ALGOtalk #3: Anya Shchetvina

Anya Shchetvina is a cultural and media scholar and a PhD Fellow in the “Literary and epistemic history of small forms” research group (Humboldt University of Berlin), writing her dissertation on the history and theory of internet manifestos. She used to coordinate The club for internet and society enthusiasts and the Internet Beyond conference. Beyond these institutional contexts, she is nurturing an open-format research initiative and blog called Matter of Imagination.

The TMS-funded ALGOFOLK project invites her to give a talk titled:

Hiding from algorithms: Tech manifesto writing as vernacular practice

What is a good internet? What is a desirable future for digital networks and networked societies? The 1996 Telecommunications Act in the U.S. and the increasing influence of big tech corporations brought huge changes in both digital media ecosystems as well as in the aspirations that tech activists and social movements have about the potential of networked sociality. With the extensive platformisation and commercialisation of the web, and in comparison to the first optimistic decade of the internet’s existence, writing utopias about digital networks became increasingly harder. And yet, there are users, activists, and online social movements who do this nevertheless. This talk will discuss the history of international tech manifestos and of the contemporary social movements within which this genre of writing emerges. Focusing on the example of The Yesterweb, we will trace how manifesto writing became a vernacular practice through which amateur web design intertwines with individual reflections on the internet's present and future conditions and acts against algorithm-mediated infrastructures of social media.

This talk will be in English, and will be followed by a Q&A and an afternoon workshop.