When the Internet Was a Place - Front Porch Republic

we were online

Turn the internet into a living, shared space with real-time traces of people browsing.

My journey to the heart of the forgotten internet

Slowly but surely, huge swaths of the internet are vanishing. But the artefacts of the early web are still out there, and they have lessons for the future.

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.

a love letter, i guess

I love the internet. It was 1998 - I remember the family computer in my home and that sweet, sweet feeling of finally getting connected to the internet, and...

The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet

A book about how to survive on the internet. It’s about the cozy web, the dark web, the dark forest, the clear net, the dark net, and a new social world emerging around us. This is the Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet.

The Extended Internet Universe

The Internet is now a very complicated place

The Extended Internet Universe

The Internet is now a very complicated place

rip.so :: the digital graveyard

A memorial to the messengers, social networks, browsers and websites the internet forgot.

Eaten by the Internet

This book makes internet infrastructure visible as a force of political power, which is transforming the social world, from the bottom up—through fifteen chapters contributed by a global set of researchers, activists, and techies. We are living a unique moment: internet technologies are the default infrastructure for society, not just how we communicate but also how we organise our social life, politics, and economy, all the way down to our material environments, like cities. Our world is eaten by the internet. This means that those who control the internet control the bounds of public speech, economic production, social cohesion, and politics, making its infrastructure a core political terrain in the networked age. The book’s chapters cover a wide set of topics, spanning from the global politics of content moderation by internet infrastructure to the colonialism inherent in the race to plug the moon, from the harms wrought by blockchain companies in rural America to the particularities of online censorship across Asia. The chapters take on thorny topics, discussing power consolidation in the advertisement and cloud industry, the role of internet infrastructure in the war in Ukraine, and tech’s environmental impact—amongst others. In doing so, this book roots contemporary technology debates in the politics of internet infrastructure and urges us to ask how can we ensure our infrastructures sustain us, rather than consume us?

Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams

I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…

Power in the Age of the Feudal Internet - CoLab

PROPOSITION

No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior

Electronic media present us with a collage of experiences from everyplace. We eat dinner at home while watching starving children thousands of miles away reach out to us for food. From our easy chairs, we stare at blindfolded hostages, and coolly

No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior

Introduction: Behavior in Its PlacePart I--Media as Change Mechanisms Media and Behavior: A Missing LinkMedia, Situations, and BehaviorWhy Roles Change When Media ChangePart II--From Print Situations to Electronic Situations The Merging of Public SpheresThe Blurring of Public and Private BehaviorsThe Separation of Social Place from Physical PlacePart III--The New Social Landscape New Group IdentitiesNew Ways of BecomingQuestioning AuthorityEffect LoopsPart IV--Three Dimensions of Social Change The Merging of Masculinity and FemininityThe Blurring of Childhood and AdulthoodLowering the Politica