16421

SoSe 17: Mapping Digital Utopia. Internet-Archives of 90s

Natalia Konradova

Comments

Having been developed by engineers and scientists to facilitate technical information exchange, the Internet soon turned out to be an important social and cultural phenomenon. From the outset of the Internet era its users began to imagine a new society, a new culture, and a new future that were supposed to be based on this new technology. The reappearance of utopian thinking in the 90s is all the more important considering the vanishing of the utopian genre from literature in the mid-20th century. The digital utopia of grassroots democracy, unregulated cyberspace, or unlimited creative opportunities existed for a mere decade. While meeting new challenges it followed its literary predecessors and soon transformed itself into a dystopia of total control, surveillance, manipulation, and commercialisation. The study of the short history of utopian Internet is closely related to the problem of online archives, which were shaped according to different rules and under different circumstances. The seminar is structured as a collective research project and includes both the study of theoretical issues and practical research. We will explore and analyze theoretical approaches to definitions of digital utopia and dystopia, digital archiving, and digital temporality. Participants will be encouraged to find, gather and compare different utopian ideas and images of the digital future as part of their research practice during the seminar. close

14 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Wed, 16:00 - 18:00 14 Class schedule

Wed, 2017-04-19 16:00 - 18:00

Lecturers:
Dr. Natalia Konradova