The internet has never been just a piece of technology, unified in its material form. Rather, it is a story we have learned to tell ourselves, organized by metaphors, futuristic pref ixes like ‘cyber’, and a suspension of disbelief about its own material limitations. The internet is the product of a collective process of imagination. But how does one study something so ephemeral as imagination?
Imagining the Internet(s): A Collaborative Glossary brings together 28 words to think about the internet as an imagined object: affordances and infrastructural ideologies, net scepticism and romanticism, vernacular metaphors and algorithmic folklore, and many others. Each entry is a keyword, be it a well-known or a new one, defined and interpreted by the scholar who uses it. The collection sits at the intersection of Media Studies, Internet History and STS, and is rooted in the “Matter of Imagination” working group. Written in an engaging and accessible manner, the glos-sary is designed for teaching, research, and artistic practice, aimed at anyone curious about the imaginative aspects of internet history.
Contributing authors: Abe Hendriks, Steve Jankowski, P. Arun, Karolin Rippich, Maxigas, Niels ten Oever, Anne Helmond, Paolo Bory, Joe Litobarski, Susan Aasman, Phakin Nimman-norawong, Kieran Hegarty, Firuza Huseynova, Dario Rodighiero, Caddie Alford, Sally Wyatt, Femke van Bruggen, Arran Ridley, Gabriele de Seta, Marianne Gunderson, Hanna Lauvli, Debarun Sarkar, Yagmur Vik, Lucy Maun, Rianne Riemens, Rowan Melling, Michael Stevenson, Dave Mee, Claudio Celis Bueno, Jesper Verhoef, Dmitry Muravyov, Magdalena Krystoforska, Danny Steur, Jeroen Oomen.