for how media studies can become a site of utopian praxis, research and experimentation. It first addresses three apprehensions media scholars might have about the notion of utopian media studies and its appeal to a loaded concept like ‘utopia’. The introduction then outlines five sensibilities to explicate the nature and significance of this special issue’s contribution to the field: a utopian media studies must adopt an ecological approach to media; recognize and be invigorated by limits; work toward the technological liberation of time; connect imagination with practice; and emphasize and enable conditions for transmitting hope. Lastly, the introduction considers Ruth Levitas’s distinction between utopia’s archaeological, ontological, and architectural mode to map some of the concrete ways in which existing media studies research is doing utopian work that aligns with these sensibilities. In connecting work that operates in these modes with the various contributions to this special issue, the introduction reveals the utopian currents that already run through media studies as a discipline and opens up new conceptual and methodological approaches to studying and modeling digital utopias.
Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
Do you remember the surprise announcement of a new social network in Davos this past January? Something that promised to be the "first" European social network? Its name is #WSocial and it's a fork of #Bluesky. Its founders have ties with European politicians - but there is no official involvement by the EU. You wouldn't know any of this from media reports because they all rehashed their talking points. So I wrote a post about it, dispelling some myths: https://blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-uncovered-the-reality-behind-the-hype/ #OpenWashing
+KAOS: Ten Years of Hacking and Media Activism
At the end of the 20th century, hacking was bleeding edge. When the ideas, practices and pranks of this experimental niche of technophiles attracted the attention of a handful of activists in Italy, they understood that information and communication were what would give shape and voice to social, political, and cultural processes in the near future. +KAOS is a cut and paste of interviews, like a documentary film transposed on paper. It describes the peculiar relationship between hacktivism and activism, in Italy and beyond, highlighting the importance of maintaining digital infrastructures. While this may not sound as glamorous as sneaking into a server and leaking data, it is a fundamental topic: not even the most emblematic group of hacktivists can operate without the services of radical server collectives. Autistici/Inventati (https://www.autistici.org - https://www.inventati.org)
The Local Connection Crisis: New Data on What Communities Need
Sometimes the most exciting discoveries happen by accident. While reading this thoughtful field report from GainForest https://lnkd.in/eihbfggg, I was reminded why I've been so impressed by the way… | Tricia Stapleton
Sometimes the most exciting discoveries happen by accident. While reading this thoughtful field report from GainForest https://lnkd.in/eihbfggg, I was reminded why I've been so impressed by the way they approach their work. Their commitment to accompanying community-based partners and building place-appropriate frameworks feels deeply aligned with the kind of infastructure many of us in bioregional work are striving for. Curious, I headed over to their website and interactive globe and zoomed into my own bioregion. Right there in Puerto Jiménez was a pin. I clicked to see which organization was connected to GainForest—and discovered it was us, Los Higuerones Opening the profile (see the screenshot below), I had one of those wonderful "aha" moments. Not only was it beautifully presented, but I realized the information had been pulled directly from our MaEarth project profile. Then another piece of the puzzle clicked into place: both MAEarth and GainForest are part of the HyperCerts Certified ecosystem. I thought to myself….This is what a truly networked movement does. It's more than interoperability between platforms. It's infrastructure for trust, visibility, and connection. It allows organizations doing meaningful local work to be discovered, recognized, and linked into a broader ecosystem in a way that is does not put a burden on the grassroots partners to make ourselves legible. And this sense of support is also what we experienced throughout the first 21 days of July—motivated, accompanied, and reflected as we engaged in the @Ma earth crowdfunding campaign Huge appreciation to Holke Brammer, @certified, Matthew Monahan and Ma Earth , GainForest.Earth team, and everyone building these interconnected systems. Thank you for creating the kind of infrastructure that strengthens credibility while supporting the people doing the work on the ground. This is the kind of network our bioregions need…stregnthening trust and collaboration within, between and among.🙏.
Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
🚨 New post alert 📝 A deep dive into #WSocial with some fascinating findings: candid statements about their motives, a Greta Thunberg connection, potential AI plans (!!!) Why write about it again? I still had so many questions after publishing my first article. I spent 3 weeks watching every interview I could find and connecting the dots. I hope you'll enjoy this piece: 🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ #blog #longread #privacy #DataMining #Europe
Nineteen Days Before the Deadline, Autistici/Inventati Is Shutting Down
The Italian communications collective survived raids, surveillance and server seizures for 25 years. Eleven days after the United States designated it a global terrorist organization, A/I says the risk to its users has become too great to…
A Luxury Survivalist Community Is Tearing Itself Apart
They went to South Dakota to ride out the apocalypse at a ‘5-star’ bunker compound. They’re already at each other’s throats with HOA-style grievances.
My Trip to FOSDEM 2025
Exploring Brussels and FOSDEM 2025: A visual journey through history, open-source AI, and Belgian charm.
Historical pragmatism and the internet
This article argues that the literature describing the internet revolution in the 1990s was characterized by the rhetoric of the technological sublime. This rhetoric suffered from three fatal flaws: (1) it was not sufficiently grounded in the historical development of technology; (2) it viewed the internet in isolation, failing to consider the wider technological context; and (3) it failed to examine the internet in view of the social, economic, religious and political circumstances of its users. Several examples from history are cited, demonstrating that changes in various systems for the production, dissemination and preservation of cultural information both border and deborder the world. The article suggests that if internet researchers take a pragmatic, historically grounded approach, they will discover that the introduction of internet technology can be seen to have similar consequences. While the technology overcomes many boundaries (of space and time, politics and economics), other social borders may be created at the same time. It is easier to see old boundaries coming down than to see new ones being erected. Rather than being swept by utopian or dystopian enthusiasms, the article insists that the really interesting discoveries are to be made in locating the subtle social shifts taking place, relatively unnoticed, as a consequence of technological change.
Erasmusprijswinnaars - Praemium Erasmianum Foundation
It takes only a glance at a newspaper nowadays to see that much of what we once took for granted is either being cast aside or turned on its head. Indeed, with floods sweeping away entire cities, and the prospect of a nuclear war closer than it has ever been, I couldn’t bring myself to […]
The 15-minute city isn’t a conspiracy: it’s already here
Conspiracy theorists have the plot wrong but the symptom right: economic hardship is already limiting how far people can go
In case you weren't aware how the anonymous Hacker News moderators control the narrative in Silicon Valley. (Bluesky Communities can't come soon enough)
Jonathan Warden
Yeah that story got penalized. Orange is the front page ranking, black is the ranking it should have given the raw ranking formula with no penalties. HN moderators often apply penalties to news and political stories, even if they are very tech-adjacent. news.social-protocols.org/stats?id=49676085
