loriemerson

Six (Difficult and Inconvenient) Values to Reclaim the Future with Old Media

Below is the pre-print version of a book chapter I wrote for The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, edited by James O’Sullivan and forthcoming in 2022. Gratitude to James for the opportunity to write this piece! * In the face of entrepreneurs’ and tech companies’ attempts to over determine the shape of what’s to […]

by Lori Emerson

The Net Has Never Been Neutral

Below is a piece, part of my larger Other Networks project, I originally posted on my blog some years ago but then took it down in the hopes that it would find a home in a journal. I’ve since realized that it would be better to share this piece on my website after all! *** […]

by Lori Emerson

Excavating Future Histories of the Internet: AfroNet | Newsletter | Telegraph

I forgot how pleasurable and meaningful it can be to write book reviews! I am, then, very grateful to the Los Angeles Review of Books for publishing my review of three books (“Alternative Internets and Their Lost Histories“) which all, in their way, excavate alternative visions of the internet: Charlton McIlwain’s Black Software, Cait McKinney’s […]

by Lori Emerson

the cosmic internet

Is there a difference–or, how big could the difference really be–between a defunct network that may have stuttered along for just a year or two, thirty or forty years ago, and a fictional network that never existed at all? If the late 20th century and 21st century have taught us anything at all it’s that […]

by Lori Emerson

Why is this all so delightful? Or, Slow Networks Experiment 6

Now that the Media Archaeology Lab is, incredibly for a humanities/media lab, turning 12 years old, and now that I’ve written on the lab in many different ways (how it embodies certain principles from media archaeology, intervenes in the divide between theory/practice, empowers students to reimagine the future, gives us all meaningful access to how […]

by Lori Emerson

Slow Networks Experiment 5: very short range over-air transmission

Continuing on from “Slow Networks Experiment 1: Over-Air Tranmission,” “Slow Networks Experiments 2 & 3: VHF Radio Transmission,” and “Slow Networks Experiment 4: Videotelephony,” this time we played with a strange and relatively recent entrant to the home security market: the X-10 Wireless video sender which we believe came out in about 1998. This is a puzzling […]

by Lori Emerson

Slow Networks Experiment 4: Videotelephony

Continuing on from “Slow Networks Experiment 1: Over-Air Tranmission” and “Slow Networks Experiments 2 & 3: VHF Radio Transmission,” this time we experimented with videotelephony or videophones – the ancestor of today’s Skype and Zoom. Details below. * Date: Dec. 18, 2020 Location:Media Archaeology Lab, 1320 Grandview Ave., Boulder, CO 80309 Participants:Lori Emerson, libi striegl Network […]

by Lori Emerson

Slow Networks Experiments 2 & 3: VHF Radio Transmission

Continuing on from “Slow Networks Experiment 1: Over-Air Tranmission,” this time we performed two different experiments with VHF Radio Transmission – details below. * Experiment 2 Date: Friday Dec. 14, 2020 Location:Media Archaeology Lab, 1320 Grandview Ave., Boulder, CO 80309 Participants:Lori Emerson and libi striegl Network Type: One-to-many broadcast networkOne-directionalOver-the-Air Audio Transmission using VHF Tools:Panasonic Bi-Sider TV/FM-AM […]

by Lori Emerson

“Did We Dream Enough?” THE THING BBS as an Experiment in Social-Cyber Sculpture

In 1990, artist Wolfgang Staehle and Blackhawk (the handle for Peter Von Brandenburg…), conceived of the idea of an online virtual community for artists. By 1991, Staehle, Blackhawk, and a group of about ten others launched The Thing Bulletin Board System into what was then exuberantly called “cyberspace.” The renowned early virtual community was at first for […]

by Lori Emerson

Slow Networks experiment 1: Over-the-Air TV Transmission

Happily, I have returned to working on my “Other Networks” research project. As one facet of the project, libi striegl (manager of the Media Archaeology Lab) and I are performing weekly experiments with what I call “Slow Networks” – ‘slow’ in the sense of temporality and ‘slow’ in terms of an embrace of deliberateness (ie. […]