Expo: Histories of Digital Culture

What do we know about our digital past? What did the first settlers of cyberspace think of life online? How were social media conceived and designed in the early days of computer networking, and how might this help us to look at the present differently? What can we discover when we dig into archives of the World Wide Web and other media?

Explore the history online communities, digital aesthetics and more in 'virtual museum exhibits' created by students from the Bachelor's programme Media & Information for the course Histories of Digital Culture. In addition to browsing the exhibits, you can assemble a student-produced zine as well as attend spotlight presentations, where students will present their most interesting discoveries.

The event includes a keynote by Anya Shchetvina and Nathalie Fridzema called "Imagining the Internets: A Collaborative Glossary." Shchetvina and Fridzema will discuss how the internet has been imagined, narrated, and contested and what concepts we need to study that process. By discussing their forthcoming publication with the Institute of Network Cultures (with support of EASST), they will bring together short essays by the publication's contributors (coming from STS, Media Studies, and Web History) to map a scattered vocabulary for analysing internet imaginaries. This ranges from established concepts like sociotechnical imaginaries and metaphors to more experimental propositions like skeuomorphism and affective surplus.

Programme

14:00 Opening
15:00 Spotlights 1
16:00 Keynote: “Imagining the Internets: A Collaborative Glossary” by Anya Shchetvina & Nathalie Fridzema
17:00 Spotlights 2
17:30 Drinks
18:30 End

Speakers

Anya Shchetvina is a PhD candidate in Media Studies at the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. She is a coordinator of Matter of
Imagination and co-editor of Imagining the Internet(s): A Collaborative Glossary. In the past, she has coordinated The club for internet and society enthusiasts in Moscow, facilitating critical pedagogical and research projects, as well as public discussions related to internet studies.

Nathalie Fridzema is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen. She is coordinator of Matter of Imagination and co-editor of Imagining the Internet(s): A Collaborative Glossary. Her research examines the cultural history of the early Dutch web (1994–2004), with a focus on web imaginaries, everyday practices, and regional histories often overlooked in dominant accounts of internet history.